Complain about a product or service

Sears

Judy of Clovis NM (1/6/05):
I had spent a couple of months looking at and saving for a good quality elliptical exersize machine. I finally decided to buy one at our local Sears store. When the sales associate was waiting on me she seemed knowlegeable, knew all the key words and heath benefits and risks of the products she was sellling. I noticed a banner across the ceiling stating that you could take an additional 20% off sale price and asked if that applied to the equipment; she stated it did not but that she would take 10% off as a courtesy.

That seemed fair enough to me so I inquired about the cost of having a machine professionally assembled so I did not have to worry about injury from an improperly assembled machine. She stated that she would assemble it free of charge and that she did this all the time. We agreed and she stated that it would possibly be the afternoon or even Monday before it was ready and we agreed to that. I knew that she would be off on Sunday however since she stated that it would possibly be ready I called and checked and they said that there was no machine in my name there. I looked at my receipt and it showed a Monday pickup date so I decided to wait until then to contact the store again.

I called the store around 11:30-12:00 to see if the machine would be ready and what time it could be picked up and they stated she was not working that day, I explained it to the person on the phone and they didn't know how they could help me. So, I waited and called the next day at around the same time only to find out she wouldn't even be coming to work until 2:00 pm so I asked to speak to a manager and was transferred to an assistant manager for that department. She assured me that my machine would be assembled and ready for pick up by evening. At about 3:00 the sales associate called me and told me it was ready for pickup. My son went to the store and picked it up.

When I arrived home it was obvious that the machine was only haphazardly assembled, then I noticed wear marks, dust, etc on the unit and it was obvious that they had sent the floor model. I went into Sears to see what could be done, I was only offered a larger discount on the shabby piece of equipment. I told them I didn't want the used equipment, they didn't offer to give me a new one so I told them they needed to come and pick it up and give me my money back. A different manager told me that they would have to charge me $30.00 to pick it up. I told them that I was not giving them an additional $30 for something that was their mistake and that I would figure out how to get it to them.

A couple of hours later the same manager called and stated he had thought about it and that they would come pick it up. He stated I could come at that moment and get my refund and they would pick up the unit the next day at my convenience. I went to the store and waited while he processed the return only to be finally told he could not return my money until they had the unit ... so we made arrangements to have it picked up the next day. After the pick-up (the delivery men were nice) I went to the store only to talk to a different assistant manager; I kept being told that the General Manager was unavailable, I went over the story and explained to her that I really liked the machine but did not want to pay $400.00 for a used floor model. Again no offer was made to give me a new machine.

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