I have a friend that works for a Sears.com call center. He's been there for many years, and the inability to cancel orders is just one of the insane things I've heard of. The frequency with which the call center he's in loses Internet access is beyond amusing to me.

I haven't been scared away from buying from them though. If you order online for pick-up in a local store, you can sometimes get a good deal...without having to do more than scan a barcode, and wait for someone to bring out your purchase. Slick.

OMG. BE VERY CAREFUL not to criticize the functionaity (or lack thereof) of their website (it is newly revamped too!) or you will be called rude & considered to have personally insulted the CSR. That was my personal experience a couple months ago, which I posted in detail on another Sears thread here.

@wvFrugan:
Here is my FULL experience from May 20th:

I just got off the phone with their website customer service and boy do they know how to escalate a conversation in a bad way: apparently if you objectively explain your frustration with the functionality (or lack thereof) of their website, you have "insulted" the website, apparently they are very defensive of their Internets & tubes. Also, I was told the current Sear.com is a newborn to be coddled as it was a new Sears.com beta version which had a lot of improvements & that I could fill out a customer survey on it that they offered (I respectfully declined, having emailed them twice already over the past year about their wonky site without the courtesy of a single response). Their website makes eBay look cutting edge.
After briefly expressing my frustration with the site, I explained to the CSR that the site was not applying the $5.00 online coupon I had been sent. She asked for the coupon code, I explained that their is none and that the email (forwarded here) advises you to click through a link (I wonder about the security of this) for Sears online & it will automatically be applied. She indicated she had never heard of such a promotion going on and knew quite a bit having been with the online site for a couple years. I again explained it was a store promotion with the cashiers offering two $5.00 coupons by email for your email address. I offered to forward her the email (no bite) and referred her to the Consumerist to check it out (I think that perhaps when this CSR heard Consumerist she thought communist!). The CSR then told me that she was transferring me to a manager as I was confused and didn't understand! (putting me on hold before I could say anything)
When she returned to say a manager was not immediately available, I advised her to not confuse her not being familiar with the offer and some the difficulties with using their web site (like having to go through all check-out pages (including credit card info) to see all possible discounts that are applied), with a lack of comprehension on my part. As a result of having apparently "insulted the site" (her words) and "refusing" (again her words) to tell her what was in my online shopping cart (she could not understand that my shopping cart now showed that my selected items where no longer available with a big red exclamation point - I don't think that the site liked that I aborted the transaction rather than click the final submit, how dare me getting to the final submit button & not letting it charge me despite being cheated out of $5.00!), the CSR Cheryl called me "rude", stated that I "talked down to her" & that she "deserved to be treated like a human being". I finally got her talked down from her ledge by clarifying that the statements I made were objective criticisms, and letting her froth on at the mouth a bit about being interrupted (I wonder if she noticed my repeated "please let me know when you are finished" requests?) and actually got her to the Consumerist website! After being on hold several minutes, she came back & said she had read the thread. I told her again that my point of referring her there was only so she knew what the stores were doing with regard to the promotional email coupons I received (God forbid she think I was being critical & rude again!). She then politely told me that she could only have helped me if I had made the purchase & requested a credit for the $5.00 coupon that should have been automatically applied. No offer to recreate my list (I took a screenshot) and take my order with a $5.00 credit.
She did badger me at the end that I was welcome to complain to the online site folks (webcenter@customerservice.sears.com). I advised her that Sears had lost the sale with my 4 attempts over 2 days being just too much. I wasted 24 minutes using my pre-paid cell with this CSR, much of it with her playing games feigning being insulted, interrupted, etc. I know how to work with CSR's & was certainly nothing close to abusive. I would have loved to have reviewed the tape with the manager she tried to pawn me off on. Sears, you fail: I up until now only ever bought Craftsman hand tools, but this experience, the increasing number of hand tools you are now making in China, and the fact that 2 of the 5 recent items (all hand tools) I wanted to buy in your store last week were of such poor casting quality that I could not use them has sent me elsewhere. I spend big money on Craftsman tools and have one of Sears' Craftsman Club discount cards: guess I can retire it to scraping frost off my windshield!

Sounds like a pretty poorly written website to me. Not sure what really can be done here to solve it besides refusing the package.

@wvFrugan: +1 for Internets and tubes.

Maybe the OP should have joined the Craftsman Club or entered the sweepstakes before ordering stuff?

/end sarcasm.

I do see that craftsman is the Official Tool of NASCAR. Maybe somebody over there knows how to cancel an order? 'Cause I'm guessing they probably order an extra item or two through the website and probably don't want to tell the UPS driver (another sponsor of nascar) that they are refusing the package (thereby causing the driver to carry the box back to truck).

Once you click that final button to put the order through, it is then typically propagated to multiple separate computers to carry the processing of the order. They don't always happen in parallel, for example a final credit card charge being refused can stop the whole process. But CSR's don't have access to that particular system for security reasons.

The back end workflow, once started, is more difficult to stop because it becomes an issue of chasing down where the order moves, and getting authorization for the various places the order might happen to be in. For example, canceling the order after the credit card is charged obviously can't just simply be deleting a row in a database because the charge now has to be reversed.

The FAIL is the website itself. If it is going to submit an error, it must not ever report that is did not. If you have to be registered and logged in to submit an order, then it clearly FAILED if it took the order anyway. But if it was supposed to take orders from "guest" then it FAILED by falsely reporting that it refused the order when in fact it accepted it.

