Sears twice confirmed the date and time they would deliver Sandra’s six new kitchen appliances. She had her plumber and contractor standing by for a day of hard work when Sears called to say they weren’t coming. After hours of futile calls, Sandra finally tracked down the delivery warehouse manager who explained that Sears had run out of kitchen appliances.

He just laughed when I went through my story of frustration with the Sears service personnel and told me he had had 75 similar calls in the last 2 days. His bottom line: Sears is not sending him product and he has nothing to deliver.

Sandra writes:

I’m wondering if you’ve had other tales about the woeful lack of service from Sears and their so-called “Delivery Specialists?” I’ve been attempting to get concrete information about the delivery of 6 kitchen appliances (purchased and ordered for delivery last month). Delivery was confirmed twice by phone for yesterday. My contractor and plumber were standing by to install and do the necessary connections. But then, a Sears call-center rep informed the contractor that nothing would be coming at 1:00 PM, and gave no reason for the cancellation and no date for rescheduling. My contractor alerted me and I started the farcical pursuit of information at that point, totally consuming the rest of my work day. Telephone conversations with the Enfield, CT Sears acting store manager, appliance department sales reps and 3 different “delivery specialists” segued into the last futile hour working with a sales rep at the Enfield store where the purchase had been made. Even his valiant attempts to get info through his channels were all to no avail. We gave up after nearly 90 minutes of total aggravation at the store and left at 6:30 PM.

Starting again this morning, I obtained the number of the warehouse from which the appliances were to be delivered yesterday and finally got through to one of the managers at 7:20 AM. He just laughed when I went through my story of frustration with the Sears service personnel and told me he had had 75 similar calls in the last 2 days. His bottom line: Sears is not sending him product and he has nothing to deliver. Meanwhile, I paid a contractor and plumber to stand by for nothing. And the family get-together I had planned for this weekend will not take place since I have no kitchen appliances and no way to prepare the meals I had planned.

My question: do you know of any way to get straight answers and real solutions out of Sears for delivery problems?

Although the sales personnel in the appliance department at the Enfield, CT Sears store were extremely professional and helpful, they have no tools at their disposal to assist a customer having this kind of issue. I will never, ever, buy another Sears product. My contractor and his plumber agree with me and have said they will advise their clients not to purchase Sears products if they require delivery or service. This is all the more frustrating because I intentionally patronized Sears (and not Home Depot, Lowe’s or Best Buy) because I thought I could count on good service from point of purchase through delivery. You can be sure this extremely negative experience will be shared with friends and colleagues. And the most egregious point of all is I’m sure the customer service management team at Sears could care less.

Straight answers? Real solutions? We can do many things, but squeezing service out of Sears isn’t on the list. We could tell you to launch an EECB or file a chargeback, but for all the good it would do, you might as well fly a kite with “HELP!” emblazoned on the bottom.

Sorry Sandra, you’ve been Seared.

(Photo: jritch77)

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