Remember when stuff just worked? You bought it, brought it home, and it diligently performed its advertised function? Me neither, but suposedly there was a bygone era where products were made to last, instead made to break. In any event, we’re certainly not in those times now, and Jeff’s tale of trying to buy a simple refrigerator from Sears is proof positive.

Jeff writes:

My refrigerator burned out on Sunday September 11th. I took the day off work on the 12th to shop for a new one. After going to four local stores I had it narrowed down to Sears and Lowes. Lowes had free delivery and a military discount but Sears was slightly lower sticker price so I went with Sears. While purchasing the refrigerator I was offered 5 percent off if I signed up for a Sears credit card. After buying the refrigerator and signing up for delivery the next day I went home.

Two hours later I got a call from Sears telling me that the refrigerator I was shown was not the one they had ordered for me (the wrong tag was on the refrigerator). They told me I could come up and look at the one they ordered for me or I could get the one I looked at (but it would cost more). I went back up to the store and told them the cheaper refrigerator was unacceptable and I was not going to spend more on the one I had ordered. Since the Lowes refrigerator was roughly the same deal I decided to go with it. Sears told me they could cancel my order but there was no way to get out of the Sears card except to wait for it to come and cancel the card.

When I contacted the number Sears gave me for Mastercard the representative told me my “story keeps changing.” He said this because I would not say if the Sears representative purposely switched the refrigerator (what I had said was it didn’t matter if they did or not the end result was the same from my point of view). He then told me my only option was to contact the Attorney General.

Before taking that step I decided to call back up to Sears to see if they could get me the refrigerator I had originally looked at. They told me I could get the refrigerator at the original agreed upon price. The only problem was that all of the Tuesday delivery slots were taken so they signed me up for a Wednesday delivery. At 6:30on Wednesday the delivery truck showed up and the two deliverymen were polite and professional. They brought it in, set it up, and gave me all of the paperwork.

After waiting 24 hours as I was instructed the refrigerator still was not cooling. I called the store who gave me the Sears service number.

The service number technician was beyond useless. He first told me my refrigerator had a time zone issue. After determining that was not the issue he told me I had to set it on 37 degrees instead of 38 (as the manual said) and to wait 24 hours. I told him it was set at 38 for 42 hours and nothing was happening (it had actually gotten warmer). He then told me that I needed to turn it up a little bit because it was set too cold. When we determined that was not the issue he told me he could get a repairman to my house in “about a week.” When I told him that was unacceptable I got his name and the ticket number and called back to the store. The manager contacted the service line and they gave me the first appointment Monday morning (the service line called me to confirm).

I took Monday morning off of work and no one showed up.

I called the store at 10:00 a.m. and they said they would check on it and call me back. I called them again at 1:00 p.m. when I had heard nothing from them. They told me they were swamped and had been put on hold so they would contact them now and call me back. That was 45 minutes ago. I am now on the verge of missing an entire day of work and no one has come out to look at the refrigerator that I purchased a week ago.

Where that Sears “Blue Crew” squad when you need them?

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