WOT: Sears can kiss my a$$

[Fritz]

Bought a W/D from them 5 years ago. Have just had a small problem in that the water pump is failing.
Made an appt with them for 8A-noon last week. Tech shows up at 2P after repeated calls from me. Tells me he just got the appt 15 minutes ago.
OK.
Fine problem and orders part for home delivery. Part arrives in a timely manner.
Sears calls to set up new appt for install of part. For today 8A to noon. Calls to confirm yesterday afternoon.
It's 10A here. I call Sears just to make sure they don't have a time foul up again.
They're coming afternoon now. The person on the phone says 8A to noon is what they request, but do not guarantee. Well wtf? Why bother?
She radios/emails/texts, whatever, the tech to call me immediately to let me know his approx eta.
No call yet.

so congratulations Sears!

You win the corporate Kiss My A$$ daily award.

You can be sure I'll be buying all our new kitchen from Sears appliance store.

Next time I'll call the Cable company to repair my W/D.

[mikebw]

Good luck with that. Last time I had to deal with my cable company it took 3 missed appointments before anything got done. That was after I called twice and had someone promise me that it wouldn't happen again. Yeah right...

[volcs0]

Not that it wil help at this point, but when this kind of stuff happens to me, I write up a quick letter, print out a few copies and (snail) mail them to the president/CEO and a few vice presidents. I include something like you said - about how I was going to spend $X or buy $Y or how I am the purchaser for a department of a zillion people, etc. I have never failed to get some sort of corporate response, either apologizing (at least) or a peace offering. I don't make the letter angry - just incredulous as to how any business can treat its customers is such a fashion - especially with so many options available.

I usually get the info from the company's homepage or from Yahoo Finance.

Here is quick info on Sears: http://finance.yahoo.com/q/pr?s=SHLD

-sam

[bazookaman]

I hate Sears. I always feel like I need a shower after i leave there. Normally i avoid it like the palgue. But their kenmore was a top rated canister vac so we went to get one. We found the one we wanted. On sale. Right there. In a box...among several. The sales creature approached us and started her pitch. I told her we found what we wanted. She walked us to the register where she also grabbed a bag of vacuum bags. Now, I have no doubt we would have needed bags evnetually. But it really chapped my hide that she just tossed it in like it was the only way to buy it. So after we pay, I figure, I'll go pick up my box and leave. right? Nope. I had to take my reciept downstairs and plug in a number into this console and WAIT for them to bring it to me! I waited another 20 minutes just to have someone bring me something I could have gotten off the shelf. Ugh! I hate Sears. I would rather shop at Best Buy!

[Fritz]

thanks for the corp info.

ya dang straight I'm gonna write a letter.

monkeys will fly next time I buy from that lot.

[Ombligo]

Ok, but imagine the wait for repair from someplace like Best Buy or a local shop with no repairs.

What burns me about Sears is they won't sell a floor model if they have anything else at all in stock. They would rather you walk away empty handed and buy elsewhere. Which is what I do.

The Sears price match also does not apply to stores that sell cheaper than them. Yep, you heard me straight. i went in with a price from a local chain that was well under the Sears price and the sales person said they won't price match them because they sell too low. They only price match stores that are competitive.

[jardster]

That is standard operating procedure for sears. They did this to me 4 times to fix my dryer that was under warranty. Finally, after the thing started smoking and almost catching fire, I called an expensive 24 hour service out of the phone book. They fixed the thing in 5 mins and couldn't believe that the Sears people were so incompetent (actually, they could, they laughed at me when I told them who tried to fix it the first time). I sent the bill for the 24 hour place to sears, some VP there, and actually got my money back! They still suck.

[ADent]

You can buy other brands at Sears. Typically the Whirlpools are the same as the Kenmores - but it varies.

Our Whirlpool icemaker went out and we called Whirlpool directly, not Sears where we bought it from.

[MikeF]

We had a gas water heater from Sears go out -- the pilot light wouldn't stay on. Called for an "emergency" service and was told that it would be 2 days later (for an emergency -- a non-emergency was even longer). And this is in So Cal...

Fortunately, I managed to tweak the pilot to stay on until the repair person came -- I was not a happy camper and not looking forward to 2 days of cold showers...

[tenders]

If you own a gas hot water heater it behooves you to figure out how to replace the pilot light thermocouple. It is an $8 part from Home Depot, 20 minutes to fix even if you don't know what you're doing. You need a crescent wrench and a grill lighter with a reasonably long flametube, nothing special. Saving just one cold shower is worth having an extra thermocouple taped to the water tank. Really, it is.