Future tool gloat (SEARS RAVE!!!) LONG

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RAdams

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A couple months ago I traded a few pens for a Craftsman disc / belt sander. The sander needed a few parts so naturally i called Sears. It took three phone calls, and just as many weeks, but i finally got all of my parts. There was a slight difference in the new part from the old part (different sized set screw) and I called to complain about the change. When I called to complain, I expected the rep to not be super friendly, but what i got blew me away. The rep was downright rude. The phone conversation quickly went from me being aggravated over a set screw to a yelling match about product knowledge.

I was so aggravated, I did something I have never done before. I sat down and wrote a letter to the Corporate office. I didn't expect or want any reply to my letter. I just wanted to gripe.

A couple of days ago, I got a letter from Sears. It said they had been trying to contact me, and asked me to call. I had to call twice, and sat on hold for over 20 minutes alltogether. I didn't know what to expect when i finally talked to a human. I explained what happened, and the woman, without hesitation, said "I would like to send you a $100 Sears gift card for your trouble." I was blown away. I had just told the woman that my order was only $45.

I went to their website after the call and looked around. I think i am gonna get me a scroll saw. They have a little one for $120!! I am pretty excited! I have never actually written a company when i was treated poorly... I may have to do it more often!
 
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LOL i see a lot of people writing complaint letters to Sears today. Just kidding :biggrin:

Congrats on doing the right thing and being rewarded for it.

I try to point out exceptional service whenever I can, and I ALWAYS point out bad service. This comes from personal experience.

If they don't know it's broke, how do they know to fix it?

That employee will now be counseled and retrained based on your call. If it's like most call centers, the call was recorded and that employee will likely be written up and/or terminated based on the call.

Ultimately you saved Sears more then the $100 they are giving you. They kept you as a valued customer. You also kept them from losing more then just your business, because now they are aware they have an employee giving **** poor customer service.
 
That is GREAT. I too don't complain very often when it comes to customer service or a bad product. A few years ago I bought a couple cases of Pepsi and they were both flat. I called the comment and question line on the back of the cans and explained that I buy a lot of pop and I had 2 cases that were bad. They applogized for the inconvenience and thats where I thought the call would end. All I wanted was to let them know that something was wrong at their bottling company and they sent me coupons for 20 free cases of pop. I was amazed by this I wrote them a thank you letter and they sent me another 5 coupons.

I just wish they would have given me a $100 gift card to sears :laugh:
 
I've heard stories like this before. When your letter or phone call reaches the RIGHT person or people, amazing customer service suddenly becomes priority. My wife and I had a similar experience with Bed, Bath, and Beyond shortly after we were married. We registered and were told after the wedding, we could purchase individual items that we registered for and were not bought by someone else at a discount. When we tried to do this, we were told that we had to purchase THE REST of the items altogether to get the discount, which was something we could never afford. We argued with the store manager, but got nowhere. My wife got a number to a district manager, who fell over himself apologizing. He sent us several very good coupons (50% off) to make it up to us. We still shop there, so I think he did his company a good deed.

Glad to hear things worked well for you!
 
15 years ago I got a pizza from one of the chain brick oven places. It had a couple good size pieces of wood on the pizza when I got home. Call the main place back and they sent us a $20 gift cert. I thought that that was a good deal. My girlfriends mom still wrote a letter to the corp office to explain it and they sent us a $20 or $40 cert (cant remember for sure). Wasn't needed but was great anyway.

A couple weeks later we were having a cook out and I was the first us the relish. I tend to dig and I hit something so I figured I would see what it was. The top of another glass jar had broke off and ended up inside this jar. tossed out the food the relish went on. Wrote a letter and sent an e-mail. they responded with "Thats not possible" that was the extent of the letter. No idea if other glass was in the relish but I am glad no one was hurt from it. Swallowing glass in never a good idea.
 
I quit buying from Sears years ago.

