SEARS customer (dis)service - Return policy WARNING!

[BruceRPA]

We all know that Sears has been in trouble for quite a few years. I have been a very good Sears customer since the 60s. When we built our house in 1978, all of the flooring and appliances came from Sears. Over the years, many thousands of dollars have been spent at Sears on equipment and tools of all kinds. Their quality and service has been a good value which has given me the confidence to do business with them. Unfortunately, I have witnessed an erosion of those attributes in recent rears. I suspect that you have too.

Sadly, the local store in the local mall 10 minutes from my home is closing. Tomorrow is the final day. It is one of many Sears stores across the country that is closing their doors but that is not the message in my post tonight. The closings certainly may be the result of what follows but it is not the subject here.

To get to the point, I purchased the second of two large rolling tool chests just before Christmas at a Sears store that is just about an hour from my home. Just to put things in perspective, with a few accessories, these things cost about a Grand each. (There is easily that much inside each one, mostly Craftsman brand mechanics tools in one of them.) I purchased two sets of drawer dividers with the most recent tool chest purchase. I didn't use them and set them aside to be returned on my next visit. Since that store is not local to me and I don't get there regularly, I attempted to return the two $8.99 sets of dividers, unused and unopened in the same bag that I brought them home in. As my usual practice is, I would spend about an hour looking at everything in the tool and lawn & garden departments while I was there so it is very likely that I would have purchased more than $18 in merchandise from them today. I was appalled to be told by the sales person that they could not do anything for me and that I would have to take them home with me because it was more than 30 days since I purchased them. The store manager confirmed the new policy in the most arrogant and condescending manner. What a jackass! What a fool! They may be enforcing some unbendable corporate policy that has been delivered to them but to take the stance and the nothing else matters attitude about the matter is beyond any reasonable explanation. I explained how disappointed I was but, of course, that didn't matter at all. I then mentioned that I hope that they spend the few dollars profit wisely that they made on the two packages of dividers because there would not be any more from me or anyone else that hears my sad story. If they can not handle a very simple return for credit of very inexpensive current stock merchandise that is still in the original packaging, I certainly can no longer trust them with any future purchases, large or small. Their policy discourages me from ever purchasing anything from them again. There are many other competitors that have much better customer service and return policies that are anxious to have my business. Home Depot and Lowes are both located within a few miles of where I stood.

So, if you consider shopping at Sears, be forewarned. They have completely lost track of building and maintaining loyal customers. Those are the very qualities that once made them the largest retail company on the planet. Their return policy is firm and unbendable, no matter what the circumstances are. I understand very well that the nature of business has changed for malls and big box stores but the one thing that can help to separate them from the plethora of internet sources of products is good old fashioned face-to-face excellent customer service with a smile. Sears has lost it.

 

[robgmn]

Two sides to that coin.
The policy has been in place for at least three years and is pretty clearly stated on their paperwork. It's understood that your return doesn't really hurt them, but look at the big picture: How many THOUSANDS of people would want that return policy to be ignored because they missed the deadline?
It's really not reasonable to think that you are the only one who would need that courtesy.

On the other side of the coin, a manager can override that policy easily, and a smart one would do it in a heartbeat. A REALLY smart one would be happy to refund you even if the package were empty, as the good service would pay back in spades.

Customer service is not what's killing them. Online shopping and an inability (refusal?) to change with the times is what is killing them.
Adapt and survive, or die trying is what they SHOULD be doing.
They're not.

 

[ETLS]

The home depot local to me allows store credit returns for me if I return something past 30 days. They usually go out of their way to take care of my shopping needs.

Case in point this past week, I usually purchase a dozen 2" number two Phillips bits from their assortment bins by the pro desk. They are bulk display, and sixty-seven cents each. For the last couple of weeks, the bin was empty. The manager brought me two of the impact rated 5 packs, for the princely sum of $2.10 total.

I never had much luck with good customer service at our local Sears.

