Sears Fraudulent Misleading Customer Dis-Service Practices RIPOFF San Antonio Texas

Sears has certainly lost a customer this week. After reading on the Sears website about their purported customer service guarantee Price Match Plus I've reached the end of my rope.

For those of you who do not know of this program (read Sears official statement on the program at http://www.sears.com/sr/framework/home.jsp?BV_SessionID=@@@@0551030025.1125602300@@@@&BV_EngineID=cchjaddfiikjeggcegecegjdghldggo.0&targetPage=%2fmisc%2fsears%2fcustserv%2fcustserv_pricing_policy.jsp&vertical=SEARS) if you purchase something from Sears within 30 days of the purchase you can receive the difference plus 10% of the difference as long as it follows certain guidelines.

After reading this I returned to the Sears I purchased the product at (the difference being $20 dollars - a total return of $22 with the additional 10% difference) and was rudely informed that I only had 7 days not the 30 that was listed.

So my wife said, "Try a different Sears, maybe the employee didn't understand what you were asking about." So off I went, receipt in hand ready to give Sears a chance to follow their clearly worded policy from their website. Once I arrived I was met with yet again, another employee who treated me like a cast-off and not a Sears' valued customer. Both times when I ask about the Price Match Plus policy it was like I was looking for a hand out or trying to sign them up to sell Amway.

I decided that maybe I had misread the policy, so I apologized and left for home. My cable internet ready to browse the web and for once and for all that I had misread the Price Match Plus policy. Hopefully if you've read this far you have also followed the above link and read the policy yourself. These clearly disclose how to receive the Price Match Plus for in-store purchases as well as for online purchases. So now I believe that I am a cuckold for Sears and their customer service games.

Tracking down the Sears customer service number took a few minutes, (800) 549-4505. I spoke with a young lady for about 15 minutes about their policy. She said that it's different for different states and unfortunately for Texas they only have a 7 day policy. She said that it changed about 7 months ago to 7 days and the website didn't show the change. She confirmed with her supervisor, so I asked to speak with her supervisor, Gavino.

Gavino told me they didn't put the states that had less than 30 days for the Price Match Plus on the website because it would deter customers from shopping if it had too much information about the plan on the website. I asked him if he was trying to say that it's easier to mislead people into shopping by offering services that they wouldn't offer than being up front and using clearly worded language to describe a customer service policy. His reply was I should have asked the employee about this policy (which I didn't know about at the time) when I purchased the item.

So, I asked Gavino if we could agree that no employee is trained 100%. He said we could agree on that. I then asked, can we agree that if I were to ask two different employee's the same question that I could receive two different answers. He said we could also agree on that. I said, as a company Sears provides information through one singular website to keep incorrect information being distributed, and as such I should be able to receive up-to-date information about your policy and procedures from your website in the exact wording the corporation would have their 100% trained employee's to use. He would not agree with me on the last part.

So, after I had the first employee and Gavino read the policy directly from the sears.com website, he accused me of not knowing enough about Sears, told me that I needed to learn to read better because that isn't what the site is discussing, told me Nevada wasn't a state, and that California has a 30 day Price Match Plus policy unlike my state's 7. I had to ask individually for each state and when I asked if Nevada had a 7 day or 30 day policy he quickly informed me that Nevada is not a state.

So I paused and thought for a moment, Did Nevada leave the union? I asked him, "As in the location of Las Vegas, Nevada is not a state?" He responded no, but after realizing his mistake told me he was thinking of Nevada, New Mexico. Surprisingly there is no such city in New Mexico named Nevada. Although he could have confused Nevada, New Mexico with Nevada, Iowa, or maybe Nevada, Illinois, or most likely Nevada, Texas.

Well, armed with states that have a 30 day period I decided to call. So I found a few numbers for California Sears and after talking with a few people (it took about 15 minutes per call to find the exact number of days for the Price Match Plus) I found out that at the Clovis Mall location (559)322-3200, knew nothing at all about the Price Match Plus program (luckily I wasn't purchasing something from them or else I would have let them know that Gavino say's you don't know how to do your job) and at their Los Angeles store (323)981-2000 they have a 7 day policy.

It went on like this for quite some time; the entire conversation lasted 45 minutes from the first number being dialed to final goodbye. So their policy on their website is out of date but has been changed, it is the customer's responsibility to know of the nuances of each Sears customer service offering. I haven't found a Sears yet that has a 30 day guarantee (Gavino told me that the differences had to do with different state laws, so I have a friend looking into that as well). I've wasted time and money going to different Sears before finding out that Sears knowingly trains their Customer Service Reps that it's easier to get customers to shop at Sears if we mislead them.

I'm in the middle of an e-mail conversation with the sears.com people who are now telling me that I have 30 days for the Price Match Plus in any retail environment in the US (sans Alaska and Hawaii of course). I can't wait to see where this goes. I am not as interested in the $22 dollars now as I am in someone telling me that "We're sorry, we were wrong. We lead you to believe that you weren't able to interpret our clearly worded policy and that our employee's were. Turns out we were wrong on both accounts." Then I'll just take the $20, they can keep their 10%.

Michael
San Antonio, Texas
U.S.A.

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