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“My dad stayed away with any equipment with the Craftsman name or appliances with Sears name due to this.”

Well nothing against your dad, I’m sure he was a fine man, but I do question his knowledge in this area.

Kenmore and Craftsman have never been manufactured by Sears, it is a brand that sears created, but it does not manufacture any of it. They are made by companies like whirlpool, Maytag, GE etc under license. You can always get a part for a kenmore or craftsman product from the original manufacturer even if sears will no longer directly sell you one (assuming of course the original manufacturer still has parts for your model) all you need to know is the original manufacturers version of that model and cross reference the part.

Here’s a useful link showing what I am saying:

http://www.appliance411.com/purchase/sears.shtml

and another for Craftsman:

http://vintagemachinery.org/craftsman/manufacturers.aspx

I know what I'm talking about on this. What I posted about was policies they had even into the 1970's. True other companies made their product and Sears manufactured nothing. Their modified or unlisted products requiring Sears parts you could only find guess where? At Sears. A Briggs and Straton engine from a hardware store you could buy parts anywhere. A Sears engine? NO in some way it was modified not to quite match up. Everyone starting getting mad over the nonsense. It was done to sell service contracts.

Now later on eventually yes you could finally go and get parts anywhere and that occurred. My guess is info finally got shared but back then no one had it but Sears. It was that and stores could not cross reference. Believe me we tried.

One store in our city had every appliance part made except Sears products. It always ended up in a trip to the nearest Sears warehouse/parts center and eternal backorder.