In May my husband and I accepted a bid from Sears for a new install of a central air system in our home. We had done our research and asked a lot of questions. We asked if it would be Sears employees doing the actual work in our home, because it was important to us that we were dealing with Sears and not a sub-contractor. His answer was yes. We asked when they would be working and he said the great thing about Sears employees was that they worked Monday thru Saturday 9:00 to 5:00. We had a lot of questions about where our thermostat would go, what size of vents we would use and where they would be placed. We thought it was working out great everything we wanted he said would be attainable. It was not our first estimate and it was not our lowest estimate, but he was giving us all the right answers and really talked us into it because we would be dealing with Sears and that was a name we could stand behind. Our salesman John left us and said they would be contacting us in 24-48 hours to schedule a start date probably the next week.
Unfortunately we later realized that our sales person John was more interested in giving us a quick appealing answer than a honest answer he had checked out. Subcontractors for Sears, not Sears employees showed up much more than a week later as promised. They worked Monday thru Friday from about 10:00 to 3:00, which doubled the amount of days it should have taken. They told us there was no way we could have the size of ducts or vents we were quoted. We also could not have the thermostat where we had agreed and that the vents would not be able to be placed where we were promised. The subcontractors fell through our bed-room ceiling and placed a whole in our kitchen wall. They tried to talk us into accepting that they would have the holes plastered and we would take $50.00 and the paint to do it ourselves. The repairs were eventually done after dealing with three more subcontractors of their choice in and out of our home over the course of the next few weeks.
Calls into John weren’t returned and we eventually had to work with a separate department at Sears that handles dissatisfied customers. When I finally did receive a call from John and asked him why when we asked if would be Sears employees in our home he said yes, when after talking to the other Sears representative he was very clear that they never have Sears employees do installs, but always sub-contractors. I was expecting an apology or some remorse at least and instead I got a defense and argument that technically they receive a 1099 tax form and Sears does pay them so that makes them employees. The more questions I asked the more arguments I got. It felt to me that John knew the difference between a lie and a very calculated manipulation of the truth that he could argue. We started dealing with Jay from Sears to help us correct some of our obvious dissatisfaction. At first it was promising and he seamed genuinely surprised and apologetic about our situation. We came to an agreement of two separate credit amounts that we would receive for compensation. My husband and I signed both agreements and were told to look for the credits on our bill that may take two cycles to show up. It has now been seven billing cycles and we are still due our second credit. Each month when we receive our statement with out the credit we have e-mailed Jay. If he responds, we are told he’ll take care of it and it will be on the next statement. The last two months after our statement have arrived with no credit we have asked for contact information for a supervisor but our requests have been ignored.
We went into this situation thinking that we would be dealing with a company that would take care of us, after all that is why our salesman John had convinced us to pay a little more and we had bought appliances, riding mowers and a countless tools from Sears and never had a problem. We left the situation feeling like they may be too big to deal with things like customer service and satisfaction and when it came time for us to purchase a new refrigerator last month we skipped Sears when we shopped around. At the very minimum I would like to see the second refund we were guaranteed in writing from Sears, and I don't know how much more of my time and energy I will have to put into getting it resolved.
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