Sears Customer Service

[monomach]

I know how much this forum likes to slam Sears, so I have my own customer service experience to share.

My store currently has the corded impact drivers as a local special; about $25 off of the current sale price. I don't need an impact driver for home...at all...but I had $15 in SYWR points sitting around and figured "what the hell?" I put in an online order for one with store pickup.

I got to the store, did the rigmarole with the kiosk in the merchandise pickup area, and sat down.

When the timer on the screen got to almost ten minutes with no associate name appearing next to my order, I went over to the tool department and asked the tool manager whether he knew where the merchandise pickup associates were at. He went back there and found one. When he came out from the back and looked at the screen, we were at 15 minutes for my pickup. He got red in the face at that...this guy was seriously pissed off. Sears has a 5 minute promise on merchandise pickup, after all.

He told me to stick around and called someone; whoever was on the phone credited the paypal account I used for the order by $10. He said they would normally give a $5 coupon for going over 5 minutes but he didn't think it was enough in this case. He then handed me a couple of tool bags for free and apologized, sending me out the door.

That's basically how my experience with Sears customer service has always been, both when being taken to the store by my father when I was a kid and shopping on my own since growing up.

Yeah, I'll join in on kicking Sears over tool quality going to **** since being bought by KMart, but I still have to wonder what everyone's smoking when they say the customer service is bad. They're still the gold standard by which everyone should be judged, from what I can see

 

[Marc Benjamin]

Some folks who work at my sears are pretty decent as well.

I just did some warranty exchanges on screwdrivers tonight and they didn't have some in sock. The tools clerk offered to do the replacements out of the pro line instead. Granted the price difference was probably $3 per at most but still great service cause she could have asked me to come back next week.

 

[MagnumForce]

The guys always go out of their way for me at my main store and the two hometown stores I frequent.

 

[fasteddie313]

plus the cutie that works nights where I exchange broken stuff..... TC

mmmhmm

 

[n8n]

I really don't have any issues with Sears CS... it's just the stuff they sell

 

[PA Woody]

My local store takes pretty good care of me. The online CS and phone CS have been pretty horrible IME.

 

[rice rocket]

Heh, so sitting on your *** for 15 minutes is good customer service?

Good that they made it right in the end, but doing it right starting from the beginning would have saved everyone some time and effort. Needing to bribe customers to come back isn't good business, nor sustainable.

My store will mark my online pickup orders as fulfilled 5-10 minutes before the guy shows up with my merchandise. It's really not worth the 5% points bonus or the 20 minutes to drive down anymore, all my stuff is just shipped to my door.

 

[franzdom]

I was thinking the same thing, how can waiting 15 minutes and having to chase someone down be considered good customer service?

 

[thewatusi]

Sounds better to me than chasing down a Snap On truck and bribing the driver by buying a bunch of stuff in order to get warranty service.

 

[juicedapple463]

Back a month or so ago, I made an online pickup in store order for the first time. walked into the tool department assuming that is where I would need to go. I told the guy at the counter why I was there, and he pointed me to the kiosk and gave directions on how to use it. By the time I went from the tool checkout counter to the kiosk in pickup, they had a women standing next to the kiosk with my order waiting. I still had to go through the slide the credit card bs, but I was out the door within 3 mins of walking in. Now I can only assume I was the only pickup order they had at that moment, so when I told them I had an online pickup the guy called back on my walk back to pickup and had the tools waiting.

Also last week I was in there, had a 3/8" flex ratchet and 1/2" raised panel ratchet heads rebuilt and a 13mm chrome replaced in 10 mins while I waited. I asked to get both my original ratchets back instead of refurbs, and they had no problem with that and slammed new gears in them and I was on my way.

 

[MN Falcon]

Last winter here at my job, we had a steam pipe in the heating circuit break spewing hot water through all of our labs and shop. We finally got the OK from the insurance company to replace some of the tools in the shop. I went to Sears because I couldn't use the tax exempt number online and made them match the online price. The kid at the register was great about it but had to wait 20 min for a manager to come to let him price match -- this was on 6/2/14.

