Brilliant. Making someone apply for a 2nd card. Brilliantly evil, that is.

This is gold. Thanks consumerist! Now I know all about the secrets of electronic retailers (well most)

The only thing I don't agree with is the price matching. I worked in appliances. We price matched things not in stock, but we also push Kenmore which is Sears only.

You also forgot to mention the life insurance that associates are made to push onto customers.

Wow I almost thought I was reading an article about Best Buy.

Last time I was in a Sears I was approached by a sales associate about vinyl siding while in the clothing department. Seriously?!?

In other words - don't buy electronics from Sears. Gotcha

So if you're keeping score at home, that makes
- Appliances
- Tools
- Electronics

This is exactly why Sears is dying a slow retail death. I haven't shopped there in years. When will CEO's actually DO SOMETHING to HELP a chain other than just lead it to the retail funeral home while getting a big paycheck to do it. Sad. Twenty plus years ago Sears actually served a purpose. Now nobody cares. Bye Sears.

@jwarner132: Naah. Sears is Best Buy's grandpa. The original retail ripoff joint. The best thing to do there is ALWAYS PAY CASH.

Anyway, I'm a hypocrite because I signed up for a card the last time I went there. Bought a $27 bucket of detergent and did the card because they gave me $15 off my first purchase. $12 for a five-gallon bucket of high-efficiency detergent good for 275 washes ain't a bad deal. When I get the bill, I'll pay it, shred the card, and close my account. Since I usually pay cash for stuff, there is virtually no chance I'll do what I heard (from here) other people were doing, which was to forget they had a 0% interest deal on something big like a washing machine and buy something else before paying off the balance. Thanks, Consumerist, for reminding me of that hot tip.

@DeepFriar:

In even fewer words, don't buy anything from Sears.

@DeepFriar: I'll agree on everything except tools, mainly Craftsman and the lifetime warranty. It doesn't matter how it broke, how obviously it was misused or how old the tool is, they have never asked questions. They just exchange it for a new one.

The real question is: Who buys anything from a Sears?

I would never buy electronics from Sears unless they had something that I knew was a solid product and at a great price to boot - which almost never happens.

Regarding MPA's though, I do recommend them for home appliances. I grew up with Kenmore appliances and they're still regarded as fairly "solid" but when I bought my fridge I got the 5 year plan and made use of it within the first 6 months (the water feed line for the ice maker froze up because whoever installed the tube @ the factory, they did so by twisting it and caused an eventual blockage of ice to form). I also made use of the (at that time) Sears Mastercard for 0% financing and planned the payments to be paid in full within 10 months. I still have the cards today and plan on using it when I buy a new stove (assuming when I do so it also provides 0% over XX months).

With regard to the original topic, I couldn't agree more. Going to Sears and asking the Electronics people whats a good TV to buy is just asking for trouble, nevermind trusting them to give me a "great warranty plan".

Be informed, not misled!

@Steaming Pile:
It's funny you mention the detergent, because it's the ONLY reason I go there, ever. Thankfully with the amount of detergent in that tub, it's very rare that I have to go.

@Goatweed: At my Sears the MPA doesn't cover the ice maker.

@Steaming Pile: How absolutely idiotic! Applying for a new credit card to save $15 and then shutting it down looks like "erratic credit behavior" and does damage to your credit score. How can a Consumerist reader do that? Paying cash is a terrible idea. If you lose your receipt, odds are you'll never be found in a system if you need to make a return. Plus, if you read refund policies of many major retailers, if you pay cash over a certain amount, they have to mail you a refund in the form of a check. For example, if you paid $375 cash for something at BBY, you cannot get a cash refund and must wait 7-10 days for a check. Bad, bad advice...

#7 is true in most commission based stores. Usually a specific product will have an additional commission for a week or two. Thus, the associate will try to convince you to purchase that product if possible.

This can be disguised as 'honest advice' or a 'tip'. Commonly they would say "Well if you want honest opinion, I really thing X is the best way to go." or "I have X myself and I love it". Alternatively "You know we get a lot of returns on Y. But almost no returns on X" if you're flip flopping between 2 models.

