I recently ordered some lawn mower parts for my Sears Craftsman mower. From past experience with Sears, I fully expected problems with the order. I was not disappointed.
First, they sent rear wheels instead of the front wheels I ordered. (they did send the front wheel covers correctly.) I was charged the correct price for the incorrectly sent wheels.
Rather than return the incorrectly sent rear wheels, I decided to keep them. I notified Sears of their mistake, and placed a second order for the front wheels and I added a sparkplug to the order.
When the wheels did not arrive, I called Sears. They determined the wheels ordered on the second order had been sent incorrectly sent to our former address, which was NOT the address used when both orders were placed. (I used our current address on both orders.)
During this conversation with Sears, I informed the Sears person that I would simply go to our former address and pick up the wheels and that would be that, which I did. (I assumed that Sears would correct their mistake on using our former address so that the sparkplug, which had not yet been shipped, would be sent to our correct address as given when the order was placed.)
The Sears person insisted that they would re-ship the wheels anyway to our correct address.
Of course, a couple of days later Sears sent the sparkplug on the to our former (incorrect) address anyway. So I went back to our former address a second time and retrieved the sparkplug.
In the matter of the unneeded re-shipment of the wheels that I had already picked up from our former address? Sears sent them anyway. Sears being Sears, the wheels were again incorrectly sent to our former address.
This time, quite rightly thinking that enough is enough, the folks at our former address refused this (third) incorrect shipment when UPS attempted delivery. UPS called me to help straighten out what the correct address should be. I told them to use our correct current address, the same address I used when placing both orders.
That was a few days ago. I suppose that sometime or other, the wheels will eventually be delivered to our correct address.
I called Sears and spoke to a person in parts. She looked at the records, and asked if we had looked in the bushes for the part (!) (Naturally, because they are Sears people, they are confused by the whole thing.)
The gentleman living at our former address called me to inquire whey he was getting these incorrect shipments. I told him that Sears had mistakenly used our old address, and I apologized for the inconvenience. He just laughed and said that this is the usual Sears service that one just accepts because there is nothing that can be done about it.
Anyway. I now have everything I ordered and it works and that's fine. However, in a couple of months, I'll need to order replacement water filters for my Sears refrigerator/freezer. I'll put it off as long as I can, hoping that by that time Sears will have deleted our old address from their records as they told me they would.
Even so, I'm sure that Sears will find some other way to mis-handle this future order.
After all, incompetence, like rust, never sleeps!
Feu
nc
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