Sears.com - Rant (long)

My daughter is getting married, and her husband to be is handy around the home, registered at Sears, listing some tools he wanted.

This will be easy, I thought, I'll just go online, click what they want, add a few more, and get it shipped to their house - simple.

Well, it takes a little longer than expected (about an hour) since I end up buying quite a few more items (saw, but no saw blades on a registry, no tool chest, etc). I end up with about 45 items, and check out - great, done.

Two minutes later American Express calls me and want to verify all of these transactions - huh? Sears had apparently broke up the sale into 9 different internet transactions, which caused a fraud alert and they were rejected. Okay, kinda odd but I'll just call Sears and get it resolved by having them put the sale(s) through again.

This is where the real problems started.

First, the link sears sent me to my order(s) didn't work.

Second, there is NO PHONE number listed on sears.com or in the email confirming the order. There is a place on the site where you can enter your phone number and they call you, kinda creepy so I kept looking around trying to find a phone number. I went to the search and entered in "customer service phone number" which instantly brought up common searches so it looks like a popular request, but no phone number.

Getting frustrated I see a link for a survey, I click on that and fill it out, when I'm done it gives me a phone number to call!

Okay, great, got a number, I call it and get someone in another country - sears? really? She exprains that they broke up the sales because they were coming from different places? - huh? yes other vendors use sears.com to sell things - what? yes I was actually buying from nine different places.

Okay, whatever, how do I re-send the order through? I can't, what? I have an order number, doesn't matter. She did offer to manually input everyone of the 45 items, but didn't know anything about the wedding registry, so anyone else going to the registry would not know someone had already purchased a particular gift.

My only option? Re-enter all 45 items online and try it again.

She had to keep putting me on hold with every question I asked, so now I have over 2 1/2 hours into what should have been an easy thing to do and resolve.

Resolution? Home Depot will get my $4,000 order.

Crazy, just crazy.

 

Conclusion:

We did go to Sears for the tool chest and floor jack, there were a lot of sales people there to help, like 8 or 9 just in tools, the one that helped us was both nice and was able to help us. Pickup of the merchandise went quickly, you scan your receipt and a clock starts ticking tracking how fast you get your purchase, only took about 6 minutes for big boxes to get dropped into the truck. The salesman concurred that they have many complaints about the website experience.

Since Lowes was near Sears we went there next. Once we were able to find someone to help us in tools, we asked him which of the compound miter saws with laser guides he would recommend. Picture deer in headlights look. I think we lost him on compound miter saw, he tried looking up in a catalog for more options on laser guides then recommended we go to a tool supply store located in another part of town - and this was after we explained we would placing a large order.

Off to Home Depot. We hit the tool department, told them we would be placing a large order and they provided us with our own personal shopper for the next 1 and 1/2 hours. Great service and very knowledgeable. Everyone got a kick that I was setting up my son-in-law to be with a wood shop.

On check out, my future son-in-law asked if they provided a military discount, yes they did, 10% off the entire purchase, even on top of some of the other discounts they already gave us. Everyone nearby thanked him for his service to our country and the manager was summoned and did the same.

I left Home Depot feeling very good, patriotic, and will certainly go back.

Happy ending for everyone. :>)