Before you really had to rely on the knowledge of the sales person to understand and compare items. But with the internet and review sites everywhere, you should really only go into the store to
1) Try out a device before buying. It's usually good to do this for cameras, to see if they feel right in your hand.
2) Buy the device outright without consulting the sales people

@Steaming Pile: Wow. You consented to a hard credit pull for a measly 15 bux. You *are* a steaming pile.....

@Pro-Pain: And I'm just old enough to remember as a kid, the heyday of Sears where they had storefronts in most small towns with a business district (this is like 30-40 years ago). You'd find something in the catalog, call the local store, place the order over the phone, and in a week to ten days, the storekeeper would call to say your order was in. Most times you'd know the person by name since they were someone local.

You'd walk in, step up the counter and give your name, and your stuff would be on a shelf behind the counter. And in ten minutes you'd be home again enjoying your purchases. If there was a problem, you'd call the local store or stop by when you were out running errands, and they'd take care of any issues or exchanges for you. We very rarely ever had to drive "to the city" to go to a real Sears store.

And the internet has improved on this?

Working at sears also totally destroys your writing ability, it seems.

Seven confessions of a former Sears Customer:

1)Your prices haven't been competitive in years. That's why you are a last resort,a place where you end up,not start out.

2) Your stores have that dirty,run down,"halo of retail death" feeling.I know you're going bust,and you know that I know. why play games ?

3)Assfucking what few customers that you have left with your silly finance games is stu-pid. Why not try treating them the way you would like to be treated ?

4) Sears Essentials is neither.Take this dog out behind the barn and kill it with an ax.The last time I went in the one nearby,there were six other customers in the store at 7:30 P.M. Six.

5)You moved a lot of your U.S.A. sourcing to China.(especially tools) Smart move...The shit is cheap and flimsy,and you know it. The "cost savings" may "cost" you what little goodwill you may have had left.Hope it was worth it.

6)The fashions belong at a low rent flea market in a third world country.Wear these and tell the world that you're poor and not especially proud.

7)You don't give two shits about items 1-6,so why should we give a hoot in hell whether you survive ?

What is the story with Sears and their detergent? I always thought that was a weird item for them to sell.

That part about tricking the customer into applying for a 2nd (or 3rd or more) credit card is really priceless. Just a nice honest company. Glad to see they are doing so well also. Everyone I know shops there cuz they always have the cutting edge products :(

So I guess even a company that's been around forever can't learn the lesson that screwing the consumer isn't the way to stay in business. Burn in hell, Sears.

@Scalvo2 : Maybe that's a new directive, when I opted for it I made sure that the ice maker and control panel were covered (I was told that with these side-by-side models, those things are usually the trouble spots) and they were indeed covered. Ironically I recently discovered that the 5 year plan has since expired and I'm wondering why Sears didn't call me 6 months prior to remind me and suggest renewing at a discount.

Back in the olden days, the Sears extended warranties were great. They even offered them on stuff you didn't buy at Sears. And they were phenomenal. I once bought an on-display VGA monitor that had a dead green gun. Bought that for pennies on the dollar, plus the extended warrantee. Took it home, called Sears, said "I have a VGA monitor with a dead green gun". Sears came out with a new one, confirmed the one I had was dead, did the swap there, and off they went to their next adventure. Brand new VGA monitor for about the price of the warrantee. Same thing with other appliances, one little thing went wrong and they were out to fix or replace it.

If they still offered those, they would be the only exception to the "don't buy the extended warrantee" rule. Too bad.

