Sears Horror Story of the Week: Dryer Dies After Two Years (And an Update on My Elliptical)

Here's another Sears horror story left by a reader on my post titled Sears Elliptical Update: They Don't Stand Behind Their Products and Their Customer Service Stinks:

I also have to say that Sears is horrible. I had an expensive dryer I bought there. It died at two years, two months. For a $400 dryer. To me, that is unbelievable. Then, I called for sears to come fix it, on my dollars. The repair person NEVER showed up. I had to call them to find out that they canceled my service appointment, without telling me. I will never buy another product at Sears or Kmart.

My personal Sears saga is into another chapter as well. When I last updated you all on the situation with my Sears elliptical, they had just come and repaired it. After about 3-4 hours of use, it started falling apart again. There's now a half-inch separation in the area where the two handles connect to the main stem of the unit and it clunks and shakes so badly that it can't be used. It's worse than ever. We called the Sears repair company on Monday, September 11 and they're scheduled to come out and look at it on Tuesday, September 19. I'll keep you updated.

Finally, here are a couple other posts from a consumer having a problem with Sears. The blogger highlights the problem he's had in getting a deserved refund from Sears and later proposes some solutions for Sears to improve their customer service. I hope they read the latter post and apply it -- it would certainly help them out quite a bit to do so.

Update: Click here to see how my (later) visit from Sears went.

Comments

[An ex-Sears customer]

This one is going back several years, but it illustrates the point anyway. I got a flier in the mail for Sears siding for my house. Although I wasn't completely convinced that I wanted siding, I was going to have my clapboard repainted anyway, so it was the right time to consider it. I made an appointment for their guy to come by and give me an estimate. I took the afternoon off from work to meet with him and waited for hours. He never showed up and never called.

I called the 800 number I'd been given to ask what had happened. I was asked if I wanted to reschedule. I told them that I wasn't interested in rescheduling until I had an answer for why I had been stood up. I told them to have the guy who was supposed to come out to give the estimate call me. After a couple of days he hadn't, so I called again.

Once again, I was asked if I wanted to reschedule. At that time, I said that I wanted several things before I'd consider rescheduling. The first was a written apology from the guy who stood me up. The second was another written apology from his manager. The third was a discount for my trouble. Until then, I wasn't even going to consider rescheduling.

I actually called back several more times to demand the same concessions. I'm a real pest when someone has treated me badly and wasted my time. It appears that Sears never wants to do business with me again. And they want me to tell everyone who will listen that they don't stand behind commitments they've made.

[jason]

I have worked at Best Buy for over 7 years as a MGR, and I can't say that we never make mistakes, but we normally see the big picture. Competition is at an all time high, if you can't take care of your customer, someone else will. that is the policy I follow.