Sears Sears Home Delivery Sears Home Delivery cancel broken promises reschedule reschedule reschedule Internet

I wish I had read up on Sears Home Delivery before ordering my mattress from them. When they first scheduled delivery it was during work hours for me, so I called and gave them 3 different days & times that would work. It ended up scheduled for Saturday between 5-7pm...not a great time for me as I was having a party at 7pm, but as long as they came on time we'd be ok.  They never showed up.

I got a call half an hour after the 2 hour window closed from a salesperson who was "so sorry" -- the truck had gone over its allotted number of workable hours or something and wouldn't be able to deliver to me.  He said I was supposed to have been notified, apologized profusely, and said there were "no excuses," and asked that I not kill the messenger (I gather he had been talking to quite a few upset people also on my route).

I said no worries, cause hey -- I'm a pretty chill person. We could reschedule, fine. I asked if there was any way to control the time slot I was given, because like most people I'm not home during delivery hours on weekdays.  He said it was based on distance from the warehouse, and I was one of the farthest on the list of locations, so that meant I would almost always get a late (5pm-7pm) timeslot.  Wonderful!  The next available day was Monday.  I got 5pm-7pm time slot (great).  Only... I got a call on Monday that the truck had broken down and I would need to reschedule. 

Ok, fine.  Rescheduled for Tuesday.  But then I got a call monday night that my timeslot Tuesday was 12:45-2:45pm.  That wouldn't work - meetings all day.  So I rescheduled for today (Thursday April 19).  The sales person I spoke to said that I could request a call ahead of 30 minutes or an hour so that I wouldn't have to sit at home the whole time -- perfect.  I work until 6:30 most days, but I'm only 1.5 miles away, so with 30 mins notice I could leave work in enough time to get home and meet the delivery people. Great. 

So today I made sure I had no meetings, arranged with my roommate to have access to the car that we share so I could get home quickly, and went into work a little early in case I got called away right at the beginning of the 2 hour time slot. 

Only... the delivery truck never called ahead -- they just showed up at my place and called me asking where I was. I told them I was 30 minutes away and that I was supposed to have been called ahead of time (2 separate Sears customer service people told me that I could do this) so that I would be home to meet them, and asked them to please wait -- I didn't want to have to reschedule again. The truck driver was extremely abrupt -- when I said it would be about 20 minutes he said no that's too long, and when I pressed that it wasn't really my fault that I wasn't there, he said he'd call customer service.

Customer service called me about 5 minutes later while I was fighting traffic to get home (I only work a mile and a half away, but this is Los Angeles) and asked me if I was home. I told her no, I was on my way home, and could they please wait, since it wasn't my fault that I wasn't home to receive the mattress. She said well if you're not home let's just resche ule. And then I said no, I am tired of waiting, Sears has cancelled on me twice already, and I'm already on the way home from work (early) -- I was literally less than a mile away at that point.  I told her I wouldn't reschedule, this was not my fault, and so I expected Sears to deliver my mattress today.

When I got home the delivery truck and my mattress were gone. I called customer service -- the agent I spoke to called and left messages with both the delivery driver and the carrier to see if they would be returning tonight. I waited for an hour and a half and didn't hear from anyone. Called customer service back (again) and they said "I'm sorry, it was a carrier error, we couldn't deliver today." 

Seriously? 

I let them know I wasn't happy -- I even had them check my account to see that there was indeed a note asking that I be called ahead of the delivery (there was).  They didn't apologize for the miscommunication, or explain, or offer anything really except "sorry for the inconvenience" and that the next possible delivery wasn't until next Sunday.  When I complained (politely) to that latest customer service agent, he said he would make sure I was a "priority" delivery for the inconvenience. 

Seriously??  It takes essentially being stood up/cancelled on three times for them to finally call me a "priority"? 

This has been just the worst customer service experience, and Sears has offered nothing but "sincere" apologies that are obviously being read off of a computer screen by people most likely at a foreign call center who have no ability to actually help -- all they can do is continue to leave notes on my "file" and say that now I'm finally a "priority."  I have a feeling that if I was actually a "priority" I wouldn't be waiting until next Sunday before they can make it back to my apartment.  That is, unless the truck breaks down, or the drivers exceed the number of hours they can work, or whatever excuse is next.
 
The whole process has been frustrating and recourse has been nonexistant.  I find it completely unacceptable that a delivery that requires the person to be home wouldn't allow you to set a time in advance -- in fact you don't know the time until the night before -- and then half the time they don't show up anyway, after you've reconfigured your life to be home at said allotted time.  Also, I should mention that since they're delivering a mattress, they're supposedly picking up my old one as well.  So every time they have scheduled, I've had to drag a mattress and box spring out into the living room of my small LA apartment so that the delivery people would have easy access when they showed up.  And then drag it back again when they cancelled.  Super uncool.

The funny thing is that I ordered the bed frame for the mattress from Overstock.com a day after I ordered the mattress.  It arrived last week, no issues at all.  It's all set up in my room.  Too bad I can't sleep on that.

I should have ordered from Amazon.