Sears Management and Customer Service at an All Time Low

At 7am on Monday morning I received a call from Sears delivery to
inform me of the window of time I would be receiving my refrigerator.
It was pitch dark out and I had to run up a flight of stairs to get
the phone. I have a heart condition and honestly almost had a heart
attack. When the phone rings in the middle of the night you think
someone has died. When I found out it was just the sears delivery man
I couldn't believe it. I told him that he couldn't do that. Wake a
customer up at the crack of pre-dawn like that. I told him a robot had
already called me days before and provided a number for me to call if
I wasn't OK with the time period. But I was Ok with the time period.
Then the delivery guy hung up on me! So I call customer service and
have to endure a very loud recording of a woman saying the same
sentence over and over again. Finally a human comes on the phone and
tells me I've been rescheduled. No one informed me of that. Apparently
the children are running the business over there unsupervised. So
retaliation is their store policy? I then call another number, the
national customer service number. I ask for a manger and get a
"delivery specialist" instead. He hangs up on me. He pretends I'm too
upset for him to endure. I recorded the call. Let's let the jury
decide if I deserved to be hung up on, again. I of course canceled my
order. I informed my credit card company to withhold payment. And I
will be seeking legal action. I have never been treated so poorly by a
company before. I will never ever buy so much as a nail at Sears
again. The man's number who initiated this nightmare is 360-449-2519.
He should be fired. If Sears' policy is to wake people in the middle
of the night and give them heart attacks,then hang up on them and
exact revenge by rescheduling the delivery without permission from the
customer, then he's doing just fine. I, on the other hand, am going to
Lowe's. :)

It's not just their online service that has a problem, the stores
themselves have issues. I had a layaway and paid as directed on time
every two weeks. I rec'd an automated call stating my layaway was
cancelled, no explaination. I called and spoke with several different
managers and no one could tell me why it was cancelled. One manager
partically called me a liar when I said I had made all of the payments
on time and had the reciepts. I actually had to go to the store and
found out that their layaway has a eight week time limit. No one
informed me of this when I was asked to start the layaway. It states
is in very small print on the fifth page of the layaway contract (that
looks like those advertisements you get with your reciepts at some
stores). I have made numerous contacts with Sears and I still
haven't gotten my money back. It was a total of $260.00 I paid them
with a balance of $19.21 left. They cancelled my layaway when I only
owed $19.21. They never even gave me a courtesy call. I entirely
understand what you're going through. Good luck to both of us....

This is one reason that I don't like to do a lot of shopping on-line,
other than on amazon.com. I just don't like the way refunds are
handled. I had the same problem you are describing when I bought
something that suddenly went "out of stock" on target.com. (took them
three weeks to refund my money.)

I hope that sears.com comes through for you and I'm sorry this has
happened. Other than that, I have no advice for you, as I don't know
much about sears.com's policies. I just know that I don't like
sears.com and every time I've had to handle an instore sears.com
return or pickup, it's led to headaches and frustrations.

Good luck.

great letter, to the point and no whining and "I want a free ride"
which sadly is usually the case on PFB.

Sears has obviously lost touch with it's customers, as this is just
one of the many Sears issues I've heard popping up more and more
often. You are taking the right steps, hopefully your bank will go to
bat with you on this one as it sounds like Sears could care less that
they have stolen your money and are in no hurry to refund it to you.

This is where having a good bank comes in handy. I returned a pair of
headphones to Best Buy. The original in-store purchase was paid for
with my Visa check card issued by Wachovia. The refund never appeared
on my account. I contacted Best Buy, who blew me off and said it could
take up to 90 days per their agreement with Visa to process refunds
(the item was 39.99 plus tax!) and basically got told to buzz off.

I made a call to Wachovia, and faxed my refund receipt (hint, always
save such documentation!) and they credited my account within 48
hours.

That email is incredible.

I hope you get your refund.

You are certainly right to be upset. In this day and age there is no
excuse for not having a system in place to inform customers of
back-ordered/discontinued merchandise. The refund should have been
automatic as well. As many calls as you had made to try and resolve
the situation to no avail, I think you did the right thing reporting
Sears.com to the BBB. I think maybe reporting them to the Internet
Crime Complaint Center was a bit above and beyond, just as sending the
letters from Fed-ex was. Companies do need to be held accountable.
That's why when a company doesn't preform up to standards, I simply
shop somewhere else. It's $23.13. Although I would continue pursuing
the money, I wouldn't spend anymore money doing so. It isn't worth
it.

How much did you spend sending letters via Fed ex? Was it more than
$23.13 that you are suppose to get back from Sears?

I knew the refund would not be in my account that night. I check
everyday as I was told three previous times it would take 3 to 5
business days and it never occurred. I appreciate your taking the
time to respond. As consumers we need to do our jobs, inform
consumers and hold companies accountable. It is truly the principle
with me and that is why I take all the actions by filing with
agencies. It is possible for us (consumers) to unite, inform and
fight back. I had continued to check the status of the remainder of
my order online and it continually said "arriving in 5 days", so I
waited patiently but then finally decided to make the first call as I
said on Oct 16th. Seems that the 5 day statement works for all of
Sears situations. At that time the customer care rep was able to tell
me the order had been cancelled from what the rep saw on the order.
It never appeared that way on the order status webpage that I saw and
to this day, just looked a minute ago, it still indicates 'arriving in
5 days'.

That is a pretty rough experience. You got started a week later than
I would have, but why should we have to hound a company?

As far as you seeing the credit that was supposed to be processed
yesterday, that may take a few days and as much as week, I believe,
depending on how credits are processed for this company. In a case
like this, I would call them. The response should be "That credit was
processed yesterday." Then you just have to keep checking the
account. That has become easier with the internet.

I have never been contacted via email or phone when a credit has been
issued to me, however I agree that the process of crediting you should
have been automatic.

The email shows how the internal standards of companies have
declined. That is sad.