Open Letter to Sears Executives,

My name is John Theodore. My girlfriend and I live together. Recently, our oven started malfunctioning (we would put it at 400, but it would only heat to around 200 based on how long it would take to bake something). After calling Sears to come out and service it, the cause was determined to be a faulty computer chip. Since it was out of warranty, the cost to repair was going to be around $600, or as near as makes no difference to the cost of a new stove. Recognizing this, the technician and Sears offered us an in-store rebate we could use to help with the cost of installation if we bought through Sears. There was also a sale on Kenmore appliances going on that weekend, so we went over to Sears, found a stove we liked on the floor with some lovely features that we wanted (Self-cleaning, Convection Oven, Elongated Griddle Burner, 12,000 BTU Burner, and a 5,000 BTU Simmer Burner) and was in our price range. The saleswoman was wonderful and very helpful. Since we both work during the week, we had to pay an extra $80 for Saturday delivery and wait 2 weeks longer to receive the item we’d paid for than we would have normally. Not ideal, but somewhat understandable. Unfortunately, when the delivery date rolled around, that’s when things went wrong.

We were supposed to receive a phone call the night before confirming our 2-hour delivery window. That never happened. Saturday morning, we checked and saw that delivery would be between 11:30am and 1:30am. Imagine my surprise when they knocked on the door at 11am while we were still getting ready (it’s Saturday – we sometimes get off to a sluggish start after a long work week). Fine, being early isn’t a bad thing. We continued getting ready while they took out the old stove and installed the new one. As they were wrapping up and it was time to sign off on the delivery, I noticed that there was no griddle burner at all. None of the other features that were on the showroom floor model we’d purchased were there, either. No special burners, no convection – the thing wasn’t even self-cleaning! At first, the delivery man insisted this was the model number that was on our paperwork, but after calling the warehouse, that seemed to be straightened out. He then handed the phone to me so I could talk to his manager and agree on a delivery time for the item we had purchased 2 weeks ago. They said they could get one out the next day (Sunday) and would call that night with the delivery window between 6pm and 9pm. Right around 6pm, I got a call from an automated system confirming a delivery window between 2:45pm and 4:45pm, so I rescheduled my Sunday around that time window.

Sunday comes, I go about my business and make sure I’m near the door with my phone handy by 2pm because they’d been early the day before. I wait, wait, and wait some more. Finally, at 4:45pm, my girlfriend suggests that I call to make sure they’re still coming because we had plans with friends that evening. I couldn’t imagine that they would have canceled delivery without notifying us (or canceled at all given that we were already dissatisfied and would want to do everything in their power to make things right). But since we were at the end of the delivery window, I called. Since I was calling from my phone and not hers, the automated system asked me to enter the phone number on the account (hers – not the most convenient thing since if you hit the wrong key, you have to wait for the opportunity to re-enter, but fine). When I’m finally connected to a person, they have to ask me for her number again, though, which doesn’t make much sense since they should have it now. The first person I speak to is very nice but not exceedingly competent. When she attempts to put me on hold to check the status of the delivery with the warehouse, she hangs up on me instead. She does not call back. So I do. I have to go through the process of entering my girlfriend’s number and then repeating it to a person again (I’m getting very tired of doing this at this point). Finally, I get an answer, though. The warehouse has rescheduled our delivery for April 3rd (Thursday). At this point, I’m very upset, but I recognize this is not the fault of the individual I am on the phone with. I calmly but very directly ask him to put someone on the phone who can make this right. I think he was eager to get off the phone with me because he promptly got a manager on the phone. I explained everything again to the manager (I was getting quite good at reciting the story but also quite tired of having to). I asked the manager why we weren’t receiving delivery, and he could not provide an answer, merely that the warehouse had changed the time. I asked him at what time that decision was made. He checked the system and told me it was made at 10am. Then I asked him how it was possible that a decision had been made to change my delivery to a Thursday, when we had paid extra money for a Saturday delivery and that no one had called me to inform me of this and that I was only finding out now, 7 1/2 hours later, because I had called to check on the status of the delivery. He had no answer. I told him a Thursday delivery would not work – we work during the week, and he got it changed to a Saturday delivery on April 5th. I then asked him what he was going to do to make this right. I asked him to keep in mind that I had already wasted four hours of my time on this and that my time is valuable to me. For purposes of confidentiality, I won’t disclose my own income here, but instead I’ll use the national Median Income, as reported by the US Department of Labor for the Fourth Quarter of 2013. Median income was $786 a week for full-time wage and salary workers, which works out to $19.55 per hour, assuming a 40-hour work week. I think that is a fair figure to use when calculating how much the average person’s time is worth. I then asked him to keep in mind that I had not only lost 4 hours of my time but there had been multiple errors on their end made along the way at that when coming up with a solution, they should keep in mind that this was not just compensation for inconvenience caused but that I was giving him the opportunity to put a dollar amount on exactly what all of our future business is worth to Sears (we’re both under 30 – the potential lost business in our lifetimes could be quite a bit).