I have a Craftsman tape measure in the side pocket of my car door to remind me why. It's broken. Sears would only replace it with a Sears tape, not another Craftsman tape. Which means I loose my lifetime warranty.

A Google search will tell you of the mass complaints against Sears.
 
Rmartin said:
I quit buying from Sears years ago.

I have a Craftsman tape measure in the side pocket of my car door to remind me why. It's broken. Sears would only replace it with a Sears tape, not another Craftsman tape. Which means I loose my lifetime warranty.

A Google search will tell you of the mass complaints against Sears.
Click to expand...


I've replaced several of my Craftsman tape measures w/o any problems....one was only a couple of weeks after I got it as a replacement. No fuss, no muss! Never have had a problem.....knock on wood!!!

Barney
 
RAdams said:
I went to their website after the call and looked around. I think i am gonna get me a scroll saw. They have a little one for $120!!
Click to expand...

I had looked at that scroll saw, but the Sears store near me (30 miles)
is abysmal. They didn't carry any blades to fit their own scroll saw.
Of course, they can order anything you need online. (well, so can I ..
and a hell of a lot cheaper) Then again, this is the same rep that looked
up the blade length for another saw and gave me the wrong information.

That unit looks a lot like the Rikon table top scroll saw that was $225.
There must be a $100 difference there somewhere, but I stopped looking
when I realized that I couldn't even get a halfway decent blade from the
place that sells the saw.
 
Another Story

Several years ago, my wife, my son, and I went out for dinner at our local Sizzler. At the time, I ordered the Steak and All You Can Eat Fried Shrimp dinner. We had just got done with our salads and our dinner showed up. I was talking with my wife and the waitress had left after leaving our meals. I cut into my steak and before i took a bite, I saw something move on my plate. I looked closer, it was a green inch worm on the lettuce garnishment they put on the plate. I showed my wife and she was ready to leave.

We waited for a few minutes and the waitress noticed I wasn't eating. She came over and I said "There's Creepy Crawlies on my plate". She looked at the inch worm, apologized and took my plate back. A couple moments later the manager came out, apologized again, and said "Thank you for not making a scene, we'll comp your dinner tonight and the next time you're in." Which worked out to about $60.

It took about 15 minutes longer for my replacement dinner to show up, and we avoided Sizzler for a couple months after that, but we eventually went back and haven't had a problem since.
 
I used to be a big fan of Craftsman. And I still like there hand tools. I have returned tons of tools and all have been replaced with craftsman tools. The only thing they may do is replace the style since those go out of production from time to time. So now all my tools do not match.

as for power tools, I was happy with craftsman until I started doing home remodeling work. My demands on the tools I use went way up and nothing sears offers was able to keep up. I still think craftsman is great for people that are just doing there own home repair and stuff.
 
Daniel said:
I used to be a big fan of Craftsman. And I still like there hand tools. I have returned tons of tools and all have been replaced with craftsman tools. The only thing they may do is replace the style since those go out of production from time to time. So now all my tools do not match.

as for power tools, I was happy with craftsman until I started doing home remodeling work. My demands on the tools I use went way up and nothing sears offers was able to keep up. I still think craftsman is great for people that are just doing there own home repair and stuff.
Click to expand...


Sears has changed alot of their warrenty policies because people use to go to flee markets buy old sears tools and take them back and return them and then sell them for a higher price. At least that was what one guy told me. But it is true they are more stricter on their warrenty stuff. As far as power tools go I will never buy a Craftsman power tool again. Owed a couple routers many years ago and they were useless. Make good paperweights.


[I had looked at that scroll saw, but the Sears store near me (30 miles)
is abysmal. They didn't carry any blades to fit their own scroll saw.
Of course, they can order anything you need online. (well, so can I ..
and a hell of a lot cheaper) Then again, this is the same rep that looked
up the blade length for another saw and gave me the wrong information.