One problem that has plagued many shopping web sites is duplicate orders. Many problems cause this. The biggest FAILURE is the lack of a transaction ID being attached before the cart is submitted, and storing it in a cookie. If that was done right, then you could do a submit a hundred times and the system would still see it as one order. A master database that tracks (and archives) all orders would be indexed by that ID code forever. No future order can ever be placed with the same ID code, so duplicate submissions of the same shopping cart mean nothing (but it should respond telling about the previous submission being complete).

The system should never accept an order until it has reached a point where the buyer can always inquire about orders. This is to avoid them starting all over with a new shopping cart which would have a new ID and really treated as a new order.

And canceling orders while they are working in the system is non-trivial. Places like Newegg can do this because their order system is centralized. The Craftsman/Sears system is probably decentralized due to the legacy organization of functional units of the company. And this decentralization changes "hard to cancel" into "impossible to cancel".

@JustinSane07: Canceling orders isn't a function of the website once the website has sent the order on to other systems in the company workflow. But clearly, a proper shopping website should manage its acceptance of orders with correct coding. It should never have allowed the order to be placed, or even the virtual shopping cart to be created, without the user first logging in. To the extent that it is difficult to register, difficult to login, difficult to navigate, difficult to use alternative standards compliant browsers, then those are all big issues with the web site design. And it's likely more an issue with some management having expended millions of dollars for a site that still turns out to be junk because they really went with the low bid.

I've never actually tried to order things on their site. I've looked at sears.com a few times, and found it to be about half way between the best and the worst as far as navigation goes. I'll have to check out the craftsman.com site.

@wvFrugan: It would be easier to read your post if you type in an extra empty line between the paragraphs. See below.

This is a separate paragraph with more space above it. You can use the "preview comment" checkbox to enable seeing your post as as you type it in, so you can see when you have achieved the spacing.

This isn't necessarily Sears's "fault". If the order is in stock, and the warehouse is not busy, an order can go into the picking queue in the warehouse instantly. It may even result in the barcode label being printed with no delay.

Plenty of Amazon orders I have placed go into "cannot be cancelled" state immediately. Same thing with NewEgg.

@sirwired:
True, but we ARE talking @ Sears.

@Skaperen: Wow, that's hella rude. I'm sorry his typing isn't up to your standards. Lets stone him. Smite the non paragraph users!!

I've had similar experiences in the past with T-Mobile and Keurig

This seems to be the recipe for customer service failure.

1) Hire low wage workers that you have no confidence in to make their own decisions.

2) Remove all authority from them so that they don't do something crazy like refund an order for being crap.

3) Wash. Rinse. Repeat.

Thats kind of dumb, didn't we invent and implement the mass use of this thing called a computer to enhance customer service capabilities and smooth the flow of order processing? Whats the point if they don't have a "cancel" command anywhere? dumbasses
That being said, in order to keep the surprise, he may have had one of the packages redirected to his house so that he himself could refuse the package, or keep it and return it directly to sears, (sounds plausible, but i don't know if it's a valid option)

@Skaperen: Maybe you have a comprehension problem? The post was easily understandable to me.

This is EXACTLY what happened to me when I tried to order Impact Gel shoe inserts (yes, the ones featured on Pitchmen)! I tried to order the $19.99 package which had the insert and another thinner insert for dress shoes. Well, after entering my credit card info on the order form, I was taken to a series of "additional offers," which I assumed would lead me to an order confirmation page. So I clicked "No Thanks" to these additional offers, which cost additional money of course, and thought I'd be on my way to confirming a $19.99 order with $10 shipping (a little ridiculous, but Pitchmen made it look so good!). Imagine my surprise when I am navigated to a "Thank you for your purchase!" page, which says I will be charged $92!!! There was NO confirmation page! And when I called the next morning to cancel the order (this was a late-night purchase), I was given the exact same story as C.W. The only difference is that I was offered free shipping if I tried to order the package I wanted again, but I'm sad to say that I won't be ordering from their poorly-designed, almost scam-like site again.

@Skaperen: that's funny, because canceling orders on most online stores is done directly from the website, usually at any time up to shipping. It's only hard because they want it to be so for some reason(s), possibly to do with keeping a place in a bureaucracy.

I'll take, "Reasons not to buy from Sears," for 800, Alex.

@Skaperen: "The Craftsman/Sears system is probably decentralized due to the legacy organization of functional units of the company." ...which is why they should be avoided. It's not rocket science to get these things right. If you can't manage it due to being stuck to a certain org chart, then you should be going the way of the dodo.

@skizsrodt: not only a computer, but this Codd guy figured out some great math to make managing data much easier, decades ago. The bastardizations that can to be popular still aren't half bad at it.

@frodolives35: That's rather unfortunate. Seriously, since when did a big wall of text, with little use of commas and excessive use of "&" over the word and become an acceptable standard? Yes, I got through it, but it was wading a bit. The content of the story was worth it, I'll admit, but I wouldn't say "easy" to understand...maybe "moderate"?

Having two orders would this be two debits and thus affect available funds/credit for the OP ?

You would figure Sears would take of this expeditously just to avoid their customer's credit being affected .

Dear Meg,

It is disappointing to read about your experience with Sears customer service. My name is David and I work for the Sears Cares Team. We would like to speak to you regarding this situation. Please contact us at searscares@searshc.com so we can further discuss your concerns.

Thank you,

David V.
Senior Case Manager