Sears anchor stores blow, but the hardware stores are still good - I've got one right by my place and wouldn't go anywhere else.

i bought my HDTV from sears along with the surround sound and i got a great deal. i didnt buy the cables etc because any self-respecting computer guy wouldnt pay $40 for a HDMI cable. but all-in-all i was satisified with my purchase and i even put it on my sears card to get the 0% interest. i have until 1/1/10 to pay it off and right now im on track to have it paid off in 6 months.

its not all bad.

wow this is my first comment, I usually don't like to make a post and wait like a day to see its results but this time it might be interesting.
I worked at sears for a while and hated it due to the fact that sales people are not my kind of people. Anyways, most of the things this guy is saying is very unethical and isn't actually pushed on the sales people. None of the guys I worked with pulled that double credit card scam. Also where I worked, they'll let you return almost anything. It was overall very good customer service. I and another sales associate even went to people's houses twice to assemble their tv stands and set it up for them for free.
The only thing that was true was the lying about protection agreements. Even the top salesmen lied to me and insured me that it was protected when I pointed out to him some of the clauses. For all I know, he might've truly believed it himself. What is real though is the pressured culture of pushing sales people to sell protection agreements. It got to the point where my coworkers would make fun of me and other people for not being able to sell any protection agreements. I personally did not want to because it was too damn unethical and I'd usually advised them against it. And of course, lets not forget about the monster cables!
Also, its almost impossible to get fired from this place. I could've sat on my ass all day and they'd just be mad at me. The manager was extremely good at dealing with people and extremely polite and easy going. I would never buy a protection agreement but I always bought electronics from there if I didn't buy it online.

I guess they changed Great Price items from .98 to .00. I used to work at a Sears myself, and can attest to all of this. It's a lot worse than the poster lets on, you can read about it here - [www.retail-worker.com] where the employees go to vent about everything. If you don't work there, it's a real eye-opener. If you do, it's just another day in paradise.

I can't remember the last time I set foot in a Sears store. Only people shop there.

@jwarner132: No no no no... when you read articles like this with Best Buy as the store, you think it's Sears. Sears is the original bullshitter in the business.

@lonewolf333: I can't remember the last time I set foot in a Sears store. Only old people shop there.

Most of these rules apply to just about anywhere that sells electronics and has associates on commission sales.

i'm going to quiz my brother on this, he works in the tool dept at a sears. he says that the electronics guys are all sleazy idiots, but we shall see.

@humphrmi: What is a dead green gun, and why did your monitor come with one?

@CMU_Bueller: amen. BUT realize that the lifetime, no questions exchange is on hand-tools only.

@lonewolf333: Thanks for clearing that up, I was confused for a minute.

I like Sears. I walk through the store every time I go to the mall. They always have plenty of parking in their part of the lot.

@CMU_Bueller: I agree, every time somebody adds a helpful "Why does anyone still shop at Sears?" to the comments, I like to think of my garage full of Craftsman stuff. I hope some other retailer will pick up Craftsman when Sears dies. I have to think the Craftsman products are a major reason Sears still exists.

@zentex: But other exchanges are similarly hassle-free, from my experience, if you're within the 90 days or whatever. I returned a battery last week caked in mud and didn't get any trouble about it. They asked what happened, I told the kid I dropped it in the crawlspace, he checked my receipt for the date and swapped it out.

wow, so much hate for sears... ive found some great bargains there recently, and i dont go to the mall often. most times i order things online but have found recently that shipping is getting jacked up to the point that buying locally makes more sense. i just got a sony 40" hd lcd tv for under $1000

i think alot of those confessions/rules posted apply to any electronics store. or any job that pays on commission really. when i worked selling alcohol on commission i sure did push whatever paid the most. and this was 10 years ago.

Having worked seasonal at Sears - in Home Electronics - I can affirm all the above points of the O.P.

On a weekly basis, all the associates who did not "make the Maintenance Agreement numbers" would have to attend a meeting wherein they would be forced to "role-play" hypothetical customer interactions. I never quite understood this - it was like the blind leading the blind because all the attendees were "losers" (to the extent that they failed to meet their quotas of protection agreements). What possible benefits could one learn in this environment of role-plays? Usually there was one "seasoned" manager overseeing the rituals who generally couldn't sell anyway.

SOme of the tricks shared (again by those who did not have luck deploying them - else they wouldn't be in the meeting anyway) were like something out of the movie 'Tin Men" (aluminum siding sales reps).

