Years ago I installed a garage door operator for a homeowner. That home has been sold and the sellers didn’t leave keypad programming data and other service literature for the buyer.
A call to Sears reveals that they will sell me a manual for the customer, but will not provide that data free of charge. I asked if they have an online database, such that I could download the manual for my customer. No.
I’ll pay for the book for the new homeowner (my version of customer service) and will install some other brand of operator in the future. :mad:
Charge them the cost of the book+ 10% finders fee for yourself.
It is the new homeowner’s fault for not requesting such a book during contract negotiations, or negotiating a lower price for the house based on it not coming with the book.
I respectfully disagree. Instruction manuals for alarm systems costing a great amount more than a garage door operator are available with little more than a phone call from the manufacturer/vendor.
Beyond that-my OP was about customer service in that you cannot expect someone to patronize your firm for purchases in the future if you’ve failed to welcome them via good customer service in the past.
I’m an old style business person, and if I can’t get this information free of charge, I’ll pay for it, and the customer will not know of that.
I agree with you cats. I do remodeling/repair for a living and if I have to eat 20, 30, 50 bucks here and there (or more sometimes) for stuff like that to keep a customer happy, I do it gladly.
Of course, I get it back on the next bid…just kidding
Oh, I despise Sears. How they’re still in business is a mystery to me! I once bought a work bench from them. It was a Christmas gift and the last one they had of that kind. I bought it on my lunch break and didn’t have time to take it with me just then and I told them this. When I went back that evening it had been sold to someone else. Fine, the person I talked to said that they’d get me another one from another store. Go home and they’ll call me at work in the morning. At noon I call the store. No one’d even looked for the work bench yet. They tell me that they’ll get on it right now and I’ll get a call before I go home for the evening. After I punch out for the day I call Sears and no one there knows what I’m even talking about. I ask to talk to a manager. She finally agrees to give me the next model up for what I’ve already paid.
So, maybe that’s not too bad. After all Christmas is a very busy time. Read on.
My parents decide that they want to buy my 2yo son a bed as he’s going to have to vacate the crib when the new baby comes. The order bunk beds from the Sears website. New baby is born. No bed. Mom calls, they have the address wrong. Mom tells them the correct address. New baby sleeps with us for his first month of life. Still no bed. Mom calls. No one ever changed the address. New baby now sleeps in the playpen in the livingroom. A couple of weeks later, still no bed. Mom calls and no one has corrected the address, still. A couple of weeks later the bed shows up. The box is really beaten up and the bed is a little worse for ware, but we decide to try to put it together and let bygones be bygones. There is no hardware to put the bed together with and no instructions. Mom calls. It’ll be 8-10 business days until they can be shipped. A month later still no hardware or instructions. Mom calls. They AGAIN have the address wrong. Mom gives them the correct address. A month later the hardware shows up, but no instructions. Mom calls Sears. The instructions have been sent separately, but to the WRONG ADDRESS. Oh, and this address they keep trying to send things to doesn’t even exsist. It’ll be 8-10 business days before they can send out the instructions again. Another month goes by and the instructions arrive. Yay!!! The baby is six months old now and he’s finally going to get the crib! Leifsdad goes to put the beds together and there is only enough hardware to put together one bed and the upright posts of the bottom bed, the ones that the top bed mounts on to, are warped like a bow. The top bed won’t mount. Needless to say, we no longer even get pictures from Sears.
Eh, Sears just generally sucks. Not in the least because they fired me the other day. grumblemumbleStupid attendance points system*/grumblemumble*
And though I worked in hardware, I wouldn’t know anything about procuring garage door opener manuals - if anyone asked us for something like that, we’d send them to the parts and service center.
When I’ve been successful in ascertaining the manufacturer of an item branded as Sears, I’ll deal with them directly, as I’ve found those vendors to be much more receptive and helpful.
Thanks for your input, Klaatu. When I was installing an Andersen bay assembly at my brother’s house in Albuquerque, and found that there was no data accompanying the window which he’d bought from Builders Square, a call to the local Andersen fabricator brought out a field rep who gave me a full line tech binder-no charge. Some folk still understand that service is the important word in customer relations.
The only thing I ever go to Sears for is the Craftsman tools. Not the power tools so far, just the wrenches and sockets and screwdrivers and such. What can I say? I’m a sucker for American steel.
Update. Manual received at a cost of $10. Manual does not contain default value for keypad, or instructions for defaulting keypad to starting value.
Call to Sears to request the information NOT included in manual leads me to condescending guy, who tells me that they can’t provide technical support free of charge. I paid for the %#@*& manual, and it doesn't tell me what the @&^)(! I bought it to tell me!
