Sears rant... Business as usual?

Spud · 03-20-2008, 04:20 PM

This is a warning to all who may buy from Sears.com..

So I ordered 3 garage cabinets from Sears.com a few weeks ago. They arrive on Monday, the UPS guy actuall invites me into his truck to show me how badly damaged one 1 the 3 items is. He tells me it should have never been put on the truck and that he was marking it as damaged in shipment in the UPS tracking system. No worries I think, I'll just call Sears and tell them what happened, and they can send me a replacement ASAP, since they can see on the tracking that it was never delivered to me and was on the way back to them.

Well the CS rep I talk to on Monday says "yeah, I see its on the way back, we'll get one out to you, and send an email confirm." So I give it a few days and no email. So I call yesterday, CS rep says a Supervisor had placed a note on my order to wait on shipping my replacement until the damaged item had made it back to their wharehouse in UT from CA. I ask to speak with the Supervisor and sure enough this is their "policy". Essentially, I paid for a product, it was damaged in delivery (I never took posession) and they are asking me to wait until the product is returned, and they credit me the cost, and then I have to REORDER the item!! WTF? I pretty much lost it when this young female "supervisor" is spouting their company policy like it makes perfect sense... She would not budge, so I told them to credit me and kiss this and any future online purchases with them goodbye.

Am I way off base here? Am I just spoiled by Pelican's superior customer service/problem resolution?

onlycafe · 03-20-2008, 04:57 PM

if you would like to really get their attention ,you might go to the local store, procure a stack of their credit card offer forms that have a first class postage paid mark on them and firmly affix them to whatever heavy items you have in the garage, for example, old beat brake rotors or a short length of I- beam, anything that weighs a good deal, at first class postage rates it will cost them a pretty penny.
i did this with columbia house record club years ago to get them to stop sending me their selection of the month. it worked.

Fritz Peyerl · 03-20-2008, 05:01 PM

No you are not off base.
After some stupid explanation like that, I normally ask for the person who signs here paycheck. that quite often get's some action. I slowly climb the ladder till I get some body who has more brain than a squirrl.
After that every purchase I get from the competition, I fax a copy of the receipt to the district manager of the lousy store and tell him why he lost another sale.

I do not like Stupidity.

peppy · 03-20-2008, 05:02 PM

onlycafe that is funny.

MT930 · 03-20-2008, 05:47 PM

Sears Blows! It was once a good company. I have had several issues with they over the last 15 years. Why do I go back?

No More.

rammstein · 03-20-2008, 06:08 PM

Somebody should do a case study of Pelican's Customer Service and mail it to the rest of the corporate world.

Does that earn me some kind of discount Wayne?

jmshepard · 03-20-2008, 06:08 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by onlycafe

if you would like to really get their attention ,you might go to the local store, procure a stack of their credit card offer forms that have a first class postage paid mark on them and firmly affix them to whatever heavy items you have in the garage, for example, old beat brake rotors or a short length of I- beam, anything that weighs a good deal, at first class postage rates it will cost them a pretty penny.
i did this with columbia house record club years ago to get them to stop sending me their selection of the month. it worked.

I seem to remember reading about this in the Abbie Hoffman classic "Steal this Book". Abbie also suggested that this is a good way to get rid of garbage and seafood.
Jim S.

stomachmonkey · 03-20-2008, 07:58 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by MT930

Sears Blows! It was once a good company. I have had several issues with they over the last 15 years. Why do I go back?

No More.

Bad customer service is everywhere.

I will continue to shop at Sears for their support of our National Guard Troops.

911boost · 911boost's Garage

I have 3 of the Craftsman cabinet, I really like them. I always order my special order stuff from Sears online and chose to pick it up in the local store. It actually works pretty slick.

Bill

Joeaksa · 03-20-2008, 08:59 PM

How did you pay for the cabinets? If it was with a credit card, then contact them and tell them that the products were not delivered and you want to cancel the charge.

Let Sears stew with it for a while...

Spud · 03-20-2008, 09:05 PM

" I always order my special order stuff from Sears online and chose to pick it up in the local store. "... I agree, this can be a good option, but not everything sold online has this option. My point to this post was to shed light on the horrible customer service I recieved, and what is, at its root, a very customer unfriendly policy with regard to the return of damaged goods. I may still shop at my local Sears store, but this has left such a bad taste in my mouth it will be a while before I go back.

I'm liking some of the suggestions here though

Spud · 03-20-2008, 09:07 PM

Hey Joeaksa, yes I paid by credit card, but I would not feel right about canceling the charge, since 2 of the 3 cabinets were OK... I just wanted what was right, now I'm leaning more toward getting my pound of flesh..

EdT82SC · 03-20-2008, 10:02 PM

The days of Sears are numbered. They aren't going out of business right away, but they are poorly run, and when K-Mart bought them they had NO intention of trying to fix them. I posted a few weeks ago about how Sears had over-charged me by $305 on a Sears.com order. After many hours on the phone with first their customer service, and then writing a letter and several more phone calls with their customer satisfaction department I finally got it all back.

How's this for a poorly run company? I bought a total of 5 items. One weighed 105 pounds, another 85 pounds, and the other three were under 5 pounds each. The heaviest was delivered by a Sears delivery truck. The 85 pound box was delivered the same day by a freight service. The lighter items came in a third box from UPS. How much cheaper would it have been for them to put all the items on their delivery truck instead of paying UPS and the freight service separately?

I told a guy I work with the whole story, and he told me about an interview he read with the CEO of K-Mart about them purchasing Sears. Apparently Sears owns the land for many of their stores, and the value of the land Sears owned at the time K-Mart took them over was greater then the Sears stock price. So one of the ways they plan to make money is shut down the stores where the land is valuable, and sell the land. That's not the only reason they bought them, but it was the deciding factor.

Porsche-O-Phile · Porsche-O-Phile's Garage

If you've lived in Chicago for any length of time (I have) you'll understand where the Sears mentality comes from.

Tobra · Tobra's Garage

Quote:

Originally Posted by Joeaksa

How did you pay for the cabinets? If it was with a credit card, then contact them and tell them that the products were not delivered and you want to cancel the charge.

Let Sears stew with it for a while...

this only works if the vendor agrees the charge is not valid, ask me how I know this. Had a situation with Sears on a fridge I got from them. Stopped working after 3 months, cost me hundreds of dollars worth of groceries. Only got satisfaction after fighting with them for a month when I offered to deliver it back to their store, by backing a truck through the front windows of the store, and calling the home office in Chicago, or wherever it was.

Customer service is dead, present company excepted of course.

I sent some tires and cinder blocks I found in a vacant lot to Columbia House using the trick onlycafe describes to get them to leave me alone. If you do this, do not go to your local post office.