I assembled the 10" drill press and the last part out of the box, the chuck, was rusty. I turned the chuck in my hand and could feel the rust inside as well. So I called the warranty line in the manual and was transferred to 3 different people and they couldn't help me. Really warranty service can't help me with a warranty issue. The last person transferred me to parts, where I was told I would have to pay $50 plus shipping for the chuck. Really, this is for a warranty issue!

So I went out of my way to get to the store again where the manager was going to open a box and give me the chuck out of it. But alas they did not have anymore of the 10" drill press. So he took down all the info and ordered one. Two weeks go by and I call the store. The manager is on vacation but they cannot find where he ordered the part. So they say they are placing the order again for me, expect it in about a week. Still no chuck!

Seriously, it has been a month and a half with this drill press and I cannot use it. I have several projects that I need to do and I can't work on them because the people at Sears cant seem to get their heads out of their.......

And nobody has offered anything to me for putting me out. Seriously, in only a few more days I will have used 1/6 of the year long warranty and because they cant seem to figure out how to get me a chuck I haven't even been able to use this thing once!

 

[PFSard]

monomach

I'm glad to see that the Sears employee went out of his way to take care of you after the 15 minute blooper. His getting angry seems to be an indication that he understands the importance of Customer Service.

I personally have only ordered via the Internet for store pickup once. The service was prompt; only a minute wait. The Sears employee offered to open the box to ensure that the order was filled correctly. I was satisfied with the way I was taken care of.

Paul

 

[monomach]

Wellllllllllllllll...I finally ran across a Sears customer service nightmare.

That $10 partial refund I got for my trouble? The SYWR people took points away from me for it, leaving me with a negative balance. When you have a negative balance, you can't even use the surprise points they keep spamming your email with. I was going to buy the C3 HD cordless impact they just came out with, so I figured I'd just get that obvious mistake on their part fixed. I emailed customer service, who were willing to place the order and then give me a partial refund afterward in the amount of the surprise point offer I had, but I figured that would just screw up my points even more.

They gave me the email address for the SYWR people, so I emailed that and explained everything to them. All I got was "We checked your points. They're right." They didn't pay any attention at all to HOW they got like that. I explained again. What they said was basically "Yeah, well, SYWR is an optional program for you so we're sorry but oh, well."

Yep. That did it for me. I called in, talked to a supervisor who didn't give a flying **** why I got a partial refund, just that I did. So yeah, "your point balance is correct, sir." I had him cancel my SYWR account and told him that I couldn't wait for Sears to go out of business because he deserved to be unemployed.

I then emailed customer service again and let them know that when the company does things to fix problems, another department is ready to come along and **** it up, creating enraged customers. They offered me a bigger refund than before if I ordered the thing on the phone. I explained that that wouldn't fix the problem I was having in the first place and asked them to never email me again.

SYWR points were the only thing keeping them price competitive with the other options in the tool quality tier they lowered themselves down to. I wasn't a big fish, but I probably did spend about a grand a year there.

 

[wildbill23c]

My sears is in a mall, and I refuse to go anywhere near that mess. Since their tool quality has gone down hill in many ways as well as their lawn/garden equipment I won't shop there anymore, 2010 was the last time I was in there and that was to purchase a new riding mower...big mistake, never will buy another craftsman item again after the junk that this new mower turned out to be, more problems out of it in 4 years than I had with my old GT18 in the 21 years I had it.

Last time I was in Sears it took forever to find anyone who knew a little bit about the mowers, then of course they didn't have it in stock, the guy who did the delivery and setup was a complete idiot, must have never leveled a mower deck before because that deck cut every way except level. Called them back and asked about having it leveled properly, and the idiot on the phone says well the box is checked off on the paperwork saying it was leveled on delivery. Then they started their BS sales pitch about buying an extended warranty, and their on site service contract, and I told them with the way their setup guy did I don't want them touching the mower ever again. That was and will be my last business with Sears.