Below, is the Sears / Christmas gift experience of my friend.
Sears:
On December 22nd, I ordered a shed for my mother for Christmas from the Sears.com website. It was listed as "in stock" in the Annapolis store and ready to be picked up. On the 24th, I went to pick it up, as planned. It was not to be found in the store and the Sears employee said I had to wait for a confirmation email. We did not get the shed that day. The confirmation email never came.
On the 29th of December, I called to inquire and found out that my order had been canceled. I did not cancel it and no one informed me that it was canceled. I replaced the order and followed up on the order several times.
We did not receive the shed until the end of January. It is interesting to me that Sears was built on a mail order catalog and this sort of service should be in the DNA of the present company: how to provide excellent customer service for Mail Order, or in today's vernacular: Internet / Phone orders.
The shed was made by Suncast. Unfortunately our troubles did not end with the delivery of the item. Suncast had packed two left door panels and no right door panel. Upon calling Sears, the agent suggested flipping the left hand door and making it into a right door.
The shed doors are specifically designed to be right and left, not interchangeable. Rather than troubling Sears any further I took up the matter with Suncast and they sent us the correct panel. The panel is large and came in a larger box. We asked them to pick up the extra panel. They declined and suggested my 73 year old mother take it to the dump. This sort of waste contributes to cost and, ultimately, is passed along to me, the customer.
All in all, it was a frustrating and disappointing experience. My mother was excited to have a shed in her small yard and had been looking forward to it for weeks. I was in a position of doing Sears’ job – following up on an order for a customer and making sure that everything went smoothly. I run a retail website and I know it is very important to take care of my customers immediately and offer excellent customer service. If I don’t, they might not come back. Of course my company is much smaller than Sears and Sears is known worldwide. Small business is good for America. Big business has lost its touch, especially, it seems, at Sears.com
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