BOSTON -- One of the biggest names in appliances has tried to repair its reputation after Team 5 Investigates uncovered a pattern of customer service problems and received hundreds of new complaints.

Viewer e-mails about Sears Service

In response, the CEO of Sears sent letters to its Boston customers, apologizing for the long delays.

Zaida Crespo was forced to use electric portable heaters because the new furnace she bought from Sears last September for $5,100 had never worked.

"That's the only resource I have right now, so what can I say?," Crespo said. "I don't want to die from the cold."

After repeated calls and no-show appointments over two and a half months, a Sears technician finally came to Crespo's house a couple of weeks ago. Using rubber bands and old plywood, he tried to get the furnace working, but couldn't. He told her it was missing a part.

"This is the story of my life," Crespo said.

Only after a call from Team 5 Investigates did Sears agree to replace the furnace with a new one.

Team 5 Investigates first reported on the company's poor service record last month. Then, a Sears spokesman blamed a shortage of technicians during their busiest time. He called it temporary. But a month later, Team 5 Investigates has received hundreds of new complaints.

"I was so happy to see your piece," said Sandy Lish, another Sears customer. "To know I wasn't alone."

Lish said she had a six-month-long nightmare with Sears over a broken refrigerator that left her with no way to keep food in the house for her family.

"It was weeks and weeks of having no refrigerator, having people be rude to me on the phone, being hung up on, being disconnected, having people not show up," Lish said.

Anne-Marie Rollo and her husband took days off from work to wait for a Sears tech to fix their $2,000 washer/dryer, but no one ever showed.

"You know, it's one thing to even have to sit there for a long window of time and wait," Rollo said. "But then to have them not show up is the icing on the cake!"

"I will never step foot in that store and purchase anything again," she added.

"The worst part was that they just didn't care," Lish agreed.

Sears denied Team 5's request for an on-camera interview, but in a statement defended itself saying, the company "is starting to see improved response times" and it "will continue to focus on improving service levels."

In the meantime, after our Team 5 investigation, Sears CEO Aylwin Lewis sent Boston-area customers a letter of apology and a 12-month extension to their Sears Protection Agreement. But that's little consolation to some customers who feel forever alienated.

"Nothing will ever be fixed for me because I will never go back," Lish said.

Sears wouldn't tell Team 5 Investigates how many complaints they've had, how many letters went out to customers, or how many warranties they've been forced to extend.

Sears also can't tell Team 5 Investigates when it will be able to accommodate all of the service calls. That's information you might find valuable when you're shopping for a new appliance.

Statement from Sears

“Through a combination of the efforts of our associates, along with the additional capacity we’ve added in the Boston market, Sears is starting to see improved response times for our warranty and service contract customers and we continue to aggressively work through our backlog of open orders.

We want our customers to know that we take their satisfaction very seriously and will continue to focus on improving service levels in that area.

In addition, beginning this week, any customer after Sept. 1 who had a cycle time (from first call to completed service) longer than 14 days will receive a letter from our CEO, along with an extension of the term of their product warranty or service contract.”

As a reminder, here are the steps we’ve been taking to improve our service levels:

The current workforce is scheduled for 6 day weeks.

We have temporarily reassigned technicians from southern New Hampshire, Boston’s North and South Shore areas and from Rochester, NY to the western suburban Boston areas to increase capacity.

We will be using authorized outside contractors where available and appropriate.

We are prescreening scheduled service calls for parts that need to be ordered & shipped to avoid unnecessary trips and to decrease cycle times.

We’ve hired additional service techs over the past six weeks who have started running service calls this month, and intend to continue to recruit additional techs into that market until our service response time returns to an acceptable level.

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Chris Brathwaite | DVP – Corp. Public Relations Sears Holdings