It was an amazingly depressing experience! Working for a company on a death spiral, working amongst a group of underpaid, under-motivated schmucks (I was one, then).

@backbroken: Old VGA monitor technology was called roughly "RGB" - Red, Green, Blue - because each monitor had three "guns" inside which basically rendered one color on one or more pixels on the screen. By putting two colors next to each other, it fooled your eyes into seeing the color as a blend and thus you could get the full spectrum of colors. When one of the "guns" (sorry I don't remember the technical name for them) died, you got a picture that was off-color. Basically it was a component that was broken, and while difficult to fix is very easy to identify. Hence it took the repair technician no more than 30 seconds to see that he needed to replace the monitor.

Unfortunately, as far as the technology goes, I've been doing this for so long that I've forgotten more than I know.

Well i spent 20 years (i'm 47) selling mid to high end hifi and video.
It was a local place, family owned and for the longest time we focused on what was best for the customer. I really enjoyed selling something to someone that i would have bought myself. We sold extended warranties but never pushed them. We sold better cables but only to people that could appreciate their value. We took returns without a 3rd degree and restocking fees.
I was on a salary and commission but didn't try to nickel and dime people to death. Those were the good old days. Probably 5 years ago the store went with a model based more on what Sears or Best Buy do. Which is focus on selling accessories and warranties and custom install. They lost focus on what the customer needed. I left the business 3 years ago. Couldn't take the new way of doing business. I still see people in town that i sold to over the years and they always tell me how much they still love their equipment. It's a great feeling.

@wellfleet: I have no further need for credit, so what do I care what the credit bureaus think about me? I've paid my bills on time for going on thirty years, and if that's not good enough for them, then they can go f*** themselves.

Wow, I used to work for Sears as well and this guy forgot a fair bit! I could easily add 7 more to that list. For example, when you apply for a Sears card, you aren't just getting your app run once, they do it twice. One for the Citibank, and once for HSBC. They have two versions of the Sears card, you see.

Another thing he forgot to mention apparently is that there are separate return rules for products like telephones. You see, they also have a phone replacement program that is nigh impossible to take advantage of because you have to prove it was a manufacturer's defect to get the replacement for free. And if that phone isn't made anymore, you get a cheaper phone than the price you paid for the original.

Consumerist, I can give you so much more! :)

We have a Sears card with a $2500 balance which we use a few times a year, often for tires or tools, but always keep the balance at $0. A few weeks ago we receieved a coupon good for $30 off a $100 purchase which we thought would be easy. Wrong! After nearly an hour wandering the store we had our $100 worth of stuff and left.

Several of the items, however, were for our daughter and she didn't like anything we bought. The next weekend I went to make the return (entering the store near hardware) and asked an associate where I could make a return and was told that I could use any register. As I approached the group of 3-5 associates and started to pull the items (bras, pair of jeans, sweater, winter jacket)one of the more senior employees told me that I needed to take this downstairs since it was not their department. I pointed to the sign above his head which said "returns" and told him that this was more convenient for me. He grudgingly made the return explaining that he would do this 'just this one time'.

My feeling is that the associates should take this up with management, not customers.

2-Sears Credit Application-'make sure you see the screen'-I've had this happen alot at banks.

Once I opened a new account an agent continued to ask me the same information:she said she was just entering it into the computer-about a week later I recieved the bank's credit card.The second time I lost my ATM card and a customer service rep asked my information several times-she said it didn't take the first time-I was able to see the screen-it was a credit application,she told me I was eligible for the banks credit card.

Quotas and incentives equal pressure to lie,cheat and steal in any place.

@DeepFriar:

4. Automotive

@humphrmi: yes, "gun" is the proper technical term. They're electron guns, they shoot electrons at a screen. That causes the area you hit to light up.
The gun is a vacuum tube, and thus one of the wonky ways for a CRT to die is that one color goes out (stops sending nearly as many electrons).
(Another way it dies is by just dimming over time -- if you have to maximize your TV's contrast to the point that red is bleeding to the right in order to see it comfortably, you need a new TV.)