What Up, Sears?
After my accolades the other day about the great service I got from Sears, let me tell you what’s going on now with them.
I’ll start with the fact that I’ve ordered two rugs from them recently. They arrived in good enough time, but when I put them down, the colours weren’t good with the room, no fault of Sears other than I guess having better pictures, but I’ve returned them both.
As of last night, the Sears website was down for their “brand new and improved” website which would be open this morning.
Ok, so I had to wait. I couldn’t order yet another rug last night, so I went to the site this morning. I found a rug that I thought might be the last one, I figured the colours ‘should’ be perfect for what I want and tried to order it. That’s after I got a little used to the changes and tried to figure out how to find what I was looking for.
What it looks like they’ve done is tried to implement some Ajax for ordering – I guess so that customers are not taken from page to page in ordering and that the little ajax pop up will do the work on the same page.
Guess what? Their Ajax was not working… just kept doing the spinny loading circle and when you’d finally try to click on a link to order the damned rug, it took you to a page where you input the catalogue number. How the fuck would I know a catalogue number?
Since this wasn’t working (and I want it ordered fast so it will get here in time), I called them. Well, waddayaknow… their staff also use the website to fulfill the orders when it’s not a catalogue order. So their staff could not help me either; but they did tell me that they were aware of the problem and to try back in half an hour.
I tried back in half an hour, and an hour, and a few hours later. It’s now after 6:00 pm and their website is still screwed, still takes you to a catalogue ordering page.
But, you know what? I stopped at the Sears store today as well. The rug I wanted was not available in any of the catalogues. The only way to order this one is online. Maybe. Who knows if it’s even in stock – I’ll only find that out when their website is working.
Which brings me to another thing. I had ordered blinds from Sears. A new set for the living room, and a new set for our bedroom. Wouldn’t you know that the living room ones were out of stock. But I didn’t find out til yesterday when I went to pick up the bad rug #2 and got the blinds for the bedroom only.
So I called up Sears and said that since these blinds were on back order, if I switched colours, were the other ones in stock? They were, so I told them to send me those ones instead, whereupon the woman taking the order and cancelling the other order, told me the price. These new coloured blinds were going to cost me $40 more.
Oh no they were not. I told her that I had used this ‘Sears coupon thing’ when I’d ordered and I wanted the same discount applied. She asked me to hold, then came back to tell me that the discount was finished and I’d have to pay this full price.
I then told her to cancel both orders. I said I wasn’t paying more for the blinds when it was their fault I had to order a different colour just to get my blinds in time. I was no longer interested and would take my business elsewhere. She asked me to hold and then came back with a discount where I’d be paying the same price as I was supposed to for the other colour.
So, this has been the long tale of my recent interaction with Sears. Not only that, but when I was at the store today, I noticed they had a sign up that said they will no longer call you when your order has arrived. All I could think of was that, in this day and age of stores not having a price differential, they’re usually trying to flog their great customer service that will keep you coming back. Sears newest approach is to tell you that you’re now going to get less customer service.
Big mistakes going on here Sears. I can’t even imagine how much money they’ve lost today with the website down and their customer service reps not being able to ring through a sale either unless someone’s got a catalogue number.
UPDATE: It’s 7:25 on Sunday and the site is still fucked up.
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Daria
HP
K
jafer
Mike
from your loving wife… ; still going to try to get everything for free… ; and when did you find the time to write this...
Female, taken, fire, Sagittarius, Monkey, Toronto, two kids, one grandson, IT.
53
is the new 30. I want the world to close their mouths when they’re eating or chewing gum. If they don’t, I want to elbow them in the face.
Hi Jafer,
The sears.ca site has been live since Friday at 10pm. You were correct that we were a little bit delayed from our anticipated launch time in the morning. However you say that you’re still having problems today? Please reach out to me directly if you’d like and we can try to resolve your issue.
Understand the pain of trying to match a rug. I had the same stresses. I hope that in the end, you’ve found one that works.
Thanks
Paige