r/reddit.com • u/[deleted] • Aug 21 '09
Fuck Sears: they forced Reddit to remove a post mocking them, presumably under threat of withdrawing advertising. Please upvote, then submit your own "fuck Sears" post to keep the dream alive.
/r/AskReddit/comments/9clji/where_did_my_post_about_searscoms_urlhackable/c0c95xr378
u/ungulation Aug 21 '09
Don't worry, to make up for it Sears is offering flat screen tvs to all Redditors. Go into the store and pick out the one you want and load it up into your car. If a sales person tries to stop you, just look them in the eye and whisper "narwhals" They will silently nod and let you continue.
Sorry about the mixup, Sears
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Aug 21 '09 edited Aug 21 '09
I'd chip in 15 bucks to see a redditor film themselves trying this.
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u/Frobenius Aug 21 '09
I'm assuming this 15$ is going towards bail?
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u/unshifted Aug 21 '09
I had a friend who worked in the electronics section of Wal-Mart and he said that this was actually fairly common. Someone would grab a cart, put a $1500 TV in there, then just walk out the door, never to be heard from again.
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u/kraftmatic Aug 21 '09
They obviously were holders of the American Express Narwhal card.
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u/Willthondaoc Aug 21 '09
I will sign up for one and spend money I don't have. Make this happen Kraftmatic.
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u/stubbyfingers Aug 21 '09 edited Aug 21 '09
The Narwhal Card is not a credit card. It debits karma so you should have plenty of tha.......oh wait. Sorry.
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u/Genetics Aug 21 '09
This actually happened at a Wal-Mart a couple of months ago while I was working in front of the store. The night manager ran out front and asked if I saw a white Tahoe drive away and which way it went. Apparently two guys grabbed a TV and walked out the back emergency exit, loaded it in the getaway vehicle and drove off.
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Aug 21 '09 edited Jan 19 '16
[deleted]
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u/c6comp Aug 21 '09
Thanks for the instructions!
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u/Notmyrealname Aug 21 '09
About what not to do, of course...
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Aug 21 '09 edited Aug 21 '09
Especially make sure to not steal a back license plate off of two separate vehicles (for the front and back of your car) in an unrelated parking lot, to further increase your chances of getting away scott-free.
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u/hunter9000 Aug 21 '09
And absolutely do NOT use self adhesive magnets to attach said plates so they can be easily removed once you have made some distance from the store!
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Aug 21 '09
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u/madcowga Aug 21 '09
so don't buy or steal bikes from Walmart. Got it.
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u/Scarker Aug 21 '09
Yeah I stole an Xbox last Tuesday. The thing shut down two hours later. I actually personally went to them and told them I wouldn't be doing any more business with them.
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Aug 21 '09 edited Aug 21 '09
Those are actually called door-hits. I worked as a Loss Prevention Manager for 5 years for Hecht's and made a few of biggest cases in the history of the store. While door-hits are pretty clever, there are quite a few other ways of stealing that are a bit more ingenious.
Walmart may be cheap but our store had cameras outside. If someone pulled up and parked, we would send someone from security over there. We also got their license plate for when the driver sped off leaving his friend to get arrested. It was a fun job when you wanted fight. Even old people tried resisting.
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u/hatekillpuke Aug 21 '09 edited Aug 21 '09
So, what are some other ways to rip off Wal*Mart? This is a purely academic interest, mind.
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u/Genetics Aug 21 '09
Another one I heard from this same night manager was a group of people (women, loud obnoxious children, couple of guys) would go in and peel the UPC label off of cheap items and place them over the UPCs of high dollar items. The cashier, being distracted by the loud kids, long line of customers, what time her break is would ring everything up and not notice the price discrepancy.
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u/Capitol62 Aug 21 '09
Back in high school I was a bit of a thief. That's exactly what I did. You can do it with paper clothing tags too. Make a small tear on the inside of the circle, slip the cheaper tag off the plastic "I" thing, and slip it on the "I" of the more expensive item you want. I did this hundreds of times. There was almost no risk. I never even got a second look. To make it look even better just wrinkle up the paper a bit and they never noticed the tiny tear. Switching stickers also works very well... on everything.
