Customer No Service

Thank you to everyone for your wonderful, sweet and supportive comments on my ranting breakdown of a post yesterday. Today was a better day for me emotionally. Even though Braeden brought home bad reports from school (again), it wasn't as earth shattering as it was yesterday. It's all about perspective and finding that balance.... hopefully I can keep my balance on this tightrope walk that is raising an exceptional child.

So, I mentioned the other day that I was having some issues with customer no service. And if you follow me on twitter then you may have an inkling as to what it is all about! LOL Over a month ago, I ordered a Christmas present for Jenna. I am not going to say what it is, cause she reads this blog (Hi Jen!) BUT I will say it cost several hundred dollars. I put this item on my Mother's Sears card and am paying her back in cash. So, we ordered it and waited for the package to arrive. All of the other items I ordered at the same time arrived within a week or so. No sign of this specific package yet and no tracking number sent to us.

On the 20th of November I got an email stating that my item was ready to be picked up. Okay. #1 We asked to have it delivered. #2 The store address listed for pickup was my home address. What? SO, I called Customer Service and spoke with several people AND called the local store to make sure that it was not there waiting for me. No dice. CS said that this was a new way of doing things and that the item was being shipped to my local store and would then be shipped to me from there. Fine.

The day after Thanksgiving, still no sign of the item. I called again. Was told that it had been received at the store on the 25th and I should get it by the end of the next week. Fine.

The following Friday arrives. No package. I call again. I speak with someone who tells me that they have no idea where my package is. But that they will forward the info to a recovery department. I then ask to speak with a Supervisor. Same story. Wait 3 days and the recovery department would either call or I would have my package. I waited 3 days. Then I called again.

This time, the CS rep went out of her way and discovered that the item was supposed to be at a warehouse in California. She then called the warehouse and was told they had no record of the order. She asked them to physically check the warehouse to see if they had one of the items to ship out to me. She then told me that she would call me back when she heard back from them. This was last Friday.

I waited until about noon on Monday. Meanwhile, I had tweeted about my frustrations with Sears and one of the Sears Homestore reps on twitter contacted me. He told me that if I was not satisfied with the outcome of the CS calls that I should send him my info and he would forward it to Sears Cares which is a separate customer service division within Sears. So, on Monday I went ahead and sent him a Direct Message with my info.

About a half hour later I got a call. I explained what was going on (again) and he checked into it. Told me he would contact the warehouse in CA and call me back. Fine. I expected to hear from him the next day. Maybe.

Ten minutes later he called me back. The basic gist of this was that the warehouse still had to locate one of the items. If they had the item in stock they would ship it out. It would be 3 - 5 days before they knew if they had the item. Then it could be as long as 20 days before I received it. WHAT?!? I ordered this thing on 11/14 specifically so that I could get it in plenty of time for Christmas. And so that I would not have to stress out and so that I didn't have to rush around trying to get it here in town. I asked the man if he really thought that I was getting the item by Christmas. He stuttered a little and said no. I then told him to cancel the order and I would reorder the item in another color since they could not just send me a different color without me doing that. He canceled the order and I hung up.

I was mad! I tweeted the results and the fact that I was disgusted that they did not even offer a free upgrade on shipping for the new item. Or anything. Just a sheepish "I'm Sorry".

About 10 minutes after I tweeted this, I get a call from the same man at Sears Cares. He is sending us out a $50 Sears card to help make up for the "inconvenience" that we experienced. Great. But I better get my package before Christmas anyway.

The new item has been ordered. It has been shipped and I have a tracking number. Hopefully this will be the end of my GAH! moments with Sears. I have never had issues with them before and was really surprised at the lack of communication between one CS rep and another. And the fact that they actually seemed really confused as to what was going on with this item. Maybe it is just the fact that it is Christmas and busy. I don't know. But I was really disappointed with my experience. Yes, they tried to make up for it. But not until I was a bitch. And not until I spoke with approximately 6 different people and two different departments. And tweeted with a third department!

Honestly. What ever happened to great customer service and caring about your customers? I guess it went the same way as the corner stores and mom and pop places. Sad.

Tune in tomorrow for stories about Steven's Christmas party at work. Highly amusing. But I will wait until tomorrow to post about it because I think I have rambled on enough for tonight!