Sears employee not helpful, was rude

sears is running a special for employees tomake extra money since the
economy is so bad right now, they are offering employees $4.00 for
every credit card application they get from customers for a sears
master card, $2.00 for every application they get for regular card so
employees are getting drivers liscence #s from unsuspecting customers
and filling out applications getting customers to "sign here" and
really not telling them what they are doing to make extra money for
themselves customers ask what is that for they say to get $15.00 off
your purchase today which it does on the first bill of your new extra
sears card that you probably didn't want. they usually do this
sucessfully with people with english as a second language and the
elderly or very young customers who won't get one anyway but the
employee gets their money whether you qualify or not they are even
using information from friends and relatives and high school friends
and forging signatures to apply for these cards some employees are
processing 50 to 75 of these bogus applications aday "for extra money"
for themselves sears pays employees $6.00 a hour to work there, part
timers only,no benefits so the employees have figured out a way to
make a decent paycheck at customer expense how do i know this i work
there with these 17 and 18 year old kids who work there and have
figured out a way to beat the system the idea behind all this is some
people will get a card and if times get tough they will shop at sears
with it these kids are putting in application one each for the husband
and the wife if they have a sears mastercard then they put in an
application for aregular sears card or vice versa so some families
will have 4 or 5 sears cards so stop worrying about a rude employee
chosse someone else but be concerned about how sears is getting these
underpaid employees to "get" you a new sears

Completely agree. They even cheat you to apply credit card. An Indian
lady cheat us to apply their sears card and clear say no when we ask
if it is a credit card. But once everything is done. She said it is a
credit card!!!! The manager is unbelievable rude. It seems he has
never been taught to be polite by anybody. Staff there is really
terrible. My suggestion is that do not communicate with their staff at
anytime. They are like wolfs or uneducated beasts

Sounds like for sure the clerk was wrong on this one. I don' know of
any register system that can tell a clerk that a 3rd party credit card
is over the limit. I say the clerk...but could be a system problem
that rejected the card. The clerk would have little choice at that
point she can't force it in the register. All registers I ever used
hand keyed or scanned would still give you a rejection if the system
was on the blink.

If a Sears Card perhaps it would alert the cashier that customer was
over the limit.

I hate to be told my card is NO GOOD when I know it is!

Like calling you a liar to your face.

There might be reasons Sears (might not hand key any cards. Reason
there is things embedded in the strip of the card that shows the card
was indeed being used in hand. This prevents fruad from hand keyed
transactions.

I find it intersting Sears has clerks still working 30 years later.
Most of the time they cut full time positions and force early
retirements. Perhaps she is part time. I know this has been a
standard of SEARS since the late 70's.

Anyway does seem she had a bit of a "tude"!

You're right, the clerk probably needs to retire. I've worked with
people like that before, and it is a pain in the butt dealing with
them.

However, I must take issue with the Manager as well. He should not be
telling you things about the clerk, such as "she's been there over 30
years" and "she needs to retire". That's definitely not managerial
behavior. A good manager will hear your complaint, be sympathetic,
and promise to look into the situation. Nothing more needs to be said
by him. For him to say what he did about the clerk to a customer is
just wrong. It's none of the customer's business how long the
employee has been there, or that she needs to retire, or any other bad
things he may THINK about her.

The clerk needs to be spoken to by management. However, the manager
could also use some additional managerial training himself.

Many times in larger companies there are people who have worked 25 or
more years. Most times these people feel this way because they have
worked for so many years and still cannot retire so they take it out
on others...even customers.
This woman sounds like one of those people. She is arrogant and
totally rude to customers. You did nothing wrong in your request to
have her enter the numbers manually...and if they are not permitted to
do so then she needs to inform you of this not tell you your credit
card was just not any good.

You were also correct to leave the bumper exactly where it was. Let
her or someone else who works there put it back...you should not have
to re-stock their inventory because she demanded you do it.

If this manager looses customers because of this employees attitude he
will soon hear it from upper management and will either have to
transfer her or worse yet let her go.

I would probably bet there was more said by the OP than was stated.
It does not make sense that sales clerk would act that way unless she
was antagonized. It does not make it right, but it would explain it
better.

The policy at my store is not not "hand type" in credit cards, this is
a company policy. In cases of fraud you have to have physical proof
that the card was swiped, database records, and the paper receipt. If
it came back a bad card, the company would have to eat the loss.

Sounds like you need to do retailers a favor and call and get a new
card, hopefully it is a check card, but I seem to doubt it.


Good Day

Wow, I can't believe that lady's attitude. It's a bit telling when the
manager is frustrated enough to voice such private concerns to you.
From my knowledge, it can be hard to get some long term employees out
the door. You just can't fire them for any reason; there has to be
documentation, investigations, authorizations, etc...I hope that this
manager you talked with does the right thing and reports this to
someone higher.

As for the card not working...well, the cashier should have ran it
again. Sometimes if the card or the machine has dust on it, the card
reader doesn't read the card correctly. Other times, the magnetic
strip on the card is bad, so you have to type the number in and do
things the old fashioned way and make a card imprint. However, if none
of that works and the machine still refuses the card, then there is
nothing a cashier can do to force the system to accept the card.

I also can't believe she asked your husband to return the merchandise
himself! While it's always nice when customers do, it's not right for
a CSR to ask or demand a customer to do it. That's why I always ask if
they want ME to return the merchandise. Most people decline and say
they'll put it back where they found it. But I like it when people
give me merchandise to return because at least I know it's going back
to the right place.

Anyhow, I hope your next experience with Sears is better. Good luck.

I used to work with a woman like that. More than once, I would have
customers call or come to the door, ask is
'she' was working and if the answer was yes, they would hang up/go
away. In the four years I worked there, I lost count of how many
people complained verbally to me or one of the others or actually
wrote out their complaints to be sent to the District office.As soon
as they started the complaint, sometimes even before if B was on a
tear, I would know exactly who they were talking about. It was the
same situation, too. She had worked at the store since it was first
opened and the district manager refused to do anything.

*Full disclosure, I liked B. She was mean and rude and snarky and when
I first started working there, she made me cry a couple times. Then I
got over it. That's just the way she was and once you got past it, she
was actually a great person and really fun to work with, just someone
who should never deal with the public.

that I found this to be delightful:

"Do they have Team meetings??? If not they need to. This pep talk
usually lifts spirits and makes the emoloyee want to do a better
job."

Such a nice positive suggestion!

Sears should fire that employee. I don't care if she's holding out
for a pension or what. She doesn't deserve the job if that is her
attitude.

I feel for that manager. I used to supervise a word processing
department and a proofreading department (never. again.). One of my
word processors was quite a bit older than me (I was not even 30, she
was over 50). When I would politely assign her work, she would refuse
to do it. Simply refuse. I wasn't allowed to fire her, and neither
was my boss, because this witch had been there since the company
started years ago. The president and VP felt loyalty toward her.
Strange, since she obviously was showing no loyalty to this company!
Refusing to work was just one of her schticks. She was verbally
abusive, came and went as she pleased, often left for the day with out
taking care of the deadline she had been working on, leaving us to
figure it out.

When she finally quit to move to another state, I couldn't have been
happier. When I got a call asking for a reference for her, I gave one
-- a very honest one. I don't pass on a lousy employee to another
person.