What do you guys think about Sears and their co-branded Citi MC?

[Anonymous]

I've had a Sears mastercard for over 10 years.  I remember taking my kids there for back-to-school shopping, well, my son actually.  The girls wouldn't be caught dead in that store lol #spoiledbrats.  But anyway over the years I've bought tires and car batteries, new appliances, and my first Samsung HDTV all on my Sears/Citi MC.  So now what?  With Sears facing certain demise, do you think Citi would cancel Sears accounts?  Or maybe PC to a different citicard?  I hope so, losing that credit line would hurt my utilization.  

[chiefone4u]

Only time will tell.

Most banks seem to move their qualified customers to a new product when a co-branded retailer goes out of business. I'm sure Citi will do the same. Since not all spending was at Sears, it would indicate there is still a revenue stream for Citi by keeping those customers.

[Revelate]

They may get bailed out too, another offer was tendered though details weren't released, but it's on the table for keeping open some number of stores and something like 75% of the employees.

[Anonymous]

The most wildly, wildly optmistic scenario for Sears would be to do a chapter 22 as retailers generally do.
A few chapter 11 reorganizations followed by a final liquidation.

[Dave4fun]

Ahhh Sears....Nostalgic and Former Flagship place to shop for America back in the day! The Sears credit card was one of the most coveted and difficult cards to get decades ago. Sears was it boys and girls! I just don;t understand why they didn't move their booming catalog business online. They had the shipping and order infrastructure. They really could have thrived. Anyway, as Livvi says we used to always buy everything at Sears. Tires, car maintenance, washers, dryers, refrigerators. Kenmore the best! Grab some popcorn and shop for tenis shoes, clothes, while your car was being serviced. Loved my Sears card back then. Gee, back in the 60's they had the best CC commericals....Your Sears Credit Card aka SearsCharge is Revolving, that was huge back then! I remember watching those as a little kid during Bewitched and wondering what that meant! LOL! You could even have 2 of them. One was for major purchaes with smaller required monthly payments.  Then in the 90's I think they rolled out the MC with Citi.  My MC has been in the SD for many years. Last time I used it was for a Samsung washer, but that was 5 + years ago.  Sears you will be missed!

[Anonymous]

Retail will continue its decline as more and more people find out online that the vast majority of products sold in stores are made by a relatively small group of manufacturers. We're seeing an ever increasing amount of disruption in this space from millennials - with their VC partners of course - who have figured out the game and are going direct to China to heavily undercut the major retailers and provide above average product differentiation at the same time.

There's still many years left for retailers to count on uninformed shoppers for their revenue targets. I'm just waiting for Alibaba to go all in with a North American market push. Their delivery infrastructure isn't good enough right now for the average consumer, but it will be eventually.

[Anonymous]

Typically they will just move you over to another card they have, or they will notify you about anything they have on the issue. Typically they will move it.