Tuesday, August 2, 2011

Avoid Sears Outlet

In March of this year, I purchased a refrigerator from the Sears Outlet website (searsoutlet.com).
Shortly after the purchase, the ice maker stopped working.

On the Sears Outlet website, it says to call 1-800-4-my-home for repairs (we get free repairs from their 1 year warranty).
A couple weeks later, the repair man comes, tinkers with the ice maker for a few minutes, then leaves, thinking that he fixed the ice maker.
The ice maker *does* make ice, but it breaks again after 2 weeks!
We call 1-800-4-my-home and they sent out repair man #2 who poked around the ice maker then left.
Same thing -- the ice maker worked for another 1-2 weeks then broke again.
We called 1-800-4-my-home a third time, and they sent out repair man #3, who replaced the entire ice maker with brand new parts.
The ice maker worked for about 3 weeks, then it broke again!

Fed up, I called 1-800-4-my-home demanding them to send me a new refrigerator rather than a repair man.  The call center agent said they can only set up with repair appointment, thus they cannot issue me refunds/exchanges.
I had the agent forward me to their "Customer Solutions" phone line.
After speaking to the Customer Solutions agent, telling them the story about the 3 repair men and demanding an exchange, the agent agreed to let me exchange the refrigerator, but I would have to pay a 15% re-stock fee, because I am outside of their 90-day returns/exchanges window (This was in July, which is 4 months after the purchase). I explained to the agent that I took so long to ask for an exchange because we spent so much back-and-forth with the repair men.
The agent was very understanding and offered to waive the15% re-stock fee and the delivery fee of the new refrigerator.  I happily agreed to continue with the paperwork to process an exchange. 
After waiting on hold for 15 minutes while the agent wrote up the paperwork, the agent came back and told me that she was a "Sears" representative, and not a "Sears Outlet" representative, and issuing exchanges was outside of her jurisdiction.
Her suggestion:  Go to a Sears Outlet store front and talk to the store manager.

Remember I purchased my refrigerator from SearsOutlet.com? 
I did not know which SearsOutlet store my refrigerator was shipped from, so I went to the local SearsOutlet store and talked to the store manager there.
That store manager was very helpful and helped us locate the store that our refrigerator was shipped from (which is the Sears Outlet store that is located 60 miles away from my home!). 
We called the Sears Outlet that shipped our refrigerator and explained to them our story (3 failed repair attempts).  That store manager said that he will be able to issue us a refrigerator exchange if we can get a repair man to look at the ice maker and declare the ice maker as "unrepairable".  Then we need to bring the "unrepairable" note to the Sears Outlet store in-person.  At that time, an exchange will be issued and all we have to pay is an additional delivery fee to deliver the new refrigerator and remove the old one.

We made an appointment with repair man #4 to come declare our ice maker as "unrepairable".
Repair man #4 was actually the same guy as repair man #3!  He remembered changing our entire ice maker, however, he said that he *cannot* declare the ice maker as "unrepairable" because he would be fired. 
No repair man will be able to declare as our ice maker as "unrepairable".

Great... now what.

I am tired of being sent in circles trying to get a working ice maker
All I want is a working ice maker!

1 comment:

  1. step 1: sell refrigerator with faulty ice maker
    step 2: create lucrative contract to repair faulty ice makers
    step 3: "repair" faulty ice maker indefinitely
    profit!

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