Done Shopping at Sears.

Hi CellarDwellar-Welcome to MySears.  Thanks for sharing your experience here on the site. You sound like you have been a loyal customer for many years, and Sears is interested in hearing from folks like you. This is not the best situation with your appliances having issues so early on and your appointment being misscheduled.  That is frustrating to have to take off 2 days in a row in order to get the handle replaced.  Was the washer able to close while the repair tech was there the first time? 

hmmm maybe that should be a new feature of the protection plan sears pays you for the day(s) of work missed while waiting on them to no show up

Wow, as a manager for a privatley owned Sears Franchise, this website is full of revealations for me. It is a great tool for understanding customer concerns. Now I realize that my store isn't the only one that gets these issues. Since I am not emplyed by Sears, yet I still represent them, I think I might go out on a limb here. My reasoning is not in any way to "make waves" but to maybe stir some debate and real thought about how we can reduce if not eliminate some of these customer issues and restore the great reputation of Sears which has endured for over 100 years.

The suggestion of paying for a customer's lost wages if service misses their appointment should at least be considered. Truthfully, it shouldn't just be a feature of a protection agreement, although it would make a great selling point. Just this week I have dealt with 3 instances of service calls being delayed at the last minute or just missed, how is that even close to acceptable? When I am pitching my products, I always mention that Sears is known for its great service after the sale. But after a year of running Sears stores and now reading these comments from arou nd the nation, I have to ask, what can be done? Something has to be done, my store's reputation depends on it. Not to mention the fact that hard earned money is being squandered on defective appliances which are not being serviced. Now I know the other side of the coin is this, some customers do take advantage of the "system" and or expect unreasonable action on the part of Sears. Rebates are a great example, if a customer does not read their paperwork and misses the deadline, or does not submit the rebate correctly and then comes into the store expecting Sears to pony up the rebate, that just isn't fair and the store shouldn't  do it.

I'm not sure if writing this will make any difference, but as someone who actually experiences high levels of stress from being caught in the middle of the struggle to make a customer happy and ensure return business and referals and following Sears' guidelines, I would really like to see some action, not words, action to set customers minds at ease about spending their ever precious money with Sears. Here's an example of what I've done. I was forced to discontinue using the Sears Logistics Delivery Service in my store, mainly because of the number of complaints I got that deliveries were botched. I have personally seen cases where washers weren't connected and other instances where a customer paid for a service they did not receive. So I now use a local contractor for all of my deliveries, and guess what...I have never had one complaint on them! I also discontinued using Sears Contractor Services a.k.a Winter Park because trying to respond to customers and get answers while having to go through the call center was a nightmare, it's a classic case of too many cooks in the kitchen. We now simply take the installation order from the customer and fax it to the contractor, it's not rocket science, but before we were complicating matters and using unnecessary steps which only result in beaurocratic headaches when all you all you are trying to do is provide outstanding service to a customer in hopes that they will tell their friends and come back to patronize the business. One Source a.k.a. Customer solutions has never been able to help me one time either, I have just stopped using them, I would much rather fix things myself. My apologies if any SHC personnel are offended but I think this s a good forum to show that the Sears team wants to change and values their business.

 

 

Not that this is encouraging but my friends had equally bad experiences with RCWilley - would you believe trying to make a delivery at midnight?!

JulieK said…

Was the washer able to close while the repair tech was there the first time? 

---

Yes it was working prefectly fine.

My biggest issue is the fact that you buy something new and by brand name in confidense but to have the motor interface fail within 1.5 years and having to have a customer foot the bill for such an item is rediculous (That part alone is almost 500 dollars, almost half as much as the whole unit is new). 

Of course labor is another factor and the service call which is like 142 combined.  Then you have the door mechanism that failed for whatever reason which costs another 95.

Plus you have a basic switch on the stove which cost me 250+ to fix plus labor/service call.  The switch should have been also covered by manufacturer.

We all love missing a day of work but when the math is all done using missed work as just part of it, the total for a repair and especially on what I would still call a NEW unit being in the range of 1000 dollars is totally unacceptable.

I don't mind paying for labor and I don't mind paying for a bad door mechanism because the door gets slammed shut and opened more than anything on the unit but doing only 75 washings in that 1.5 years on the motor interface is just of poor quality, when this interface fails which should be due to workmanship or faulty parts should not be a burden on the customer - 500 bucks for that, with or without a warranty that part should be covered for at least 5 years.

I do computers for a living and many things that have a much higher failure rate have at least 3-5 years if not lifetime and using an excuse as to the newer items having more that can fail attitude is a complete joke.  I saw the unit and it was no more techical than a huge capacitor with a small circuit board on a huge metal frame within a plastic box - this unit should have cost no more than 50-100 period and even if that were the case it should be covered by the manufacturer.

So my bill should have been simply for 2 service calls and 2 labor charges and the hardware that failed should have been covered or should be covered for at least 3-5 years by the manufacturer on these types of appliances and at their original costs.

Re: compensating for lost wages, does any other repair service company in the country, or world for that matter, compensate its customers if a scheduled visit is late or missed? And, let's say that the customer makes $200,000/year. A missed visit would cost $800. Does that sound reasonable to anybody? What incentive would there be for Sears to provide appliance service if it's going to potentially lose hundreds of millions of dollars every year doing so? Besides, the potential for cheating that kind of system and fraudulently soaking the company is enormous. Any service organization would be out of their tree to even consider opening the door to that kind of shrink.

