It’s been awhile since we had a good Sears warranty repair horror story, so without further ado:

Over a week ago, before Thanksgiving, our new Kenmore High Efficiency (read: expensive) clothes washer broke. Sears support diagnosed the problem as a single part, telling us that it would be more than a week until they could have a technician come out and repair the unit. We could order the part ourselves, but then we would void our warranty. We chose to have the technician come with the part and fix the machine for us.

On the day the technician was supposed to show up, about 3 hours into their 4 hour delivery window, the tech called and asked us if we had been shipped the part for our machine. I told him I had no idea what he was talking about, so the tech just hung up on me. That’s right, after the Sears technician found out we didn’t have the part, he hung up on me.

I called Sears repair services and they told me that it was standard operating procedure to ship the part directly to the customer. However, Sears picked a delivery date for the part that’s two days after they scheduled repair date.

Sears’ solution? Wait for the part to come since they couldn’t guarantee when we would actually get the part–two days was just a guess–then reschedule for another repair appointment, which could be another wait of a week or more.

I explained I wanted to file a complaint against the tech who hung up on me and was transferred to customer service. I waited on the phone for an hour until I got so frustrated I hung up without reaching anyone.

Why can’t Sears supply their repair technicians with the appropriate repair parts? How long am I going to have to wait to get my clothes washer repaired? Who made the bonehead decision to mail me the part?

Thank you,

Justin

We’ve yet to find an effective tactic for negotiating with the Sears repair division. Letting their CEO know that you need your appliance to, say, refrigerate your insulin, doesn’t work. Blogging about how they refuse to deliver the dryer you ordered sort of works. You could be thankful that your tech didn’t grab your container of olive oil and pour it all over your dishwasher.

In any case, the best advice we have is to try escalating your issue. Has anyone out there come up with a foolproof method for dealing with Sears? Let’s hear about it.

(Photo:SqueakyMarmot)

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