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I have to agree with desertsun41. The home improvement quote made by Sears was way the highest I received.
I always come on here saying how the 2 big box stores charge full list price or MSRP on everything in their store. Sears charges 25% over list price or MSRP.
I can think back to some sales I made where a customer would come in with a Sears quote on a kitchen for say $50,000 and we came in with a better product for $23,000.
But........everyone has a Sears charge card and it makes it so very easy to buy buy buy with that card. The other thing is Sears charges a higher rate of interest on their consumer credit card then any and all other retail stores. In fact they charge .001 less then the highest federal usury rate allows.
After all this, I received a call from Sears asking me to take a 2 minute quiz about the repair service. The call started 'using your touch tone phone' . . . . I still have a rotary dial. Yes, I know it's old, but it still works and works good.
i called Sears for a quote on central AC units. little did i know they would show up with 2 guys and a 90 minute presentation. which turned into nearly 2 hours until i eventually told them to leave because they were being too pushy. their attitude alone made me look elsewhere.
We scheduled service to fix an ice maker at one of our other office locations and the first appointment was rescheduled by Sears with no advanced notice to us. Then 2 more reschedules. Apparently their techs were all too bust to get to our call. When we finally got a tech, the ice maker functioned worse than before the repair, and actually didn't work. After 3 more re-scheduled follow up appointments, a tech came out, plugged something in and it was working. Talk about lazy! It was really frustrating being rescheduled without notice until the automated call the night before.
This situation reminds me of the comedy skit by Ron White where he was suing Sears based on a wheel that fell off his van.
You can do a You Tube search for "Ron White Sears" and listen to it. Fair warning... there is alot of foul language involved... and probably rightfully so based on his experience (I have no idea if it really happened).
This situation reminds me of the comedy skit by Ron White where he was suing Sears based on a wheel that fell off his van.
You can do a You Tube search for "Ron White Sears" and listen to it. Fair warning... there is alot of foul language involved... and probably rightfully so based on his experience (I have no idea if it really happened).
As a person who worked at Sears Auto Center when that bit came out, I will say it is true. I also laughed my ass off. Sears just doesn't give a S. The appliance repair folks are completely separate from the retail stores. The only thing they have in common is that the auto center services the work vans.
I hate to say it, but most of the people working for Sears are either young kids like I was, or they're older and couldn't hack it in the real world. We had some good mechanics, but they were too old or to slow or too lazy to get dealership jobs. I imagine it is the same for the home service guys.
Training was minimal. I went to one hands on Automotive specific training in 6 years of working for the company. Everything else was video tapes and later a computer e-learning system which management never made us to because we were so short handed and couldn't take people out of the shop.
Has anyone else had a bad experience with Sears repair services? We completely stopped dealing with them when we were told that our lawn mower would need to go to Florida for repair and our TV to Houston.
Last week our almost 1 year old refrigerator went out. This was the last thing we bought from Sears. It was a refrigerator with the freezer on the bottom. When I called for a warranty repair, I was told it would take a week to get the repairman there.
Fortunately, we have a local store that stocks dry ice, so I made a daily run to them.
The repairman showed up, fixed and left. When I tried to open the freezer door, it wouldn't open. Called Sears and was told that the earliest a repairman could come was 4 days away!
Is Sears this bad everywhere?
Do you live in a rural area? The reason I ask is their warranty service varies considerably if you live in a city vs a rural area. I have homes in both urban and rural areas. In the rural area, it was a pain to get Sears to address things. It took them 3 weeks to install a garage door opener because they only have 1 tech in the area that services a large area so if that person is unavailable, you have to wait.
In the urban area, Sears is amazing and fixes things the next day and will address issues immediately. I've had great service with them. I still swear by Sears and prefer to pay a premium due to their warranty service. Unlike Home Depot, Lowes and other large vendors, Sears has their own service department and doesn't outsource work to third party vendors so it's nice to deal with the company directly and they were great about replacing items. When you deal with third party vendors, they tend not to replace things because a portion of replacing the item comes out of their budget so they fight it. I"ve never had Sears reject replacing an item when it went bad. But you are right in rural areas, they will take a long time to get things fixed.I had a treadmill and they always came out to service it promptly.
I'm not saying Sears is perfect but to all the critics on here, what is your alternative? Going to the Mom and Pop down the street is just as bad if not worse. Calling a person in the yellow pages to fix it is going to cost you more. Home warranty companies won't cover most appliances and I'm talking about the very best warranty companies and plans. Trust a guy from Craigs list or the local handyman is playing with fire too. Home Depot, Lowes and Best Buy all have worse warranty policies and don't cover everything. Case in point, I bought a fridge from Sears, and only their policy covered the ice maker but even the best policies from the other three stores didn't cover the ice box.
Sorry but I'm not comfortable buying used or going to some sketchy warehouse or local dealer who will go out of business in a year to buy the appliance and then expect Joe Handyman to fix it when it breaks down. Yeah, you can get lucky that way and save a lot of money or you can be swindled like most people.
Last edited by azriverfan.; 08-08-2011 at 11:34 AM..
I live in between Covington and Mandeville, two towns with about 37,000 people, just outside of New Orleans. The repair people just don't care. Utter indifference.
My first refrigerator lasted about 15 years; the second, about 20. I will not buy anything else from them.
If my experience is how they treat urban customers, I would hate to be a rural customer.
Sears uses private subcobntratcors like mnay other contractors do for certain jobs. They basically do teh same thing as mnay stores in seelig the prodcut and sub intalling. You will find that some subs do work for many stores.But i agree their appliance repair is pretty poor now which they actaully run themselves. But the so are many others.
As a person who worked at Sears Auto Center when that bit came out, I will say it is true. I also laughed my ass off. Sears just doesn't give a S. The appliance repair folks are completely separate from the retail stores. The only thing they have in common is that the auto center services the work vans.
I hate to say it, but most of the people working for Sears are either young kids like I was, or they're older and couldn't hack it in the real world. We had some good mechanics, but they were too old or to slow or too lazy to get dealership jobs. I imagine it is the same for the home service guys.
Training was minimal. I went to one hands on Automotive specific training in 6 years of working for the company. Everything else was video tapes and later a computer e-learning system which management never made us to because we were so short handed and couldn't take people out of the shop.
I agree but why is this a surprise? You get what you pay for. People go to Sears automotive to save money not to get the best work done. I went to Sears regarding a wheel alignment to save money. They were so incompetent and didn't fix it, I finally ponied up the money and paid the dealership to fix it and and it was fixed perfectly. I remember Sears supposedly tested my alternator and said it was working perfectly and a day later my car's electrical system shut down on the freeway due to a bad alternator which I discovered from the dealership that the car was hauled to.
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Also stupid
