Our heating system was working OK. It came on and stayed on and kept us warm in the winter month.
But there was an annoying problem with it. Every once in a while, after the system shut-off after reaching the set temperature on the thermostat, it would not come back on by itself as it should with the proper thermostat setting. I would have to shut-off the system from the thermostat and turn it back on for it to begin to work again. This was an annoying issue as often I would have to get up in the middle of the night to "reset" the system.
So we decided to have it looked into and called the Home Service Department at Sears...
... And the nightmare began!
I had given the above description of the problem to the person who took my call and she said she had had it written down.
There are lots of little things about these people that I don't want to be mentioning as they also are very good at messing up on big things. For example, on the time-slot they were supposed to show up, they claimed that no one was home while we know for sure that one of us was at home.
When he shows up finally, my wife is at home. My wife called and told me that he was there so I leave work and get home about and one hour later. He is about to leave by this time. He tells me that there was a crack in one of the parts of the furnace and the whole furnace was needed to be replaced. And then he tells me something that just appalled me...
... He said he had shutoff the system and turned off the gas flow to the system.
Then he scheduled a visit from the salesman who would help us choose the new replacement furnace. (A part of his compensation is the commission from the new sales, obviously.)
Now, here is the problem. That problem with the "crack" had been diagnosed about five years ago by another heating expert and by adjusting the gas-flow to a certain level, the system has started working. That particular problem had never given us any trouble in the last five years of winter months.
I asked him to turn on the system again and bring it to the working state that it was in before he touched the system. He said he would not do that because the unit was not functioning well.
After he left, I tried to turn the system on but it would not come on.
So now we had no heat. The temperature outside was 22 degrees F and would go to 7 degrees F over the next three days - all the while we had no heat in the house, with two children and my wife and I all living, eating and sleeping our bedroom with portable heaters.
The next day after the visit from the serviceman, I called Sears and reported the problem and asked for the refund of the charge ($164) because I told them that he had misdiagnosed the problem and actually Made It Worse than it was before. The first person who took my call made me repeat this whole story and told me that she had written it in her system. She told me that she was not authorized to issue a refund but will transfer me to another person who will do so gladly.
The person who she transferred me to told me that she had no information in the system and made me repeat the whole story from the beginning to end. Then she told me that to issue a refund, she would have to send a technician out to our home and after he made his, report they would look into refunding the money.in the process he would try to fix the problem.
The technician was supposed to show up the next day in the PM.
He did not show up.
In the meantime, the temperature outside is dropping. All of the family members have moved into our bedroom with portable heaters.
In the mean time, I began to look for someone else who can come and look at our system. Because of cold weather outside, we had a hard time finding someone to come out.
The next day, I call sears again and ask for my money back because they had not only misdiagnosed the problem, but has broken the heating system that was working.
I also told her that the technician who was supposed to show up did not show.
She tells me that she has no record of a scheduled visit from a technician.
Again, the first person who took my call made me repeat this whole story and told me that she had written it in her system. She told me that she was not authorized to issue a refund but will transfer me to another person who will do so gladly.
Again, the person who she transferred me to told me that to issue a refund, she would have to send a technician out to our home and after he made his, report they would look into refunding the money.
I told her that I did not want her to send a technician to our home because we did not want to rearrange our lives - again - while there was strong possibility that he would not show up.
I told her that I wanted her to refund my money.
She told me that she would not do that. After a heated exchange, she hung up on me.
In the mean time, at the time of this writing, we have no heat in the house. Last night, the temperature outside was 7 degrees F. We are spending our time at our neighbors' homes because it's too cold in our own house.
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