He told me he could give us 50,000 Sears Points on our account. Wow! 50,000! That sounds like a lot! I asked him what the dollar value of that was. He said $50. That doesn’t even compensate me for the time lost ($78.20 worth of time based on the above calculation). So I asked him to try again. After speaking with his supervisor, the most he was able to do was $100 worth of points that I could only spend at Sears on items that in their price still include a profit for Sears (in other words, I’m not getting these items at cost, so the actual expense to Sears will be considerably less than that $100). But that was the maximum he was capable of authorizing, so I thanked him for doing as much as I could and let him know that I would be posting my story here and on every other social media outlet available to me. I would also email this to every inbox within Sears in the hopes of getting it to an executive and let everyone who reads this decide if they think that Sears has done enough to regain my future business. Keep in mind that the initial mistake (delivering me a product that was not what I ordered but rather a lower-end base model) could have been fixed immediately – they could have paid some workers overtime, sent the truck back to the warehouse, and brought it back that night, correcting the problem, making us feel like our business mattered, and ultimately making us happy with the experience. Sears did not do this, however, and is instead in this position.

I ask anyone reading this to please offer up suggestions of what they think would be fair in this situation, what Sears should do to make me happy enough to not only win back my business but to put a happy ending on this story when I tell it on social media outlets and to my friends.

Thank you for your time.

Sincerely,

John Theodore

Former (Probably) Sears Customer

Here is the response I have received thus far after posting on the Sears forums...

By SHC-JulieK posted 03-31-2014, 02:23 PM

Hi there, jtheodoropoulos! Thanks so much for reaching out on MySears today. I am sorry to hear of the troubles you have had with your oven delivery. I have forwarded your concerns on to the SearsCares team, who will be happy to discuss the issues you had, along with any compensation, with you further.

A team member will be by shortly looking to help. As soon as that response is posted, I will be sure to send you an email to let you know.

Thanks!

Hi Mr. Theodore,

Thank you for making us aware of all that has transpired surrounding your new oven delivery, we definitely recognize this has been an upsetting and inconvenient situation for you. For many years Sears has built its reputation on providing top quality member services and it appears we have let you down. My name is Brian and I am a member of the Sears Social Media Support team. After reading your post I would like to take this time to offer our assistance. We would like the opportunity to make this right by you. In order for us to contact you, please send your contact #, the name and phone # used at time of purchase, as well as the screen name (jtheodoropoulos) to reference your post to smadvisor@searshc.com and a case manager will follow up with you directly. Again, thank you for posting about your oven delivery. We look forward to speaking with you soon.

Thanks,

Brian R.

MySears Community Moderator

And my response...

Brian,

I followed your instructions to the letter and sent the email to smadvisor@searshc.com with all of the information you requested. It has been 24 hours, and I still have no response. Additionally, I called the store we purchased the stove at yesterday to get confirmation that my delivery fee had been refunded. Before I was able to talk to a person at the store, I was routed to your national call center, where the operator there was only able to assist me by routing my call back to the store where an automated message told me that all representatives were busy, and I was asked to leave my name and phone number and told someone would call me back. I have not received a call back. I will continue posting the progress of this here, on the Daily Kos, on Facebook, on Twitter, and on other social media outlets where I can find an audience.

Thank you for your time.

Sincerely,

John Theodore

Our new stove arrived on Saturday, and we are very happy to have it. It's such a shame that the service was so bad because this could have easily been a very pleasant experience that would have built a strong relationship between us and Sears. The delivery was not without issue. They called the night before with a 2-hour delivery window between 8:15am and 10:15am. We were woken up by a call at around 6:30am (which it turned out was them, but we couldn't understand anything on the other end of the line). They showed up at 7:45am while we were still getting ready (not a huge deal, but at this point, any little thing that goes wrong is just adding salt to the wound). When they pulled out the stove they had installed last time, there was a dent in it. Now, this is placed snug between two counters (and thus the sides where the dent was located were completely inaccessible), yet they still felt it was appropriate to ask us what happened (and imply that we had something to do with it) - as if we would have any idea. They also put us on the phone with their warehouse to give a statement that it was not us who put the dent there, so it was either there already or done during the previous installation where they had to take the door off of one of the cabinets to fit the stove in on that side (they didn't put the door back on properly). There was definitely a much greater sense of urgency in regards to this cosmetic dent on a stove they were taking back than there has been at any step of the way in resolving my issue. It's been a week since I heard anything from their customer service department. Sears still has a chance to put a happy ending on this story, but they definitely haven't made that a priority yet...