That unit looks a lot like the Rikon table top scroll saw that was $225.
There must be a $100 difference there somewhere, but I stopped looking
when I realized that I couldn't even get a halfway decent blade from the
place that sells the saw. /QUOTE]


If these are the standard 5" flat blades and( that is all you ever want to use )I can set you up with a great person who sells the best blades on the market and are cheaper than Sears. They are called Flying Dutchman blades.

I know this is not what the post is about but you brought up scrollsaws. You may want it only for a few cuts here and there but please try the saw before you use it and check vibration and ease of blade changing and make sure it has VS.
Click to expand...
 
jttheclockman said:
Sears has changed alot of their warrenty policies because people use to go to flee markets buy old sears tools and take them back and return them and then sell them for a higher price.
Click to expand...

People still do that. Friend does it here in Tampa. Now your limited on how many you can return. Doesn't cut it out completely but does help.
 
jttheclockman said:
If these are the standard 5" flat blades and( that is all you ever want to use )I can set you up with a great person who sells the best blades on the market and are cheaper than Sears. They are called Flying Dutchman blades.
Click to expand...

D'OH!!! :eek: :redface::redface:

I just realized what I typed. I was thinking of putting the scroll blade in
the tabletop BANDsaw .. not scroll saw. That's the one that looks like
the Rikon. Not a scroll saw. My bad.

I do have an older tabletop scroll saw, and wanted to get it back in shape,
but there is one part in it that Sears says is no longer available.
So now I just use it to vibrate the molds..
Too bad, as I'd love to use it and other than this one part, it's in
great shape.
 
more in sears

as a former employee of sears, i know that corporate is always busy personally answering complaints from customers - probably more so now that kmart has bought them - it can and should be a good company but they really, REALLY try to get by on the cheap knowing that there is always another customer coming in the door - humm ... didnt montgomery wards try that type of management?
 
Unfortunately our local store has forgotten what customer service was so I had to stop shopping there 7 years ago, I would rather pay more and have good customer service than pay for the attitude that the customer is only in the way. So good for you for getting results.
 
I worked for Sears in 1965 when they had a really neat profit sharing program. Of course that went away. I did too. Went in to banking.
 
jttheclockman said:
If these are the standard 5" flat blades and( that is all you ever want to use )I can set you up with a great person who sells the best blades on the market and are cheaper than Sears. They are called Flying Dutchman blades.
Click to expand...

FD and a couple of other online vendors are impossible to beat if you're really using the scrollsaw. Buying blades by the dozen or gross starts to make a lot of sense after you see how often you'll break blades. The Ace Hardware 5-packs are about a day's supply if you're cutting something intricate with a really fine blade.
 
RAdams said:
There was a slight difference in the new part from the old part (different sized set screw) and I called to complain about the change.
Click to expand...

FWIW, I've occasionally gotten companies to send me an extra of a changed part like that, so I could alter it myself to make it work, then have the unaltered one in case I ever needed to take the item in for warranty service. Especially for something like a setscrew, I'd rather re-drill and tap for a $.30 locally available screw than wait for the part to ship.
 
I did indeed end up fixing the set screw problem without waiting for shipping. BUT.....

The fun continues! My "Local" Sears is about an hour away, and i had planned a trip to HF and Woodcraft as well as the spending of the Sears card that was supposed to be tw day mailed. A big storm kicked the daylights out of Oklahoma, so i had to wait extra for several shipments (WOOT EXOTICS!!)..

After waiting what seemed like plenty of time (two extra days to make up for the storm delay) I called Sears again. This time i got to talk to a very horrible bitter lady. I asked for her Identification so I could add it to my next letter to the company. She informed me that she does not have to share that info. Them i was really steamed so i asked to speak to her Supervisor. She flat out said, and I quote WORD FOR WORD....



"NO".

My original plan to use the card (which finally came yesterday) for tools in completely out the window (especially after reding this thread). I am going to go find something that i don't have to worry about returns or parts. Some 360 titles or something maybe.

And once this craftsman sander bites the dust, I will throw it in the garbage and that will be the oficial end of my Sears shopping experiences.
 
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