About ten years back (or so), I needed a new garage door opener. Sears had one on sale, so I bought it. They came out and installed it without any muss or fuss or extra charges, and it has worked great ever since.
The trouble with Sears is that there’s two faces to them. The first is Sears itself - when you’re in the store picking and paying for your new appliance, garage door opener, roof, etc.
The second is the delivery and installation. These folks are not Sears. They are “local guys” contracted to Sears. Last year, when I bought a dishwasher, I went into the store to buy it, but it was a local applicance shop that brought it over and installed it. No pretense of being anything but a local shop - the installer’s shirt said “Don’s Plumbing” instead of “Sears.”
What this boils down to is a realtively uniform buying experience wherever you are, but the in-home experience can be a crapshoot. Our dishwasher installer was in and out in about 45 minutes, didn’t leave a mess and was entirely pleasant. The guys that delivered the dryer, however… I should have stuffed them into the dryer and shoved the whole lot back onto their truck. They seemed genuinely surprised that I was upset about the big dent in the side of the machine, the door not closing and the grating noise it made when running. Took them three tries to deliver a dryer that hadn’t been mangled.
And remember…they were the lowest bidder.
Many nationwide computer repair places are like this as well especially for warranty work.
A couple of summers ago I called Bob at Sears to secure an air-conditioner that was on sale. He told me that we could not finalize the sale on the phone, I had to come down to the store. He would hold the unit for me. When I got to the store I was told that Bob was on lunch, so Bill would help me. I explained to Bill that Bob had already taken my CC info but needed me to come down to sign for the purchase. Bill told me that there was no order in the system and I gave my CC info again. When I pulled around to the loading dock I was presented with my 2 air-conditioners. I explained to the dock person that they may have been a mix up and I needed only 1 air-conditioner, I was told that they would take care of it. Well next month guess what? You got it, 2 charges on my charge card. I called Sears and asked for the manager. He was out sick and apparently there was no manager at the store. This is not a little Sears in a small town, it is the Sears on State St. in downtown Chicago! Well after pestering for a while I was transferred to the director of HR, the only person available to speak with. She apologized and said she would correct the mistake with the manager tomorrow (she also sent me a note with a $5.00 gift card). I was not so sure that this would be taken care of so I also called corporate to complain. I spoke with a different manager who also promised me that they would correct the mistake. Well both managers were true to their word, next month I had 2 credits on my CC! Poorly run companies can sometime work in your favor.
I’ve had very similar experiences with trying to buy a treadmill at Sears. First, the three models I was considering weren’t available (though they were in the ad). Then the models on the floor weren’t, either. I only learned this an hour later after having to find, then repeatedly redirect and assist, the salesman (not some young punk, but, y’know, a middle-aged guy about my own age). Then they ordered one for me from another store. But it never came, and the order itself could never be found.
Yes, and yet when I actually got a Sears credit card for various reasons, they immediately “upgraded” it to a Mastercard, so I cancelled it.
Please keep us posted. I’ll wager anyone dinner that you’ll have to fight again to make this happen.
I have to call the installer on Monday. There’s already a knot in my stomach about it. Well, this is the one time I’m going to be firm and be the squeaky wheel and not break down and just take it if something goes wrong.
Last time I got an appliance from Sears: Gimme My Dishwasher (A Saga)
I never updated that thread. They brought a second dishwasher in early April, and broke it during installation. This time we told them they had a week to bring us the replacement, or we’d take legal action. Only then did we get a properly installed dishwasher.
You guys should seriously start trying to look for appliances elsewhere. In all seriousness, Sears just isn’t what they used to be in terms of being leaders of the appliance industry.
What did they do when you notified them of the mistake? Not being a thief and all, I’m certain you persued correcting the overrefund just as diligently as you persued correcting the overcharge, right?
Well, we’ll soon know how good Mr. Manager In Appliances’ word is - installation is tomorrow, and I told the installer to talk to Mr. Manager first so we don’t have any Unpleasant Surprises.
