Kmart Sears Online payment errors, lost money and lack of customer service in ANY store or online Fayetteville North Carolina

My issue with Kmart aka Sears Holding is due to an error in their layaway payment processing online.

Earlier this month, I made an in-store layaway agreement at my local Kmart. My first payment was due 11-19-13 in the amount of $75.26. I registered my layaway online with my rewards membership as I have been a loyal Kmart & Sears customer since, well, forever.

When I confirmed my payment of $75.26, it showed the amount paid to date being $100.51 ($25.25 was my down payment) Imagine my surprise when I get a Chase notification stating $225.70 had been pulled from my account, not seconds after making the payment.

I immediately called the online customer service as provided on the layaway page. The service rep told me I would need to go in-store to have the issue fixed. I then called my bank to ask their advice also.

At 8am on 11-19-13, I went in-store. Merely 2 hrs after this had happened and was met with lacking customer service skills. After an hour playing the "I already called that number, etc" I was told to wait until the layaway department opened at 9am to have this fixed. Not only did I have my 2 yr old with me for over an hour while I waited for layaway to open, I couldn't buy anything to hold him over due to this transaction making my account negative.

Layaway finally opened around 920 am and after repeating the situation 3 more times, referencing the information the lady at the customer service kiosk, a manager came back to assess the situation and seemed to have an attitude like I made the mistake. He repeatedly said "I've never heard of this" "it's not my problem" and after several attempts to have him call the number he was told to call, I had to call myself to resolve any issue.

After 2.5 hours I thought this was taken care of as the online customer service rep I contacted per instructions from in-store. The rep even gave me a record # for an error report she had to file and that would credit my account back the difference in what was supposed to be paid, minus what the system took. Roughly $150.00. She told me to call and check the status of the report at any time with the # she gave me.

Good thing I followed that advice because that record # didn't even exist. She did nothing. After another dozen transfers on 11-23-13 I supposedly found a lady that knew and cared about the issue or her job. She told me she was sending it to offline department and that since it was early enough I would see the money that day at least as pending. Nope. Nothing. Called Saturday. Asked to be directed to that same department. Nope, every person I talked to tried to look it up even though I insisted this wasn't their dept only to have them waste more of my time and energy and then get irate and outright rude with me. Eventually made it to the same dept where it was confirmed that the offline dept had the report and was processing. Told me to give it a little more time and probably by this morning I should have monies pending.

Fast forward to this morning... 11-25-13. No monies pending but I receive an email from the offline department telling me I infact have to cancel the layaway in order to receive the refund in another 3-5 days to call the number given if I had any questions. Keeping in mind that I would lose my down payment, the cancellation fee and not to mention the fees that have hit my bank account while waiting for someone to do their job. So, I called, was met with more rude people telling me to go in store and that while it was their fault, I had to cancel and be out the money not only from this error but my bank also.

I'm completely disheartened. I have always loved Kmart and Sears. Being a military family, we have been able to be apart of the Heroes At Home promotion and while it is a great gesture for us family members of service members what's the point if you repeatedly rip us off throughout the year? It's tough living on military pay to begin with but roll in companies who are all talk about supporting the armed forces to have them literally tie up their monies by taking no accountability is ridiculous. I hope that this doesn't happen to anyone else but as far as I can tell it's an abundant practice by Kmart and Sears.