how do you feel about splitting the discussion board into two sub-categories?....

Maybe with the resolved problems and complaints removed as issues are resolved and communication achieved?

I like your idea. You are right; it has become a gripe session board and it isn't healthy for Sears. Even though I have yet to see any other company as large as Sears do this I believe it has gone from being very helpful to being a bashing session.

I'm with Rvblue. We need a separate section for customer issues. Also, I think it would be useful to have the same kind of progress gauge as the Ideas page has for customer service issues. That way, people could see that customer issues actually DO get resolved, instead of just assuming nothing happens because they don't see the happy ending.

I think it would be better to adopt the format used by many other discussion boards.  In that format, the main page does not show the "all recent posts" view.  Instead, it shows categories and only the title of the most recent post in each category.   That way, there would not be a whole screen of complaints unless every category happened to have complaints.   When a user picks a category then the posts in that category are shown in chronological order.

The search feature on many web forums has shortcuts or methods to search for views like: "recent posts", "All threads I've posted in", "This weeks unanswered posts".   With those features, a user could view all posts in chronological order if they wished.

The number of categories on this site is already too large.  If you "drill down" to many of them, you find zero posts.  So instead of dividing the board into two boards, each with too many categories, it would be better to rearrange the board to have fewer categories.   Categories for complaints could be included in this reduced number of headings.

It's hard to visualize what people have in mind from abstract descriptions, so I think it would help if the participants in this thread could suggest other discussion sites as examples that illustrate what they advocate.  I'm thinking of sites like

sawmillcreek.org ( http://sawmillcreek.org/ )

dutchforce.com(  http://dutchforce.com/~eforum/index.php )

redaprons ( http://redaprons.invisionzone.com/index.php?/index )

Great Idea.  Hope something comes of it!  I especially like the idea of a resolution meter BlueCrew!

Thanks for the suggestions, guys!  And, the websites to check out, tashiro!  All of this is much appreciated!

A further suggestion about complaints:  Taking the example of fedoraforum.org, it has a section called "Reviews, Rants & Things That Make You Scream" where the more vehement posts are placed.  I think specific complaints with a rational tone should be put on one section and general rants should be put in another.  In particular if the title or main content of a post makes a general assertion like "Sears Lies!" "Sears is Great" "Sears doesn't Care" etc. it should be put in a "Rants and Raves" section.  (The moderators will probably be busy moving  misplaced posts into that section.)

Not a bad idea. I was posting earlier elsewhere that it would be good to post resolutions or lack thereof and at resolution it would be time to lock the thread out.

Has anyone ever seen a reform that didnt expand things and cost more money?

When it comes to bashing, Its been my observation that there isnt much content where folks get referred to elswhere or their information sent on.  In balance I see a few constantly suggest it and the moderator does it a lot BUT

That leaves one to assume that  personnel in customer relations (such as sears cares) does review this area) as on occasion you see a post from them asking for contact.  Information is great as folks see that also. (supports the idea of the split) 

Part of what I believe I see is the antagonization of customers having difficulty. (even if it is not intentional)  That aids in the formation of bashing content not quelling it.

Perhaps instead of having two separate sections, the moderators can be more proactive about moving threads into designated areas of the forum. That, and having the front page be a list of sub-forums instead of seeing the last days worth of posts, which are mostly rants/raves.

Hi all - thanks for these ideas! I really appreciate them. We do have a category for "Customer Feedback" and we re-categorize as much as we can. Our main view of the discussion forum displays all threads recently posted (as tashirosqt noted). I think these are great suggestions & will definitely take these back to our team to see how we can implement. Thanks!

maybe u should come up with a suggestion forum, with TOS stating that anything submitted the user has no rights to, that way they cant claim you owe them money when you use the idea. Otherwise your kinda playing russian roullete with suggestions

This probably isn't forum related but I do think Sears should start having resolutions posts or some other progress bar on how these things resolve out. I notice a lot of the time that the posts just stop within a topic and usually I assume that it's because Sears took care of the issues, but sometimes I wonder. It would be good for customers and Sears to show that in fact Sears is does Care, and that it's not because the person stopped posting.

These are great suggestions. I especially like the idea of breaking out the customer service issues and posting the resolutions so people can see what we are doing. We will work on this and try to get these improvements made shortly

Might want to check with your resolution team first b4 going through with this plan. From what I've seen, the very irrate people who are upset enough to post here when theres a problem, are concerned enough to post back here after its resolved, and so far i've seen about 3-5 of those posts.

still working on my response it is comming over the xmas holiday....(fyi)