Oh, and he springs on me that dependant on where my gas line is it might be a “bid call”, meaning he’ll have to estimate it and come back some other time with the right parts. How hard can it be to bring a few extra pipes? Happy place, happy place, find my happy place.
The key is whether bat312 is a thief, not you. 
You know who sells sheds? Sears!
Selling appliances right now is a really, really bad business to be in. It just very tough to turn a profit for several reasons.
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Too many competitors. When you can buy your stove at Sears, Lowes, Home Depot, BestBuy, Appliance Direct, etc it’s hard to have good margins with a saturated market.
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Stock storage and shipping. What do you think is cheaper to ship from a manufacturer and store in your own warehouse, 200 digital cameras or 200 side-by-side fridges.
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Delivery costs. And it’s not just delivery it’s set up. And most people expect it for free. Well two expreienced delivery guys with class C licenses who do manual labor and know how to hook up gas, water, and electric and who won’t scratch you new kitchen floor along with a truck with gasoline don’t come cheap anymore.
-Loss of money from damaged goods. Let’s face it, appliances are big and get scratches and dents. And when they have scratches and dent nobody wants to pay full retail anymore. Flush your profits away right there.
-Haul aways. Most people expect you to take away their old unit for free. This cost time and money also digging into your profits.
-A lot of vendors and companies have tried to make the move towards high-end appliances so they have some more margin $$ to work with. But it’s tough when most of your customers come in and want to know what the cheapest washer & dryer pair are.
Overall, appliance sales are a big loser for most companies and most aren’t willing to put money into an educated talented sales staff to sell them. Why would they? Most continue to do it as a service for their customers.
You can only hope. Forget about the stove, and get a Hot Diggity Dogger. It’ll rock your world.
Hampshire I’m an appliance salesman. While this certainly isn’t my livliehood, I totally enjoy doing what I do and it is somewhat related to the field that I plan on going into (Architecture and Building). That said, your reasons for saying that selling appliances is a really bad business to be in just aren’t true. The fact is, most appliance retailers make that the focal point of their stores (an example is at Lowe’s, where everyone is hired with the hope to eventually make it as a Supervisor in the appliance department). You’re right on with the bit about the competitors, though. With everyone being able to price match everyone else, it’s hard for anybody to turn a profit with margins constantly shrinking because of competitiveness.
For that reason, retatilers offer accessories and services (which are actually really, really good, at least where I work). Delivery and services are different though. Delivery ensures delivery of product, free haul away of an old appliance, and set up and reconnection of the new appliance, not installation. Services include installation of complicated appliances (OTR microwaves, built-in cooktop and wall ovens, gas appliances) and cutoffs (gas, water, etc.) and these are usually not included with delivery and incur a seperate charge. As far as losing money on delivery, retailers usually contract a seperate delivery entity to handle delivery of appliances. These contract usually (not always) go out to the lowest bidders, but that doesn’t mean that the guys don’t do a good job. A scratched appliance hurts their bottom line as much as it hurts ours, not to mention the fact that our supervisors rip those guys a new asshole everytime a brand new product arrives at a customer’s house damaged. Those items have to come back to us, and we have to discount them (again, that cuts into margin) but, for the most part, we really don’t have a big problem with our delivery guys, and they do an excellent job.
RE: vendors. Yes, this is true to some extent. However, alot of brands (Roper, Inglis, etc.) do very well for their parent company (Whirlpool, who now owns all of Maytag). The reason is that, while profit on a $400 washer/dryer pair is close to nothing at all, these pairs have absolutely no problem selling themselves. It is my job, however, to inform the customer that they definitely will not do as good a job as a high end pair, and go on to explain why. I don’t work on commission, and I have no stake in the company’s well-being, but I do believe in at least telling the customer what he/she can realistically expect if they buy a low, low, low end w/d pair. Usually I’m able to upsell, sometimes not, but I really don’t care. I don’t get anything out of it, and still get paid the same, but I just really like what I do, without having to get too much into the business portion of the whole thing. I don’t go out and expect to sell all KitchenAid appliances (which are BTW, totally overrated) to every customer because to be profitable we don’t have to do that. The best thing about working in appliances is that they sell themselves.
