As with many of the real life stories on your site, ours is filled with astonishment, confusion and anger. It began in August of this year and continues until today. I write to you mainly so that other avid readers of your site may consider whether or not they should ever make a major purchase from Sears, and of course with the small hope that of the two or three staff at Sears who care about customer service would respond and end this saga for us.

What follows are the exact text excerpts, other than our phone number being removed from the first post, from the Better Business Bureau complaint that we have made, Case# 1168481. The background on our situation in the first post. I’m sure at least of your readers would find this amusing (as would we if we were not actually being screwed over by these fine folk). I have also attached two pictures as I think they’re pretty funny(or sad, you choose). The first is of the fridge door and innerds (in the box) which have been on our front step since they missed their first visit. The second is of the fridge in the basement. We had defrosted the fridge and removed what we could to reduce the weight for the movers before the first visit. When they didn’t show up we were concerned with mold so we moved the door outside and ripped off some of the plastic shielding to allow the water to evaporate.

Nathan [redacted]

BBB CASE#: 1168481

Initial complaint filed by us on Nov 8, 2007

We purchased a new Whirlpool fridge from the Chinook Sears store on August 29, 2008. As part of the purchase we paid an extra $20 to have our old fridge removed.

When our fridge was dropped off 2 weeks later on Sept 8, the delivery personnel said they couldn’t remove our old fridge as it was old and too heavy and required a 4 man crew. They indicated that the salesman should have asked us the age and location of the fridge which he didn’t.

We then scheduled the fridge to be removed on Sept 22 from 12-6pm. At just after 6 we contacted Sears corporate customer service to ask them what the issue was and they said that they would still arrive. They never did. A number of calls to customer service never resulted in an explanation as to why no one came and we were not called. They showed up on Sept 24 at 5pm even though no one called us to notify us, and of course we weren’t at home. We then rescheduled the appt. for Oct 6. The same event repeated whereby we called customer service at 6pm and were told that to the best of their knowledge someone would come but no one did. The same event repeated two more times, on Oct 10 and Oct 27. We had even contacted a manager, Marylne, but that proved to be no more useful. Four appointments, four no shows and not a single call at any time to tell use that they were not coming.

A letter was also sent on October 8 to Ethel J. Taylor, Senior Vice-President, Corporate Store Sales on to which we have not received a response. The majority of this has been documented on Sear’s customer service system under our home phone number, xxx-xxx-xxxx, though some CSR agents have not recorded the events.

Response from Sears Nov 30, 2007

upon investigation, customer had already accepted a gift card for this inconveniences, received a credit for the pickups. Sears delivery had tried to pick up the units, calling customer, knocking on door, ringing door bell, each no answer, we apologize for any inconvenience.

Our Response Dec 4, 2007

I find this response yet a further insult. Has the person responding even read the complaint or the notes on my file?

First, each of the two gift cards was provided as an inconvenience for two of the missed visits. We never received gift cards for the other two missed visits. I assume that the additional $100 is on the way? And that’s just for the inconvenience of waiting around for several hours and have no phone call, no notice that anyone was not going to show up.

Second, the only time that Sears showed up, as recorded on my file, is on the Tuesday Sept 24, for which we were never even contacted to tell us that they were going to show up. We were told by the CSR agent that there was of course a mistake on their end. If we were contacted, we would have informed them that we would be at work and not available on that day.

If Sears is not interested in providing us with enough cash to pay for a reliable and professional company to remove our old fridge, they can come back and take the fridge we purchased from them and provide us with a full refund on that fridge.

I would ask that at the very minimum that who ever responds to this read the full complaint and our long history which has both been recorded on our account file as well as in a letter sent to Ethel J. Taylor, SVP Corporate Sales. Please quit further cementing in out minds that Sears is a company that no one should ever expect decent (never mind even good) customer service from.

Nathan

Their “Final” Response Dec 12, 2007

sorry to hear that had not received the gift cards that were issued. as per the policy of sears, the gift card sent will be cancelled and will request to have the cards re-issued.

Our “Final” response Dec 14, 2007

Are you kidding me? Did you even read what I said? No where did I say I did not receive the cards. What I said is that you offered $100 for only two of the four missed visits. Thus, simply for missing the other two visits you should provide $100 ADDITIONAL!

Come on, is enraging your customers really what you’re trying to do because you’re being very successful at that. You still haven’t even offered a solution to the fridge which is still in our basement now 3 months after we paid you to remove it. What kind of customer service is this? Is this a joke to you?

Nathan

PS Please take the time to at least use capital letters. It shows that you’ve spent more than 6 seconds responding to a message.

Yuck. Since you live in Canada, we’ll toss this one out to our many fine Canadian readers. Any advice for Nathan, aside from the usual EECB?