We have had Sears service contracts on our appliances for years. Our microwave broke. Sears repair came to fix it. They said the plastic piece that made the glass turntable move was broken. They ordered the piece. It never came. We contacted them over and over again with no response. Then we found out months later from again contacting them that the piece is no longer made and they could not get it! They suggested we try to find a used part, but we couldn't find one. After about NINE MONTHS of this, Sears came out and replaced the whole microwave, and because it was a microwave/oven combo, they had to replace the whole thing.
The new microwave/oven combo lasted about a year, and then that microwave broke and Sears had to replace it again. That third time we chose a unit that had a separate microwave unit from the oven. But after another year the microwave broke again, and by that time the manufacturer had updated their products and a replacement microwave of that type was no longer available. For each replacement, we had to pay approximately $250 more to get the same quality level of appliance.
The 4th microwave/oven combo (costing us another $250) was bigger than the old so we had to saw a hole below it in the cabinet to make it fit. Sears installers cut the hole in the cabinet when they installed the appliance.
But then that microwave turned itself on by itself and started a fire. We were there and were lucky to catch it in time to stop it before it started a house fire. With no appologies from Sears, they came to replace that microwave/oven combo too. We paid another $250 to keep the quality level the same for that appliance as well. I requested for Sears to cover the hole in the cabinet, since they had cut the hole to make the previous appliance fit. At first they did not respond. When I kept contacting them, they said they would not do it. When I contacted the Better Business Bureau, Sears said they would not 'remodel [our] kitchen'!!! They did not respond to any of the issues I brought to the Better Business Bureau, and the BBB said they could not do anything more.in those days, blogs like this one had not fully taken hold, but if they had, I would have written this here then, and in many other complaint places online besides.in the end I had to contact a plastics company and have a piece of plastic cut to cover the hole, and that costed us about another $100.
A couple of years later, the process (with an added $250 out of our pockets) was again repeated—that is, the microwave broke—but this time we decided to get a double-oven instead of a microwave/oven combo because it was always the microwave that was failing. The oven was even larger than the 4th installation, so we hired people on our own to modify the cabinet so the double-oven would fit. We have not had any problems with the double-oven so far, and it has been over a year.
But I am still furious that after the fire in the microwave Sears refused to cover the hole in the cabinet when we had to install a combo unit that was smaller than the previous one. It was not our fault that any of these microwaves broke, and Sears always did as little as possible to help us. I still think they were totally wrong to make us pay an extra $100 to cover the hole. (That's not even to BEGIN to mention all the added MONEY we've had to pay for faulty products and all the TIME it took us to get them replaced!!!)
So far I've been unable to find another company to service our home appliances, but boy, if I could, I would drop Sears in a moment, and I highly recommend to everyone to stay away from Sears altogether if you can help it, both for products and for services. Now, Sears, if you actually read issues like this one, you might make me a tiny bit happier if you reimbursed me for the plastic cover I had to have made. And yes, I still have some of the correspondence that was written communicating with the BBB dating back to October. But the rest of this story still stands as fact, so everyone else, beware.
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