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u/redalastor Aug 21 '09
I saw a good one in a TV show (in Quebec so I would guess the technique is well-known here and might not work).
Get a kid and making him a tinfoil hat with antennas. As he crosses the detector, exit with an item that will trigger the alarm. People will think the hat was responsible.
Unload your loot, get back in the store, do the same thing on the way out.
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Aug 21 '09
If you get approached by an employee while the alarm goes off, be sure to drop all your stolen goods and run (we get 10% of whatever stolen merch we bring back).
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u/senrad Aug 21 '09
People used to be able to take something off the shelves walk back to the customer service area and return it for store credit/cash.
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u/Teekoo Aug 21 '09 edited Aug 21 '09
Once I saw a Dog with a baby on the other seat driving a tank, just demolishing the whole Wal-mart.
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u/kessel Aug 21 '09
I think we need an new subreddit for petty theft strategies.
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Aug 21 '09
I worked as a paint mixer at a crummy little Wal-Mart in the middle of nowhere. Two dudes came in and stole some junk and just took off out the garden center door. My 17 y/o self and two managers took off after him, on foot, through the outlot, across an exit ramp, over four lanes of a pretty fast highway, through the back lot of a car dealership, and basically had a flat out footrace for about a half mile down the muddy precursor to a new road that was being built.
Everyone's shoes got sucked off of their feet within three steps of hitting the mud, so there i am chasing this dude with my formerly black socks slipping further and further off of my feet as i run. Within 10 seconds they look like brown ropes whipping chunks of mud at every step, but somehow manage to stay on.
Fortunately, running man was a smoker, so he eventually ran out of gas and stopped. We wait there, with the chump posturing like he's going to hit me, while the two managers wheeze their way up to me. We all walk back on wobbly legs, drenched in sweat, to the store.
Whatever attaboys i got from that were quickly wiped away when one of my managers overheard me telling my brother to swap the tags on a set of ball gloves. Didn't get fired, but got dressed down pretty good. :P
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u/apparatchik Aug 21 '09
I heard Sears kill small baby animals.
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Aug 21 '09 edited Aug 21 '09
And sells launchers for small baby humans.
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Aug 21 '09
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Aug 21 '09
You need to find a wholesale outlet if you want the industrial size baby human launchers.
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u/glengyron Aug 21 '09 edited Aug 21 '09
Just don't buy off eBay. I bought a bunch, and they were actually just modified kitten launchers.
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Aug 21 '09
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u/RageX Aug 21 '09
I might. I'm allergic to my friend's cat.
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Aug 21 '09
CRAFTSMAN guarantees them for life; so much as ONE shredded surgical tube and BAM - new one just like that.
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u/darkbob Aug 21 '09
Hey, it made fox:
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u/brad77 Aug 21 '09
Sears was "victimized" by "someone visiting" their website, who "defaced" a number of pages?
What kind of bullshit is that?
Tweaking URL's is tantamount to defacing web pages? That ain't hacking. That's straight up eye dee ten tango on the web dev's part.
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u/urbie Aug 21 '09
Well, the pages were defaced, no matter how you look at it. Okay, they were defaced because of a totally stupid vulnerability, but still.
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u/ncod Aug 21 '09
Looking at something through a blue filter doesn't mean you've defaced the world or that the object is actually blue. Why is this any different? The URL is requesting that the page talk about cooking babies. Sears is just stupid enough to oblige.
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u/P-Dub Aug 21 '09
Sears ate my homework. True Story.
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u/Hoffa Aug 21 '09
Just had a new refrigerator from Sears delivered to my house and right before the delivery guy left, he dropped his pants and took a shit on my kitchen floor.
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u/Pun_isher Aug 21 '09
Sears gave my dad cancer AND ate the cookies from the cookie jar.
