Wow – I think I really got railed by Sears Appliance Service this weekend and need to vent my frustration.
We have a rental home that we lease out in Maricopa, AZ. Our tenants called the other day to let us know that the freezer was leaking some water. My wife called and had Sears Appliance Service handle the repair. Someone ripped her off by selling her some kind of warrantee for $251. I think they tricked her. My tenant, whom I get along very well with, called me and said they were there a grand total of 10 minutes. When I told him how much Sears charged us he about fell on the floor.
Well today we decided to call Sears. After close to 2 hours of calls (everyone pointing fingers at others there and numerous transfers and retelling the story) they said they would cancel the agreement. Wow finally a resolution I think. But then they told us that the actual service call was for $225 for ($14.83 for parts and the rest labor/service fee). So even though they were willing to cancel the fee the actual charges were almost the same as the rip-off warrantee. They basically put a heat probe in and thawed an area which freed up the drain. A simple defrost would have solved the problem.
We ultimately spoke with a customer service manager that refused to even look into the matter for us. He was only willing to give us the local shop's number to call them ourselves. They would make no inquiries or adjustments whatsoever.
We chose Sears because we thought they would back us up if anything happened like this. We were to the point, but not rude with the customer service manager. He eventually hung up on us. The service tech turned in that he was there for 45 minutes. This is a smaller town and they spend 2 days a week doing calls there, so there is no way there was 35 mins of drive time.
Sears is now on my boycott list. No more tools - no more appliances - nothing. What happened to this store that my Dad and my Grandpa used to swear by? Where is customer service these days?
edit - please note that the "warranty" was sold to my wife when she called for a service repair on a 4 year old refridgerator. It was not represented to her as a warranty, but rather a "required pre-pay fee" in order to do the work. The warranty fee was reversed. My beef with sears is an unreasonable charge of $211 labor charges for 10 mins of work and the unwillingness of customer service to investigate what we felt were unreasonable charges and confirm that we were billed correctly.
* This post was
edited 04/30/08 09:46pm by onasafari *
Tom and Sherri
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When K-Mart bought Sears, you should have figured on everything going downhill.
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I have rent houses. When a stove, dishwasher or hot water heater goes out,if my handyman cannot repair, it is cheaper to get a new one than service on an old one from ANY service company including Sears. Then you at least have a new unit not an old unit with a repair bill equal to 60 to 90% of the cost of a new unit. Disposal society.
I'm confused. Your wife bought a Sears service contract for the freezer for $251. The freezer had problems so you called Sears to have the warranty work done. Once the work was done and the freezer was working again, you're complaining because the tech was able to figure out that all it needed was defrosting?
The cost for the service call, should you have not had a warranty would have been $225, a mere $26 less than the service contract cost to begin with. However, the service contract is still valid for a few more years, and should there be another issue with the freezer, it will be covered at no cost, because you have the service contract.
Do I have all that right?
So tell me, what exactly is the problem? You bought a service contract. The freezer was repaired per the service contract. Now you're complaining because it was a "simple" fix? If you or your tenant had thought to perform a simple defrost prior to calling for service, a tech would not have had to waste their time on such a simple fix, would he?
As I said, I'm confused. Sears honored their contract and fixed your freezer. You're just not happy with the cost of it?
Julie, I didn't read his post that way. I think he said that his wife called Sears to have them repair the freezer and she was (tricked) into buying the service warranty contract when she called.
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MrsSoCalToolGuy wrote: Julie, I didn't read his post that way. I think he said that his wife called Sears to have them repair the freezer and she was (tricked) into buying the service warranty contract when she called.
correct - she was told the only way to have them look at it was to pre-pay the $251 (which was misleading). Please understand this is what they told her when she called to schedule a service call, the refridgerator is already 4 years old. We don't purchase extended warrantees on anything. The warranty charges were reversed and we were charged $225 instead for the service.
My issues are:
1) they charged us $225 for a total of 10 mins work with $14 in parts
2) they would not do any follow up to confirm that the charges were correct or incorrect - they said we had to do that ourselves
I am not unreasonable, and I know service costs money. But $211 for service for 10 total mins of diagnosis and labor by a service tech is unreasonable.
MrsSoCalToolGuy wrote: Julie, I didn't read his post that way. I think he said that his wife called Sears to have them repair the freezer and she was (tricked) into buying the service warranty contract when she called.
MrsSoCalToolGuy wrote: Julie, I didn't read his post that way. I think he said that his wife called Sears to have them repair the freezer and she was (tricked) into buying the service warranty contract when she called.
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