Comments on: Sears: “Ready in 5″ Guarantee Revisited

By: Diane

Diane — Sat, 09 Aug 2008 20:24:02 +0000

I haven’t shopped at Sears for years now – closed my account and never looked back. My father bought all his appliances and tools there for years; I started out doing the same, until they ran me off with poor selections, inexplicably bad customer service, and lack of advertised products. There are many, many other stores to choose from – I’ll spend my hard earned money in a store that understands customer service and satisfaction.

By: Joel Groosberg

Joel Groosberg — Fri, 23 May 2008 17:43:30 +0000

I encountered a worse experience. When I arrived at the Sears Brooklyn NY Beverly St. Location, I was told the kiosk to sign-in does not work. It then took 25 minutes for the Clerk to return with half the order. He then went to the same Broken Kiosk and used it to sign me in. After 43 seconds he marked the order complete. That’s how they beet the 5 minute counter.

As this was happening another customer walked-in. I told him to insist on using the Kiosk to sign-in. The Sears clerk the unpluggeed the machine to prove he’s right.

By: jack howell

jack howell — Tue, 15 Jan 2008 21:47:32 +0000

I worked at Sears for a time and since then refuse to shop there.
They are dishonest. I worked there during the stepper exersice craze. They came out with a manual stepper for
129 dollars and sold, I am sure, thousands of them as this was shortly before Christmas. My friend who worked in sporting goods departmant came to me and said he had already been told that the steppers would not be available till May and to
sell as many as he could. Then call the cusotmers tomorrow and inform them.
As far as I’m concerned only fools shop at
Sears.

By: Jim D.

Jim D. — Tue, 15 Jan 2008 16:28:13 +0000

A friend of mine owns a Radio Shack dealer store, and he runs into this all the time. His store looks like a company store, which they strongly encourage, except for a few specialty items he stocks that he knows will sell.

The problem (worst at Christmas) comes when people buy something at another (usually a mall store) then bring it back to his store for a refund. This puts him between a rock and a hard place, especially if it’s an expensive low margin item or something he does not regularly stock.

If he gives the money back, the BEST he can hope for is to resell it at the same price, so it only costs him the time he spent and the carrying cost to hold the item until it’s sold.

However, Murphy’s law usually kicks in, and, as soon as he takes back an expensive item (dvd recorder, etc) you can bet it will go on sale for at least 25 percent off. So now he can either hold that item back until it goes off sale, or he can sell it and lose 25 percent.

Of course he has several large signs explaining this, but we all know how that works out….

By: John A Elson

John A Elson — Wed, 26 Dec 2007 16:17:26 +0000

“Same thing happens at many places of business. How many times have you seen a commercial for McDonalds or Burger King for a great deal just to go to a store and the cashier tells you that they’re not honoring that sale.”

I’ve seen many such ads and they always say “at participating stores…” [or something to that effect]
, it’s irritating, but they have that disclaimer as a defnese. In this case, no such disclaimer was in the
ad.