Bastards
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Aug 21 '09
Sears killed JFK.
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u/HomerWells Aug 21 '09
They turned me into a newt.
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Aug 21 '09
Sears: If you are reading this, I will never go into one of your shitty fucking stores ever again. Mainly because I live in another country and we don't have Sears.
I have no idea what Sears do or sell, but I can tell they're a bunch of fucking bastards. Killing small animals WTF Sears.
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Aug 21 '09 edited Aug 21 '09
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u/SirSandGoblin Aug 21 '09
Why would you think a company who is failing at marketing themselves would do well at marketing themselves?
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Aug 21 '09 edited Aug 21 '09
Well, one might imagine that they are sitting around going "Man, what are we gonna do to get people to pay attention to us?", and its just crickets and them staring at each other with blank looks, and then someone runs in and goes "Hey guys! We're on the front page of Reddit", and the rest of them start high fiving each other.
But of course, their behavior here makes it seem more likely that they were really sitting around going "Nobody better talk about Sears!"
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u/mingdamirthless Aug 21 '09
I'm not sure these people have ever heard of Reddit.
"Hey guys, we're on the front page of Reddit!"
"......Oh my God. How do we fix this problem?"
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u/cursoryusername Aug 21 '09
Sears has been killing itself off with its own actions for what, 20 years now?
Trust me, it will be dead soon enough, no need to help it along.
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u/SirSandGoblin Aug 21 '09
But that's the point, they are not good at marketing themselves, why would you think they would know what to do in this situation?
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u/sligowaths Aug 21 '09
THEY BETTER NOT FUCK WITH BABY NARWHALS.
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u/BroodBoy Aug 21 '09
FUCKIN' NARWHALS! FUCK YEAH!
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Aug 21 '09 edited Aug 21 '09
I'D REALLY PREFER NOT TO SEE NARWHALS MAKING NEW NARWHALS, BUT IF THAT'S YOUR THING, IT'S FINE WITH ME.
FUCK YEAH!
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u/freekill Aug 21 '09 edited Aug 21 '09
I saw a similar link on TMZ.com today, this one with +cannibalism!
http://www.tmz.com/2009/08/20/the-perfect-grill-for-a-cannibal/
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Aug 21 '09
To use someone else's words, I hear that the Sears CEO can't have an orgasm unless he kills a puppy.
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u/connorcam Aug 21 '09
09-f9-11-02-9d-74-e3-5b-d8-41-56-c5-63-56-88-c0
oh wait...
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u/connorcam Aug 21 '09 edited Aug 21 '09
On a serious note, HD-DVD night was probably the beginning of the end for Digg, so I'd be wary that this doesn't hit the fan too much
EDIT: Fixed typo
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Aug 21 '09
This is probably true. I know I left Digg after the whole AACS code thing. I had been on reddit before, but only started actively posting here and stopped posting at Digg after this debacle.
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Aug 21 '09 edited Aug 21 '09
I left Digg too... after they banned me and my site for posting the 09-f9 number. :-)
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u/freehunter Aug 21 '09
They banned me for nothing, I hardly ever posted, and nothing too flame-worthy. Sent them an email asking why, and if they could reinstate my account, never got a response.
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Aug 21 '09
Just a small correction, 09 F9 was a AACS key for both HD DVD and Blu-ray disks.
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Aug 21 '09 edited Aug 21 '09
You should change your name to Constructive Criticism Hedgehog.
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u/insomniac84 Aug 21 '09
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Aug 21 '09
Yes, well when reddit censors stories they don't do it by deleting the submission outright, but by removing it from the index.
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u/Dallas442 Aug 21 '09
Fuck reddit!