After a dark moment, I did some Googling, and found the (suspected) manufacturer. One call to them, and in 2 minutes the mystery was solved, including their advice to disregard the information in the Sears manual.
Yes, shame on me-I went to the wrong source to start with.
Once I went in to buy a wrench. Only because I didn’t have one handy, and they were the nearest ones to where I was. I carefully select a standard, generic 10mm wrench.
“Pardon me sir, wouldn’t you rather have the official Craftsman wrench?”
“No, it costs 100% more than your standard non-Craftsman wrench.”
“But it comes with a lifetime warranty!”
“How frequently do you expect my metal wrench to break?”
“It happens all the time. You just don’t understand tools. I’ll ring up the sale, but sneer at you derisively while I do it.”
Everything but the last sentence is pretty much verbatim. I’ll buy tools from a QuikTrip before I ever even consider stepping into one of those places.
I mean, dude, it’s a wrench. It’s not a Van Gogh. I’m not particularly attached to my wrenches. I have three seperate toolboxes, mostly K/Wal-Mart wrenches in em, and I feel no inclination towards them that’d make me want a “lifetime warranty” for em…
I am amazed that they manage to stay in business as well. About a year and a half ago, I tried to buy a ~ $400 microwave oven at their store, and failed. Can you imagine that? Actually failing to buy a product that they carried and I wanted, when I was willing to pay their price. Why? Because only 2 people per store are authorized to sell microwave ovens, and there was a crowd of people waiting for them. It’s a sad state of affairs when someone who WANTS to spend hundreds of dollars at your store doesn’t because your sales model is too irritating.
Tools break on my Dad all the time. Of course, he’s a mechanic for American Airlines. When he walks into Sears, the sales people just shriek like little girls and run away.
Sears will be gone within 5 years- mark my words. The segment they inhabit is dying, and they are not noted for quality, service or good prices. Chapter 11, followed by a Chapter 7 liquidation is their future.
Between Walmart, Target, Loews, Home Depot, Best Buy and numerous discount clothing stores, everyone replicates their products better, faster, cheaper and with better service. They are a walking corpse.
It’s funny, because I used to sell microwaves at Sears (along with electronics and furniture, at various times), and I can tell you with near certainty why you didn’t get help - not because associates in other departments are prohibited from selling in a different dept (at least they weren’t when I worked there 4 years ago), but because they get paid 100% commission, no hourly or salary base in Brand Central (stupid name for Electronics, Appliances, Sewing/Vac/Microwaves), and only get full commision in their own departments. Anything you sell in another dept is comp’ed at 1%, compared to 5-10% average for your own department (varies by dept). So while they are making $4 selling a microwave, their colleagues are making $40 selling a $400 stereo, or overn, or whatever.
That is the dumbest sales model I’ve ever seen. It ensures that: A) Customers get crappy service, and B) Employees do not feel invested in the success of the overall business, only their own departments.
BTW, I quit Sears after 4 1/2 years (making decent money), with no other job to fall back on, because I got sick of crap like that. Sears does indeed suck.
Several years ago, the company I work for negotiated a multi-million dollar program with them: they’d sell our product over the lucrative Christmas season, opening up a line they’d never sold before. We were excited; the buyer was excited.
Six weeks after Christmas, we accepted back 70% of the merchandise. Rather than putting it on the floor so people could actually see it and touch it (and, heaven forbid, buy it), it sat in their warehouses, or was placed on the thirty foot high shelves at the top that line the walls. We were promised a couple of newspaper ads, which guarantee double or triple sales for the period; no ads ran.
We took a bath on the whole affair, and when they came back to us next year asking for the same, we politely told them to fuck the goat they rode in on. They’re dying a slow death, as corporate behemoths do.
I did have the privilege of visiting their corporate headquarters to help set up a planogram: it’s a massive, ten-acre campus with huge buildings reaching upwards phallicly out of the Illinois countryside. My brother, a couple years later, went to Walmart headquarters for a sales meeting, which is in a building the size of a small high school, and located in Arkansas.
Better, cheaper, faster- experiance tells us you can usually have 2 out of 3 of these, but not all three together. I generally agree with you assesment, however. Pretty soon, WalMart and Home Depot will be the only business’ left.
I don’t usually shop at Sears, but I’ll tell ya, Craftsman hand tools ROCK! If you really use tools and they will break if you do, you take them in and get a new one. Simple as that.
My old man used to say that there was nothing as expensive as a cheap tool. I agree.
Fagjunk Theology: Not just for sodomite propagandists anymore.