 

[Cadillac Kid]

Check out Sears Holiday return policy? Based on your facts, it looks like you have until the end of January 2018.

http://www.sears.com/en_us/customer-service/policies/sears-store-returnpolicy.html

 

[voodoocanoe]

Probably just a disgruntled sales person, I on the other hand had a great experience, several years ago I bought a new 22hp hydro-static Garden tractor with several implements, it had to be ordered and I returned 2 weeks later to pick it up, I was waiting at the loading dock with my snowmobile trailer to pick it up and I started looking at my tie down straps which were looking very worn and decided to replace them.
I went into the hardware section and found new straps and while paying for them the sales person noticed the wad of receipts I had in my hand for the tractor pick up and she asked what all the receipts were for and I explained that I was picking up a tractor which I bought 2 weeks earlier, she said let me see them, I handed them to her and she said that they were having 10% Days and I was eligible for a 10% refund on the tractor and implements that I purchased 2 weeks earlier and issued me a $310 refund on the spot. If it wasn't for her I would have never got the refund.

 

[savatage1973]

she asked what all the receipts were for and I explained that I was picking up a tractor which I bought 2 weeks earlier, she said let me see them, I handed them to her and she said that they were having 10% Days and I was eligible for a 10% refund on the tractor and implements that I purchased 2 weeks earlier and issued me a $310 refund on the spot. If it wasn't for her I would have never got the refund.

You got lucky and she probably got reprimanded. If you had tried to decline/reverse your purchase, she may have refunded you $310 less than you initially paid--it is a common policy of many retailers to refund the current floor price of an item upon return. So if the item has been discounted/put on clearance, they will only refund the current price, not necessarily what you paid.

Sears/K-Mart has been dying a slow and painful death for at least two decades, and it shows. Stores are not up to date, merchandise is not up to date, and employees just don't care anymore--they are just awaiting losing their job due to another store closing. Pretty much all of the Sears/K-Mart stores in my region have closed/are closing, or just waiting out the clock for when they will close. It's hard for employees to remain enthusiastic and motivated when they don't know if their next paycheck will be their last.

 

[Grenadeslio]

You got lucky and she probably got reprimanded. If you had tried to decline/reverse your purchase, she may have refunded you $310 less than you initially paid--it is a common policy of many retailers to refund the current floor price of an item upon return. So if the item has been discounted/put on clearance, they will only refund the current price, not necessarily what you paid.

Sears/K-Mart has been dying a slow and painful death for at least two decades, and it shows. Stores are not up to date, merchandise is not up to date, and employees just don't care anymore--they are just awaiting losing their job due to another store closing. Pretty much all of the Sears/K-Mart stores in my region have closed/are closing, or just waiting out the clock for when they will close. It's hard for employees to remain enthusiastic and motivated when they don't know if their next paycheck will be their last.

Standard policy if you DON'T have your receipt, otherwise how would they know what you paid?

As for the great customer service of returning the $310, it's fairly customary if an item goes on sale within 30 days of purchase the difference will be compensated. I've taken advantage of this service for decades, even as far back as the 70's on some auto electronic purchases. Recently at a Home Depot for a gas grill purchase, paid $199, a few weeks later it was on sale for $169, they refunded the difference, even so far as to go into their sale history to find my receipt which I didn't have with me.

 

[biscuithead]

With online sales becoming the new retail, is the Sears behavior a surprise? Sears has been in a downward spiral, and they are doing nothing to change it.

Customer service has long been an ancestor. Quick profit, venture capitalism, planned obsolescence, strategic bankruptcy, rebranding, etc etc is the new business model. Gone are the days of building a great product to build a great customer base.

Times have changed, and the consumer has sat idely by and let it. Until we vote with our non-buying, it will continue to morph into something that isn't customer based, but board-room initiative based, with ROI being the only metric.

We have made our bed, with marketing lies being the mattress, consumer idiocy being the bed-sheets, and Corporate Policies are the battery-powered toys in the night stand next to it.


.

 

[beat_truck]

I've had some good luck and some bad luck with Sears customer service, mostly with Craftsman tools.

