Sears, Roebuck and Company Sears Unreliable customer service - you may be stuck with a defective product Nationwide

I purchased a Sear's Craftsman garage door opener with battery backup for $180.  I had purchased it over the internet and picked it up at our local mall.  Within one month the unit was indicating a low battery.  A sear's repairman replaced the battery which may have been defective.  About a month and a half later, the same situation occurred again.  A Sear's repairman came out and I mentioned to him that the battery had been just replaced 6 weeks ago.  Without bothering to diagnose the cause, he simply replaced the battery again and left.  Another 6 weeks pass, and for the third time the same situation occurs again.  The unit emits a beep every 30 seconds to indicate that the battery is low.  It is obvious the problem is not with the battery, but is with the garage opener itself.  It is evident that the unit is not properly charging the battery.

Upon calling for service again, I was informed there would be a $199 service call since the unit is now out of the 60 day warranty period.  They were not interested to hear about my explanation that a proper repair of the "real" problem was never completed.  The servicemen were only doing a "bandaid" repair.  One customer service individual even hung up on me saying, "we are really busy here".  Too busy to take care of a customer?!  I was being pleasant, yet got the run around by sending me to other departments.

After many phone calls, one Sear's representative offered to reimburse for $129 towards the repair,  But, I would have to pay for the repair first and then file a request to get reimbursed.  This was not acceptable.

I finally wrote a letter to the corporate office providing both a concise summary and a full detailed story of the situation.  I asked for them to either send someone out to make a proper repair for no charge, or refund me the cost of the garage door opener.  I mailed the letter on April 2nd, 2014 and have to this day May 20th NOT received any response.

I had disputed the purchase with my credit card with the hope it would get the situation recognized by Sear's.  Unfortuately, that route did not help as the credit card company is limited to what they can do regarding quality / defective items.

My next attempt will be to speak with the local Sear's manager and see if he can help to resolve this.

All this for a $180 item!   I'm glad I haven't spent thousands for larger applicances that Sear's would not support should they have defective issues.  Smaller companies have better customer care and would have done something to keep a customer happy.  $180 is a small price to pay for maintaining good relations versus all the negative illwill it is going to cause.

My trust of Sears is gone.