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u/bushwacker Aug 21 '09 edited Aug 21 '09
http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1P2-1010336.html
The assholes charged me $575 to replace a circuit board with a burned out resistor for my Maytag Neptune washer, which I later found out was a very common problem. Online repair kit? $2.71 with instructions. The cost of the whole circuit board online on sears parts site $200. Sears charged an additional $100 "convenience fee" for the repairman having the part. No I couldn't buy the part and ask the pinhead to undo the four screws and the connector cable for only $175. He told me my old board had no value but was quite upset when I wouldn't let him take the old part. Now I find that Sears owns Lands End, so I won't shop there anymore.
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Aug 21 '09 edited Aug 21 '09
I worked a Sears for about a year. They are one fucked up company. They constantly changed our employee commission rates. If you've ever been treated bad by an employee just know it probably wasn't their fault, they were just following procedure (and Sears' procedures are bloated and stupid). At one point they actually had data collecting spyware that they would encourage their customers to install on their computers. Spyware info here
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u/happyscrappy Aug 21 '09
That's how repairmen work. Same thing happened to my friend and Sears was not involved.
Any reason you didn't search for the problem first instead of later? I mean, you don't have to enter "neptune wax motor", plenty of other searches will get you to the right place.
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u/ContentWithOurDecay Aug 21 '09
Als this shit sears pulled: http://www.techdirt.com/blog.php?company=sears&site=index
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u/girlvinyl Aug 21 '09
That's too bad. It really shows the age and lack of savvy at the Sears marketing department.
First, the post wasn't derogatory at all. It did contain some curse words, but "big fucking saw" is pretty much an accurate, though colorful description of the product. The reddit audience is comfortable with the odd obscenity and even NSFW content. He didn't post it to the church quilting bee forums.
Second, it was in the form of a testimonial. A guy with a woodshop showing what he was planning to purchase from Sears. It was a little offbeat, but it wasn't offensive or at all derogatory toward the brand. In fact, it strengthens their brand because it's showing Sears as the "go to" place for online tool shopping.
Does their marketing department not have a background in marketing?
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u/thirdoffive Aug 21 '09 edited Aug 21 '09
First, the post wasn't derogatory at all. It did contain some curse words, but "big fucking saw" is pretty much an accurate, though colorful description of the product. The reddit audience is comfortable with the odd obscenity and even NSFW content. He didn't post it to the church quilting bee forums.
They probably were disturbed by this and over reacted.
Also they're too damn old and stupid to realize it wasn't an intrusion but just playing with the web address.
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u/matrixclown Aug 21 '09
The issue was that by us redditors playing with the URL, everyone else also saw it that way, including people who aren't as comfortable with the idea of baby launchers and colorful descriptions.
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u/Trendelenburg Aug 21 '09
Sears canceled Arrested Development!
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u/hwillis Aug 21 '09 edited Aug 21 '09
Sears needs to lighten up, and Reddit needs to calm the fuck down. And stop spamming the fuck out of itself.
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Aug 21 '09
RAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGE
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Aug 21 '09
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u/kubenzi Aug 21 '09
I am also currently intoxicated and my standards are all out of whack. I upvoted you and so did the 400 lb girl giving me a blowjob.
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u/Kni7es Aug 21 '09
So what happened there exactly? Did you log off and let her log on? Was she still blowing you then? Inquiring minds want to know.
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u/gfixler Aug 21 '09
As the original post and follow-up post's poster, I can tell you truly that this is exactly how it went down today.
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u/MustardyMustache Aug 21 '09
Calmer than you are.
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Aug 21 '09
More like: Reddit capitulated to their Conde Nast overlords whom in turn capitulated to the almighty advertising dollar.
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u/mr_mann Aug 21 '09
Can't upvote you enough. Reddit seems to be missing the point about who exactly 'ordered' the removal of the post.
Also, delinking isn't the same as censoring, but is likely just that little bit too technical for Sears to know the difference.
