On 11/8/2012 4:31 PM, bob haller wrote:

Well it broke on a tuesday, has been well over a week, and latest
prediction is friday, thats 10 days. without hot water what happened
to over nite shipping and warranty calls come first?

I suggest I go along and talk to the actual sears store manager for
monroeville PA, this store is scheduled to close.

So the store manager will shortly be losing his or her job.

I want to be honest with the store manager, you didnt have parts in
stock you are short repair people adding days to calls. If you dont
give a complete refund I have a friend in the media, and Sears will be
featured, not in a good way.....

Since the store manager is shortly going to be unemployed, I doubt
s/he will much care.

Is that what you want?

Sears was bought out by a hedge fund guy who combined them with Kmart
into a holdings company. He has absolutely zero interest in growing
retail operations. He's taking what profits he's getting from them
(Kmart is doing extremely well) and putting it into his other
investments. He took the Craftsman and Kenmore brands and spun them
off into a separate company, so that he'll continue to hold ownership
of those valuable brands even after Sears ceases to be. In the
meantime, he's licensed the sale of those branded products to other
retailers, which further hurts Sears' bottom line.

The long and short of it is: the head honcho isn't interested in
making Sears better or keeping its dwindling customer base satisfied.
The people working under him suffer serious morale issues as a result
(not to mention knowing their jobs are gradually going away, as in the
case of the PA store manager). Some of them still strive to provide
good customer service - but if doing so costs the store money, they
will face repercussions from upper management. Others know they can
get away with providing poor customer service, so they have no guilt
about doing so.

I've got a sister in Sears management who has been with them for over
thirty years. When a customer comes to her with a complaint, she'll do
what she can, but often she can't do much more without putting her job
on the line, and that's a line she won't cross. In those cases, the
customer usually threatens to contact the head office in Chicago. She
encourages them to do so. You may want to try that, because the store
manager may not have the power (anymore) to make things right.