Bad SEARS service (dishwasher, Home Depot, Lowes, heat)
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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!
They sent a subcontractor out to install a stovetop I bought. The idiot cut the opening way off. Every time I called Sears to deal with this, I was told the person I needed to talk to wasn't there. No more Sears for me!
I quit shopping at Sears years ago for this very reason. Their customer service was, and apparently still is, dreadful.
My parents bought a riding lawnmower that despite hauling it in at least a half dozen times, never did run right and so on and so forth.
On one of the talk shows several years ago, a woman told a story about a dishwasher that left the dishes with dried on food. Sears told her she wasn't loading it right. Finally, she brought a bin full of her just washed dishes down to the store, determined to show potential customers how her dishwasher worked. Turned out a filter was installed incorrectly. Who knew?
Anyway, when the host of the show asked her to name the store and she said Sears, the audience exploded. Everyone there had a similar experience.
Yes Sears is that bad everywhere. You learned your lesson the hard way because you did not do your homework first. If you think their service dept is bad you should hear the price quotes on their home improvement products and services. And you think the big orange and big blue are expensive? Oh yea sorry, not everyone knows that either.
Yes, Sears is that bad -- and worse -- everywhere.
And, if you think their appliance service is bad, try their auto repair. They'll rip you off every time. I got a brake job there 20 years ago -- and then one month later, on a bet with someone (who told me they would rip me off again), I took my car to another Sears, where they told me I needed the exact same brake job. I havent bought one thing from Sears since then.
I am old enough to remember when Sears Best brand was truly the best and the service and warranties were wonderful....this chain store will die soon.
And its too bad because it didn't need to happen.
All they had to do was what they were doing. Good service, good products. But they didn't. They didn't need to change good service when the retail world started to change with the discounters in the 1960's and 70's. They were the big boys, and the Wal-Marts of the world where tiny. They changed the wrong things for the wrong reasons.
Blaming it on discount retailers is a cop out, because they didn't compete on their own terms, they tried (and failed) to compete on the discounters terms. Its a big mistake that almost every full line department store made. Granted they didn't know the future but it is telling that most of them made the same wrong decisions (which they are STILL doing by the way).
There is a market for a full line, full service department store. Unfortunately most "department stores" are no longer in the department store business. Most don't seem to know what business they are in.
Sears repair services have been on a decline for nearly a decade. At one time they had repair locations to cover most of the country. But as time went on fewer and fewer people were graduating from trade schools and the quality of those graduating were also dropping. As time went forward numerous repair locations were closed due to not enough staff. Up to the Kmart merger they dealt with all manufacturer repairs in their own facilities. But due to cost and lack of repairpersons many of the carry-in products have to be shipped further and further away. Which thus takes longer to repair. Thus items like push mowers may take three, or more, weeks to repair because it has to be shipped via ground trucking only (sometimes out of state to regional repair centers). Sears does not make anything they sell. but Sears gets the most heat because they sell more than anyone else. Also what many people don't know that many of the big box retailers contract their repairs through Sears. It will come to a point when the Kenmore name will no longer exist, and you will have to deal with the manufacturer directly. It will be like Lowes, Home Depot, Bestbuy, etc. Who have no in-house repair centers who on day 15 give you a manufacturers phone number to deal with.
Quote:
Blaming it on discount retailers is a cop out
Sorry it was a reality. But has anyone noticed that these discount retailers have raised their prices?
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