Stay Away From Sears!

So, remember back in February when we went through a gigantic fiasco with Sears concerning a refrigerator and a dishwasher?  Well, it's now June 3rd, and I'm still dealing with corporate incompetence from Sears.  Here is a list of things Sears fails at:

1.  Delivering the correct appliances

2.  Not beating the living piss out of your hardwood floors

3.  Returning phone calls

4.  Staffing their customer service number with fluent English speakers

5.  Explaining charges on your account

6.  Crediting back your account when they have made mistakes

Here's the situation - we bought a dishwasher.  When we received our first bill the total outstanding balance was $500.00 more than what was on our receipt and included some funky charges that remain unexplained.  Calls to customer service were beyond frustrating as the reps manning the phones could barely put a sentence together let alone explain a billing statement.  In the meantime, we've been racking up finance charges we never intended to accrue because we wanted to pay the account off...but since we can't get an accurate payoff balance we've been making the monthly minimum.  Which means more finance charges are accruing on an inflated balance. 

Now, we could just pay the outstanding balance to avoid the charges, but I have no faith that Sears would ever credit us with the proper amount we overpaid.  Frankly, I'm surprised that company can pay their electric bill month in and month out.  Again, this has been going on since February, which is when I was assigned a 'case worker' to look into our billing situation.  Want to know how many times I've received a phone call from my case worker?  That would be zero.  Oh, I've called my case worker every week since Feb 22nd, but she has never returned my messages.  My emails at least receive a canned response, but that's about it.  Twitter complaining gets a prompt response...that my issue will be escalated to my case worker. 

Every company has reps that have a bad day, but the level of disregard and apathy I've encountered with Sears tells me that their indifference and lack of caring is systemic.  It runs top to bottom with that organization.  It shouldn't take 4 months to get an accurate billing statement...or even an apology for scratching and denting our wood floor.  I've yet to speak to a live person at Sears outside of the organic automatons employed to answer phones at their 800 number.  No one is accountable.

If you are in the market for new appliances, by all means, avoid Sears.  You'll get better service at Lowe's and Home Depot...Sears will just deliver the wrong appliances, which is what they did to us and our neighbors.  The delivery team will ding up your floors and not even apologize.  When you call to report the claim you'll be assigned an unaccountable case worker that is completely disengaged.  Your bill will be wrong and no one will be able to explain why...but other than that I'm sure Sears is just great to deal with.