Well I'll jump in as a Ex-Craftsman salesman!
No arguements here, everyone has hit it right on I think. For people that make a living and use their tools every day, their are better alternatives than Craftsman.... but for a whole lot more money!
I worked the hardware dept. at Sears for 6 years in my high school/college days and heard all the good and bad from customers. Never any complaints though when we would unconditionally no questions asked give them a shiny new hand tool if they asked. Sometimes it wouldn't even be technically broken, but we stuck by the "customer is always right" policy. I could go on all day with stories of the experience but I won't.
The oldest tool I ever replaced? A 1/2" ratchet. Didn't look anything like anything we'd seen, to reverse it, you had to pull the part that holds the socket out of the gears and insert it back in the opposite side. The thing weighed a ton too, much better quality than anything Craftsman made since. We looked it up in the old catalog archives and couldn't find one like it until the mid 1930's I believe. It belonged in a museum, but this old fella insisted he didn't want it and just give him his replacement. So he traded in this cool antique for a $17 one of the rack.