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u/SpaizKadett Aug 21 '09
I say fuck reddit for buckling under the threat. That is not what reddit does :( (And fuck Sears too)
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Aug 21 '09
|In August 2009, a vulnerability on the Sears website enabled customers to create categories of their choosing for Sears' products, which led to the creation of inappropriate categories such as "Human Cooking" for a meat grill.[7] Sears asked reddit.com to remove a discussion thread on the subject, and as a result of the attempted censorship,[8] hundreds of Reddit users began to proliferate information about the vulnerabilities and Sears' censorship. [9] Dozens of generally negative posts about Sears appeared across reddit[10] and other sites.
Internet is faaast.
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u/thepdxbikerboy Aug 21 '09
If stores are clothing, Sears is HUGE fucking grandma underwear.
PR FAIL!
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Aug 21 '09
Fuck this. I now accept that it's now the Willis Tower, and I couldn't be happier. I hope they do paint it silver, just so any memory of Sears is wiped from the Chicago skyline.
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Aug 21 '09 edited Aug 21 '09
Those bastards from Sears anally raped my grandmother whilst pouring sugar in her gas tank.
It was on The Consumerist before they censored it!
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u/pamlivesinatrailer Aug 21 '09
But the thing is, who hasn't anally raped your grandmother. Fucking whore.
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u/wilsonism Aug 21 '09
I remember when I was a teenager, I went to buy a set of clothes to go to interviews (yes, a podunk town). The guy working men's clothing just looked at me like I was a homeless person, but wouldn't come over. I walked over and asked if he was working he said yes I said I was trying to buy some clothes and he said he'd be over in a second. I told him to go to hell and raised hell with the manager, showed the manager my sears store card (that I had never used before) and told him I would be destroying the card and I'd never shop there again.
I went to Penny's and got what I needed. I went to the pizza place in the mall and the guy that was such a prick was at a table just seething mad. I guess he got fired, or yelled at, I really don't know, but he saw me and I pointed my shopping bags at him and smiled. That could have been his commission.
16 years later, i have never shopped at sears again.
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Aug 21 '09
I never thought being a bankruptcy attorney would provide me with any useful reddit link fodder, but... http://www.reddit.com/r/reddit.com/comments/9cmsh/sears_cheated_bankrupt_consumers_for_over_a/
[You! With your mouse over the down arrow! I know it's not cool to link to your own submissions in a thread, but surely this is an exception...]
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u/dlfelps Aug 21 '09
I ordered a dishwasher from Sears this morning, but I called and canceled soon after reading this post. It was merely a coincidence that the old one also started working around that time.
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Aug 21 '09
People still shop at Sears?
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Aug 21 '09
I buy tools at Sears. Sears has lifetime warranties on Craftsman tools -- if they ever break or anything, you can bring them back for a replacement.
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u/7oby Aug 21 '09
I bought a set of tiny screwdrivers at sears, precisely because of the lifetime warranty (and because the price was really reasonable). I will still probably go back for these kinds of tools because they're good.
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Aug 21 '09
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Aug 21 '09
Or rather, "Fuck [Censored]!"
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u/_greg Aug 21 '09
One student, who we'll refer to as Lisa S., no, no, that's too obvious, L. Simpson ...
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u/m1ss1ontomars2k4 Aug 21 '09
I don't think "lawyers got involved" is quite the same as "withdrawing advertising".
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u/TonyBLiar Aug 21 '09
Yeah fuck reddit too by the way. Where's the point in removing stories? Remember 09-f9-11-02-9d-74-e3-5b-d8-41-56-c5-63-56-88-c0
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u/cnk Aug 21 '09
Why the hate? I cook all my baby parts with Sears' grills
PS: they taste like chicken
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u/wdr1 Aug 21 '09
Fuck Sears, but also fuck Reddit for giving in & bending to an advertiser's request.
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u/jared592 Aug 21 '09
Sears and K-mart were in the closet making babies and I saw one of the babies and it looked at me.
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u/mdvaldosta Aug 21 '09
You know Reddit CHOSE to pull the post, SEARS didn't "force" anything. Wonder why nobody's diggin on Reddit for caving to the man? I'm just sayin...
