A decade before Internet business started eating into Sears profits, the local Sears car service dept got caught selling unneeded front end alignments and parts. When a customer brought their car in for tires or brakes they were showing the owner how the ball joints were loose, but placing a large channel lock pliers on the control arm and wiggling it up and down.

A good friend got a call from his wife telling him Sears wanted an extra couple hundred bucks to repair the "loose and worn parts".
He knew the car drove perfectly and did not need any front end parts based on his knowledge of the car, it was a low mileage Buick. He told his wife not to authorize the work and he was coming down right away to see what they were trying to sell her.
He showed up and when he saw the scam he told them he knew what they were they trying to pull and took the car home.

Flash forward about a year later there was a news release that the California Bureau of Auto Repair caught Sears in a sting operation for just those things, selling unneeded front end work.
Its sad that a big corporation allowed a scam to go on like that!
here's from an online account of the Sears scam:

When undercover cars in California and New Jersey caught Sears Auto Centers selling unnecessary repairs in 1992, many people were surprised to learn that the company had quotas, sales commissions, and contests that encouraged the sale of additional repairs. Consumer advocates said those practices were responsible for the problems at Sears, but the company initially denied that anything improper had occurred. Sears claimed that replacing good parts before they fail was "a common practice in the industry" and tried to pass it off as preventive maintenance. The company later admitted that "mistakes did occur" and agreed to pay $8 million to settle the California charges. Sears also agreed to make restitution to 900,000 customers nationwide and they discontinued the use of quotas, commissions, and contests.

At the time, the shocking truth of Sears' words went largely unnoticed. But the industry's "dirty little secret" was out: Quotas, commissions and contests (for example, Caribbean cruises and $10,000 cash prizes for managers, $500 per day quotas for mechanics), plus the replacement of good parts, really were common practices at many large, well-known auto repair chains. A number of undercover investigations and class-action lawsuits have resulted in charges of deceptive advertising, bait & switch tactics, and outright fraud at some of the biggest names in the business.

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'95 E320 Wagon my favorite road car. '99 E300D wolf in sheeps body, '87 300D Sportline suspension, '79 300TD w/ 617.952 engine at 367,750 and counting!