I had an older set of metric and SAE ratchet wrenches, and they were starting to rust pretty bad and the ratcheting mechanism was broken in several of them. I took all of them with me, but expected to get a run around or maybe get only the broken ones replaced AT BEST. They ended up being a discontinued model, and the sales guy replaced ALL OF THEM with two brand new higher end sets. I was shocked.

Another time, I took one lousy socket that had broken to get exchanged. It was a less common size, and they didn't have it on the shelf, of course. I talked to the salesman, and he gave me a major run around and finally said "Well we can charge your credit card and order one and exchange it when (IF) it comes in." I said never mind and chucked it in the garbage on the way out. I think I had a spare anyways.

And speaking of their tools, not too long before they decided to start closing stores, I bought a giant Craftsman socket set from their website. They are CRAP quality compared to what they used to. I guess they moved a lot of production to China as of late. Gee, Sears, that's great. I could have gone to Harbor Freight and gotten sockets that are probably just as good, or better, and probably got less of a hard time exchanging them if they broke. And now that there are no more Sears stores in the area, I would have been better off going with HF stuff. Especially since one just opened locally.

 

[whoaru99]

Times have changed, and the consumer has sat idely by and let it. Until we vote with our non-buying, it will continue to morph into something that isn't customer based, but board-room initiative based, with ROI being the only metric.

We have made our bed, with marketing lies being the mattress, consumer idiocy being the bed-sheets, and Corporate Policies are the battery-powered toys in the night stand next to it.

.

Agree times have changed.

Disagree the consumer sat idly by. The consumer has largely driven the current situation. Personally, I make way fewer brick and mortar purchases than I used to; "Add to cart". There are times I still buy local when it's more convenient (such as recently paying ~2x more for sheet rock locally in our town than would have at a home improvement store 35 miles away, but then have to haul it).

Agree we have made our bed.

 

[biscuithead]

Disagree the consumer sat idly by.

You are right !
We have supported it by our zombie actions, and then we criticize it's results... Duplicitous cycle. How do we stop?

Can we count on consumer awareness ever again?

Personally, I have a very poor, pessimistic view of the future of consumerism. Not too far into the future we will have the choice to either have Jeff Bezos or Scott Thompson to be the new CEO of the USA.

 

[zebra03]

I once ordered and paid for an item at Sears . I called 2 weeks later looking for my item and they had no idea what I was talking about . I went back to the store with my paid receipt to jog their memory . Good grief !

 

[onwardjames]

Working at GNC in the mid to late aughts (isn't that what we call 2000-2009?) I found out that GNC didn't give a TOSS about longtime customers.

When they summarily fired my manager, my part time assistant, and told me "You didn't have anything bad on your record, so we're going to give you 10 hours a week at $7.25 hr" when I was making 31K a year, a funny thing happened -

They lost $400,000 in the first 6 months. Why? Because my crew had LOYAL customers that the new pinheads making $7.25 hr would not accommodate, nor would they "work" with the customer.

A business works 11 times harder to get NEW business, when the real battle is keeping the old. That sears manager could have worked with OP. Just sayin'.

Sears lost my patronage after I bought a couch that fell apart in 1 month, a riding mower that leaves plastic pieces all over the yard (motor fan/shroud fell off and jammed in the top of the motor) and the final straw was the experience of buying a mattress. Incompetence writ large. I had spent nearly $4k with them in a year, and it was nothing but headaches.

 

[Chip Chester]

Locally, ACE Hardware is now the go-to place to get Craftsman tools. And the stores I've been in have pretty full selections. Haven't had to return anything (that would have originally come from Sears). Kobalt looks reasonable, and, believe it or not, Harbor Freight is starting to sell some better stuff. Or our opinion of 'better stuff' is slipping, one of the two. Even SnapOn etc. stuff is slipping a bit in quality, compared to earlier offerings.

 

[Tom Brennan]

Sears lost me when they did away with the catalog and the candy and cookie counter. I used to go to the old Homan Ave. store in Chicago.

 

[Beatnik]

Sears could have been Amazon. They once had a catalog of everything you would ever need, if they had only went with the times and used that to start online sales before anyone else. To bad, I liked Sears.