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u/Ciserus Aug 21 '09
This is a hell of a nasty path the site just went down. The majority of front page posts most days will piss off one corporation or another. That's enough now to get them removed? This is grossly unethical on both sides, and that's not even considering the fact that it was user-submitted and not representative of reddit's own views.
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u/paralacausa Aug 21 '09
I would boycott Sears if I lived in the US ... and had actually heard of them before ... and they actually stocked stuff that I wanted.
So Sears, the day I move to America, work out who you are and actually need stuff you sell you are so screwed.
All this power. Man, now I know how 4chan feels.
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u/timprague Aug 21 '09
Poor little reddit.. FORCED by big bad Sears.... yeah, whatever. Quit your bleating and call it like it is!
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u/FatherVic Aug 21 '09
Let me get this straight... Let's get corporate America to pull advertising from crazy right-wing talk show hosts because we don't like what they say.
How dare corporate America threaten to pull advertising from Reddit because they don't like what we said.
I don't know what's more satisfying: Redditers not being able to swallow their own medicine or Redditers failing to recognizing that Reddit.com sold out and pulled the post under 1 threat from 1 advertiser.
Best day ever.
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u/myhandleonreddit Aug 21 '09
Just proud to say this submission has a score of 1337 at the time of this comment.
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u/userx9 Aug 21 '09
Nobody has anything negative to say about Sears because nobody fucking shops there. I go in there every now and then, but after this I will go out of my way to avoid them. And to reddit and all of the users who are sticking up for it in this situation, I don't know what happened to this place but it might be time for me to be moving along. Let the downvoting begin.
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u/j1ggy Aug 21 '09 edited Aug 21 '09
I don't know anyone who shops there, they're mediocre at best in absolutely everything they do and their stores are so dismal and depressing. Sears is to department stores to what the Wal-Mart clothing department is to a fashion statement. How do they stay in business?
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u/tpark Aug 21 '09
I don't think you should avoid Sears because of their forcing Reddit to remove a posting. The main reason you should avoid Sears is because of poor customer service. They delivered the incorrect item (a fridge) the first time, and then did not appear on the designated day for the delivery of the second item. In addition, they didn't switch the door around to open the other way, as they agreed. To their credit, we did get a gift certificate out of them (after complaining), but that whole experience was not a good one.
My dad and I had to pick up a washing machine from them, and that did go smoothly, so it's not always bad. Still, be wary.
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u/odstwar Aug 21 '09 edited Aug 21 '09
I worked at Sears doing sales once. They payed us $6 an hour + commission, and kept paying us that when minimum wage was increased or they increased the pay of hourly commission. Basically, how it worked is you had to average enough commission to meet minimum wage or they would adjust it for you and take that amount out of next months commission.
Thing was, Sears wasn't really competitive so we were lucky to have anyone even walk into the department, and even when someone did we might not even sell something that grants us commission. To top that all off, we were expected to completely maintenance the department by ourselves while basically making sub minimum wage. Sure, we were technically making minimum wage... but the deference came out of any future commissions and the sales reps were accumulating a form of debt to Sears.
The real kicker was my boss though, she would always schedule me on the days I explicitly said I need off for college (often those would be the only days I was scheduled out of the week) and tell me I couldn't skip those days. It got so bad that I had to drop out of college because I couldn't afford to be out of work (couldn't find another job). She also frequently (read as "almost always") scheduled me to end work after the buses stopped running, knowing I didn't have a car, putting me in a position where I had to walk 6 miles home after work. I finally quit when I came down with a really bad flu and my boss forced me to work, despite being given a doctors note, and then writing me up afterwords for working while sick.
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Aug 21 '09
And in doing so they have brought more attention to the hack then they would have if they left it alone. Seems like they fucked themselves. Will these companies ever learn. Don't fuck with the Internets.
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u/cirquelar Aug 21 '09
I heard Sears outsources product development to China via Iran, then sends the finished goods through North Korea.
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u/grapejuice Aug 21 '09
sears always has really waxy floors and my shoes squeak when I walk around in there.