Sears Customer Service Says 'Lady, Chill Out'

BOSTON -- "These are all the different telephone numbers that I called," Willene Carroll told Team 5 Investigates' Susan Wornick. "Every time I called," she said, "I got somebody different."

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Carroll's customer service runaround with Sears lasted three months. She was bounced back and forth between Sears, where she bought her big screen TV, and an outside repair company that Sears contracted to repair her appliance when it broke.

But Carroll said customer service representatives weren't helpful. One wasn't even nice. Carroll said, "Her comment to me was, "Look lady, chill out."'

Maryann Stefanski has spent seven months trying to get Sears to fix her defective refrigerator.

"I am taking everything out of my house that is a Kenmore or Sears product," Stefanski said. She, too, has a thick file of Sears customer service employees with whom she's spoken, "Sandy from the executive office, Ray in Denver, Jim Louders in Danvers, Bob in Arizona, Sylvia in Texas."

"They say all right, we will transfer you to someone, hold on please" Stefanski said. "Then the next thing you hear is the dial tone. And that has happened many times."

Team 5 Investigates has been reporting on Sears customer service problems since last fall. They initially blamed too few technicians during a very busy time. They said it was a problem unique to Boston, but it's not. Our reports attracted attention from around the country.

We've received hundreds of complaints, some of which state, in part, "unbelievably horrible customer service with Sears," "defective appliances," "refusal to honor warranty," and "Sears poor service."

The ABC-affiliated television station in Philadelphia documented dozens of complaints in their area.

"It was rather disappointing to have had this experience," one Philadelphia-area consumer told WPVI-TV.

And despite telling us it was a Boston-only problem, in WPVI's report Sears admitted it had similar problems in Philadelphia, again blaming customer service levels and saying they would hire additional technicians.

Sears has had other recent problems. In January, it was announced that CEO Aylwin Lewis would be leaving within weeks. He still has not been replaced. In early February, Sears announced lower than expected holiday sales, and a plan to cut hundreds of jobs at their corporate office.

"I did hear from customer service, who gave me a file number that I should use the next time I called," Stefanski said. "And when I tried that, nobody knew what I was talking about."

Sears has denied our repeated requests for an interview and in their most recent statement would only say that "we have continued expanding our workforce by almost 10 percent in the Boston-metro area. Service levels have improved dramatically with response times consistently in the 3-4 day range," according to Sears spokesman Chris Brathwaite.

He said the company's target this year is to "shorten that wait further," adding that nationwide, Sears completes more than 30,000 home service visits each day. But Carroll wishes she was one of them. "I'll never shop at Sears again," she said

Carroll did finally receive a new television after she went back to the store and appealed to the manager. Stefanski is scheduled to have another service call this week.

Sears tells Team 5 Investigates they are planning to do a customer service survey so they can hear about problems directly from consumers.