 

[Dave_1962]

I shopped at Sears....once. I felt uncomfortable there with the floor and lighting making me think I was at the hospital. The electronics department was a joke with a very limited selection of also-ran brands. Guys saying how good the Emerson brand was as if I had no clue about quality. I was asking for some specs but they couldn't answer any more than "It's better" or "Lots of people buy this so....". Nice try but I can see the comparison trap coming a mile away. To top it off the overly smarmy salesmen and higher prices on some things I compared to other places just pissed me off. I came out of there thinking they were rather snooty. With their business model apparently based on 1959 and the condescending attitude I perceived I'm surprised they made it this far - they won't be missed by me.

This post isn't all about me though it just confirms the indifference they treat their customers with. I guess they ran out of people that would put up with it.
Oh - my experience? Around 1986.

 

[2011etec]

I like brick and motor stores for most purchases.Today I'm sad to say most are getting too lazy ,they want to just click a button and be done with it with no thought to how the product feels and looks in person.Yes I will buy online but its stuff I cant get in my little burg and the next large center is 400 miles in any direction.Mybe I'm wrong but todays average consumer is much more accepting of 2nd or 3 rate junk.Put a couple of electronic dodads on it and Bluetooth you got em! On a good note my nieces bf is getting an album pressed and I'm getting one.

 

[biscuithead]

Working at GNC in the mid to late aughts (isn't that what we call 2000-2009?) I found out that GNC didn't give a TOSS about longtime customers.

When they summarily fired my manager, my part time assistant, and told me "You didn't have anything bad on your record, so we're going to give you 10 hours a week at $7.25 hr" when I was making 31K a year, a funny thing happened -

They lost $400,000 in the first 6 months. Why? Because my crew had LOYAL customers that the new pinheads making $7.25 hr would not accommodate, nor would they "work" with the customer.

A business works 11 times harder to get NEW business, when the real battle is keeping the old. That sears manager could have worked with OP. Just sayin'.

Sears lost my patronage after I bought a couch that fell apart in 1 month, a riding mower that leaves plastic pieces all over the yard (motor fan/shroud fell off and jammed in the top of the motor) and the final straw was the experience of buying a mattress. Incompetence writ large. I had spent nearly $4k with them in a year, and it was nothing but headaches.

Well... pretty soon Amazon and Walmart will be our only retail choices, and they will take care of us.

Isn't competition suppose to result in better choices and better products... oh wait... maybe its monopoly... thank god we don't have actual anti-trust laws.

Loyal customers were replaced with loyal investors. Why seek out loyalty when you can force obligatory?

The business rules that were adhered to 60 years ago, are laughed at today by corporations that just see that past as "cute".

Today, Corporations make the product cheap,
and make the money first and fast.
cheat the employee and make him weep
and make sure the product doesn't last.

Pay the lobbyist & politician to rig the rules
hide the profit offshore like the family jewels

...but they have that right because they're people too !
united , divided, give them power in all that we do !





If I put it in a jingle, is it allowed?



Montgomery Ward, Sears, Radio Shack, Gart Brothers, Builders Square, Hugh m. Woods, Service Merchandise, Woolworth, Kinney Shoes, The Limited, Osco Drug, Circuit City, Rhodes Furniture, Hancock fabrics, B. Dalton books, Blockbuster, Hastings, Media Play, KB toys, Lionel Playworld, Price Club, etc, etc, etc,

Do we miss all of these companies ? Some yes, some no... but it was partially up to us to keep them in business. Did we help their demise by shopping elsewhere?

Commerce is a relationship... it takes two to tango. If a companies policies scares away the dancers, then the music dies. OR... if all the dancers decide they are ok with less music for a cheaper entry fee... then the music dies.



.

 

[rxonmymind]

Costco.
Awesome return and customer service. Once the CEO was in a conference call with shareholders and one quipped "you should pay your workers less and maximize profit". He rebuffed him making a case of quality store tied to pay.
Case in point. Circuit city fired their top sales people to maximize profit and replaced them with warehouse guys on the sales floor.
THAT worked out well.