BruceRPA
Addicted Member
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.
Shame on me for not knowing that their policy had changed. Now I know. If I had known about the change, it is very likely that I would have purchased essentially the same chest that is obviously manufactured in the same factory from Home Depot under a different brand name. I suggest that, among many others, one very significant reason that Sears has not been able to keep so many of their stores open is the policy change that is precisely the reason that they lost me as a very long time good customer. How many customers have they lost over the past three years? Do they really think that their asinine return policy is worth loosing customers? My God, a simple return for credit or exchange for other merchandise is a win-win for everyone involved. They built their empire on a foundation of good customer service. They are pissing it away at an alarming rate. If they don't fix the fundamental problems that they are facing, providing excellent customer service being #1, there is no hope for their survival. Nothing else that they do matters.
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
I was in the store on January 27th. The salesperson that I dealt with was fine. She was the same person that sold me the chest and the dividers. She recognized me as a semi-regular customer at their store. The stone manager that was called to assist was a complete jackass. Apparently he chose to ignore their own policy. So shame on HIM!
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.
Ahh, the good old days of Sears. I have been a good Sears customer for MANY years for the same reasons that you mention. Too bad, so sad, those days are gone. Their declining product quality and their lack of their once excellent customer service makes it crystal clear why they are in a flat spin with a certain destiny. How can they not see this obvious problem? Who is driving this bus and where the hell do they think they are going?
Absolutely! And based on my personal experience, the very same thing can be said for Radio Shack (in a more narrowly defined market). However, if customers do not have the confidence to make a purchase due to weak or poor customer service, there is absolutely no point in even trying to adapt to a changing market. If you don't have a firm foundation of the most basic business principles, nothing else will matter. At least not for very long.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.
Its really sad to see the once mighty Sears falling apart right before our eyes.