 Dear CellarDweller,

 My name is Brian and I am part of the Sears Cares escalations team and we would certainly like to talk with you more in detail about this issue. We are a single point of contact for escalated concerns which means we step into a situation and handle it start to finish with one Case Manager. I am very sorry to read about this issue with your range and washer and we will do everything possible to assist with this resolving these problems.  Of course we do all we can to have the highest quality products available for our customers, but anything that goes through a manufacturing process has the possibility of failure. That is the exact reason why we offer extended warranties on appliances we sell. We obviously don't like to see something like this happen and we would certainly like to talk with you more about what options we have to help you. At your convenience, please contact my office at searscares@searshc.com so that we can discuss this. When you have a moment, please send an email. Please provide a contact phone number and the phone number the range and washer were purchased under (if different than the contact phone number) and we will call you directly. In addition, please provide the post name (CellarDweller) for reference to this issue and we do look forward to talking to you soon.

 Thank you,

 Brian J.

Senior Case Manager

Sears Cares

BluecrewguyinMA, fair enough that compensating for lost sales days may not be feasible from a profitability standpoint. But can we just at least agree on the fact that the current level of service is below our customers expectations? And can we also agree that there is a solution to this and we just need to dilligently work using our resources until it is fixed? We may have thepverall market share lead right now, but that can change, we cannot take our customers for granted!

What if we built in a capped compensation for missed time off of work, similar to the way food loss is covered for a maximum of $250. If we want different results i.e. customers absolutely raving about us on this site instead of expressing the maddening frustration of wasted time and money, we need to do something different, right?

  

The bottom line is this... Communication!!!

Effective communication between the customer and Searshc persons needs to happen... Sears must show the care for their customers just as much as the customer cares to shop at sears knowning they are getting quality goods...

By provideing good communication and cooperation we can all have a life well spent...

Thanks for your post, Lglee35. That's one of the reasons for this community - to give us (Sears - the company) a chance to listen to our customers. Thanks for being here and please continue to share your feedback. We're listening.

Did you folks ever hear the of the legal term

"force majure"  please look it up

  loss wages, loss production time, etc,  etc -the term provides = exclusions..

and is intergral part of manufacturer -dealer - consumer business contract relationships.

:)

Nobody would ever say that our service is as good as it should be. We should never be satisfied with current levels of service, and should always be looking for ways to improve our customers' experiences with us. There are technically solutions to everything, but finding them and implementing them in a cost-effective manner are easier said than done.

The most important step in ensuring positive customer experiences, ultimately, is the feedback from customers. Too many people have a bad experience and, rather than bubbling it up the ladder at the store, they rant about it online. Rather than looking for solutions, too many people look for others around them to nod and share their outrage.

 We are problem-solving experts, but when we're kept out of the loop, and our customers fail to give us feedback, how can we identify our problem areas/associates and remedy those issues?

We provide so many ways to let customers give us their feedback, but only around 0.1% of customers actually do so. Heck, we even offer them the chance to win a $4000 gift card every three months, and even that only increased feedback levels by about 10-15%.

If we can't squeeze information out of our customers directly, and their venue of choice for feedback is third party websites that have no connection to Sears, how do we work with that?

I'd say that this website is probably the best means of providing customer support in a timely and efficient manner. It cuts out the phone frustration, provides the online support network of fellow customers and store staff that many people seek, and give the company direct access to its customers in a way that is generally not practical by other means. Oddly enough, there is no carrot AND no stick, yet people are motivated to share their experiences because there is a sense of interpersonal connection that can't be had in conventional customer support systems.

The question is what the company can glean from all the raw materials here. Hopefully many good things will come from this fertile bed of feedback.

at the end of every transaction / sale

the " do you have any further questions?" statement should be made to the client, this will help cipher out the "expectations" between the client and the sales associate. It is a very good practice to follow, prior to thanking them for their business.

Unfortuantely, the store does not have direct control on how "others" -downstream-react as one would expect after the sale. They are at the mercy of those who , at times, who may not have the certain skillsets and social skills to satisfy the expectations of the client, not in all cases, but some.

:)

agree !

gee, I wish Lowes, Home depot and best Buy had a forum shuch as this, but just maybe they dont want to go this way, beccause they fear , they have "issues also and yes all those other independents who are rated so high in the eye of Consumer Reports!

So the next time an applaince needs repair, just go back to their constant repetition of no need to buy a protection agreement for your $$$ purchase when it may have breakdowns- if your the 1 in 5 that has issues, pickup the magazine  cause they aint going to pay for your item to be repaired

pure balderdash on their part-

althoug I must say the aug 2009 issue gives very good ratings too many Kenmore branded products, just do not agree with them on the MPA's sears offers to their clients.

CellarDweller, when u called to make the service appointment did they offer u the purchase of the MPA at that time?

 

Sears removed store level Customer Service personel, years ago, from the stores.

Everyone that works at the store is now, in addition to their regular duties, a "Customer Service representative".

Training and experience levels tend to very widely.

No one is trying to upset a Customer.

But, clearly, this is happening.

Perhaps, store centralized Customer Service, linked to Corporate Customer Service - with TEETH concerning delivery and service calls should be implemented?

Thanks for reminding me.

I NEED to get a surge protector for my new electronically controlled appliance!

I couldn't agree more with BluecrewguyinMA, this forum does show that the company does care enough about what its customers think to make the investments in developing a great website that lets the customer dictate the topics. I just finished reading a story on the Wall Street Journal Website about businesses using forums such as this to do market research. I do hope that good things will come from this site for both the customers and Sears Holdings Corp.

Free parts and labor - Merchandise Protection Agreement

That sort of covers the "expensive" repair parts end of the deal.

The new controller and labor to diagnose and install it, would have been $351, had I not invested in a MPA for the machine.

Now, the BIG thing is an owner-supplied surge protector, for most of today's electronically controlled appliances.

Now, THAT'S low-cost protection, right-there!