Sears Dishwasher Repair and Parts and treatment ripoff Nationwide

In September of 2005 I purchased a Kenmore dishwasher from my local Sears store. Just after the holidays the lower spray arm on the washer broke off during a wash cycle and melted a bit. I called the 800-4MY-HOME number for Sears and ordered the new parts that I needed and set up a repair appointment for the following Saturday. The following events occurred when the repairman never showed up:

A repairman from Sears was supposed to be at my house between 8 and 12 am last Saturday. When 12:30 pm rolled around and he had still not shown up, I called the 800 number for Sears to see what was happening. After waiting on hold for 10 minutes, a woman answered, and I told her my problem. She said that my status was incorrect in the system and that she would transfer me to the routing department, but the call was cut off.

I called back and spent another 20 minutes on hold before another woman answered. I told her the story; she tried to get a hold of the routing department, and after another 10 minutes came back and told me there was nothing they could do. The servicemen had all their appointment slots full.

After I told her that I work during the week and Saturday was the only day I had open, I asked to speak with a supervisor. She said there were no supervisors and that the customer service department wasn't open either. I kept pressing for a response and she put me on hold. She came back and said she could put me through to customer service, and did so. The customer service woman tried to contact the technician and said she'd call me back.

After another 20 minutes she called back and said he couldn't get there (even though he was just in Knoxville and could have stayed on the job for the 15 minutes extra it would have taken him to fix my dishwasher!). All in all, I spent over an hour and a half on the phone for nothing. The clincher to this whole story is that the dishwasher was only three months old. And I noticed later that Sears only sent me one of the three pieces they said they would.

Jessie
Knoxville, Tennessee
U.S.A.