And I definitely consider myself educated and talented. Then again, alot of what I know wasn’t learned in training, most of it was outside the classroom, so to speak. I truly (as ridiculous as it may sound) have a passion for appliances.
Well, sometimes you get the softer side. Sometimes you get the armored fist up your ass. It’s karma, man.
I certainly would not buy an appliance (or anything else I can think of) at Sears. I worked for Sears 35 years ago when they had a much better reputation, and from an employee’s point of view they were pretty much idiots even back then. I can only imagine how butt stupid any transaction with Sears would be now that they’re owned by K Mart. Gah.
When I worked for them I was 17 and didn’t know shit from shinola in retail sales. I soon found out I knew a whole lot more than my management team or my cow-orkers.
I was a part-time employee like nearly everyone else at that store. I was also a floater, which meant that yes, I could be sent anywhere in the store to fill in for absences, breaks and lunch periods. This enabled me to appear a fool to customers who wanted the purple guppy, not the pink tetra (pet department), or the “largest jock strap you carry” (men’s underwear - my favorite!), or the ivory wool Aubusson, not the eggshell nylon William Morris (floor coverings). Yes, those dingbats sent a 17-year-old girl in to sell carpet.
I was always happy to get back to my home department, Draperies & Bedspreads. :rolleyes:
I did notice that Sears seemed to be incapable of communicating with their employees on even the most basic level. I soon found that if I wanted to know what items were on sale, I’d have to look in the sales pages of the newspaper, just like the customers. You’d think the department manager could post something by the register or on the work schedule or something, but no. If I didn’t check the paper before work, I would be surprised by a customer requesting (gasp) the sale item at the sale price.
These and a lot of other butt-stupid things make me prefer to take my money elsewhere.
I hadn’t done business with Sears since about 1991, and had sworn them off. There’s a huge Sears down the street from my house, so my GF convinced me to go there for a few items a couple months ago. Nope, they’re still behind in a lot of respects. I could write a book on the number of times Sears did me wrong. I’ll spare you the long prose and just give the chapter titles:
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Automotive waiting room of eternal damnation. The incident where Sears kept me waiting in the lobby 10 1/2 hours to replace a tire. At hour 4, I demanded they put the old tire on, take my car off the lift and let me leave. They refused, held my car hostage for another 6 hours while I screamed and went up the management chain. (They did replace the tire, though.)
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The time Sears falsely charged me $400 and destroyed my credit rating when I refused to pay Eventually they agreed that I didn’t owe them $400, but they refused to send a retraction to the credit reporting agency. I couldn’t get a credit card for years.
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The other time Sears destroyed my credit rating for no reason Basically same trick as above
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The light weights. When buying a set of weights, the guy in the pickup department only delivered one of the two boxes to my car. He firmly denied that I had bought two boxes, even when I pointed out to him that the box had “Box 1 of 2” written on the side
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The stopped clock, or how I once bought a clock at Sears. It stopped precisely 17 minutes after I took it out of the package. Amusingly enough, it even timed itself. They refused to take it back.
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It’s curtain for you, buddy! I bought some curtains with my GF. They looked nice, and the package said "panel curtains. Turned out it was a curtain, singular. I suppose it wasn’t their fault, they don’t make the packaging, but I choose to blame them anyway.
That’s pretty typical, if annoying. Even Laurie on Trading Spaces fell for that one and then didn’t have any money left for the other panel(s).
I preferred the logic that the Sears employees were the thieves when they charged me twice…and committed fraud when they told me that they would not double bill when I pointed out their mistake when I first took delivery of the product. Then out of the goodness of everything that is great about Sears, they decided to clear their names and pay restitution for my pain and suffering by crediting me twice. They have indeed earned a loyal customer for life.