I see in today's paper that Sears lost money in the third quarter:
Sears Holdings Corp. swung to a fiscal third-quarter loss on falling sales and margins, notably at namesake domestic stores, as the sales woes worsened the past two months and prompted the company to pull its earnings forecast for the year. . .Many retailers have struggled for some time, but Sears's challenges go beyond the economic environment as the retailer's namesake and Kmart stores have been plagued by a reputation for shoddy customer service, high out-of-stock levels and poor presentation. Those factors in recent years have made it hard for the company to stem customer losses to more focused rivals.
Sears has also seen significant turnover in its executive ranks and is still looking for a replacement for its interim chief executive, W. Bruce Johnson.
This resonates particularly with me because today is a very special day. Today is the day when a private company actually succeeded in giving me customer service as bad as that of a government agency. And not just any government agency. I'm talking about TSA-levels of sophistication*. I used to think that only the government was able to achieve the soul-crushing indifference to human suffering with which Tamerlane's smiling hordes piled the skulls of their victims outside the gates of broken cities. Surely it must have taken the kind of massive research program that only a government could afford to have utterly perfected that exact combination of witless and ironclad which could neatly, and perfectly, frustrate all normal human desire. No, thought I, the market would not permit it. If you want customers to keep enduring that kind of towering ineptitude, that kind of pointless proceduralism, that smugly bovine disinterest in their simplest rights, you have to have recourse to violence. Otherwise, if you can't shoot them, they'll just up and walk away.
As we round the corner into my second month of dealing with Sears customer service, I can only conclude that the company has some secret strategy. Either it is refocusing on the presumably profitable "retired masochist" segment. Or they are waiting for the guns to arm their staff to work their way through the company's byzantine parts ordering system. Perhaps both. I just don't know.
I invite you to guess how many days I have now spent at home waiting for the man from Sears customer service to come fix my washer. Answer below the fold, for anyone who is willing to wade into yet another rant about the appalling state of American corporate relations.
The answer, my little chickadees, is "eight". But I am accepting nine. Or ten. Thats' because I lost count. I have waited at home for Sears for so many days that I actually cannot remember how many times I have pined out the window for the heroic, nay, mythic figure, who never materialized.
People with a mechanical background may well be surprised at this figure. Eight trips is a lot to fix one problem with a washing machine, which after all, does not have so very many moving parts. Even allowing for an initial service call and one bout with the wrong parts, surely it should be fixed by now? What sort of mechanics is Sears hiring these days?
This is far too hard on them. Of those eight scheduled calls, I have only seen a technician three times, for a total of perhaps twenty minutes. The other five or more were simply days when I waited at home for a Sears repairman who didn't come.
Once could be forgiven; accidents do happen. Twice is embarassing. But somewhere around the fifth time, you begin to sense a trend.
The first time, the Sears chap ran so late that I had to leave. Apparently, Sears regards scheduling appointments for an 8am-12pm window as a sort of empty formality, like telling your Great Aunt you're glad to see her. I have now scheduled, as I believe I just mentioned, at least eight appointments with Sears. I have not once had the glad surprise of having a technician show up during that window. Indeed, I started to believe that my apartment had been stealthily relocated to one of those tropical climes where showing up sooner than two hours after the scheduled time is regarded as gauche. The closest any Sears technician has been able to get to this much vaunted window is the bonny chap who actually did show up at 2:30 for his 8-12 appointment.
That accounts for two or three of the missed calls: I had unwisely scheduled other events within six hours of the time Sears quoted me, and was forced to leave my apartment. Now I know to clear at least one day on either side. And I no longer watch television and work, as an amateur does. If you have CSPAN on, you might not hear the phone ring. And if you miss the repairman's call, he will cancel your appointment. That accounts for another few days of my life. I now carry my cell phone into the bathroom.
But do not think that just because you have called several times to confirm, taken a week's vacation, and planted yourself firmly in the living room with some very quiet knitting and the phone on loud, you will be able to just have some repairman come and fix your washing machine. On the second visit, a repairman inspected the machine and ordered a part. On the fifth visit, another repairman replaced it. The machine made if through two loads before halting in the middle of the rinse cycle with no warning but a burning smell. I called Sears that night and scheduled another appointment for two days later. Gamely, I chose a 1-5 window and cleared my evening calendar. At four, having heard nothing from the technician, I called Sears customer service to inquire as to whether he was still coming. The nice woman in what sounded like Guatamala promised to message him right away and have him call me. I agreed and hung up the phone.
But this was visit six. And by visit six, I knew that inquiries about late repairmen were always met with promises to message him, and have him call you, and that this never, ever actually resulted in the repairman calling. I had come to believe that this was just something that the call center people said to pacify you, like telling an irate two year old that you'll take them to Disneyland. So I called them every ten minutes until five, receiving each time the same placatory promise. At 5:05 a horrified call center operator in what sounded like India informed me that the technician had cancelled my appointment much earlier in the day, on the grounds that it was a "duplicate". Apparently, it had not occurred to him that his very own sterling work might have broken down.
Visit seven did result in an actual visit, albeit a week later, since I had to go to New York (and to spend about $100 on laundry that had not been done in the past month and a half). Of course, it almost didn't, because I had been forced, by necessity, to schedule an 8-12 on a day when I had a 4:00 doctor's appointment. The technician called at perhaps 2:00 to inform me that he was running somewhat late. I went . . . well, the only word that really does it justice is "berserk". He rearranged his appointments, showed up half an hour later, and let me out just in time to dash down to George Washington Hospital.
That visit, of course, resulted in ordering yet another part. Which was supposed to be installed today. You can guess where this is going, can't you? My cell phone glitched when he called. I called him back immediately to tell him I was home. He called back two minutes after that. Before I could get to the phone, he left me a message indicating that despite the message I'd left not two minutes earlier, he couldn't confirm that I was there, and was therefore cancelling the call.
Well, it was only 12:40. (As predicted, Sears had once again not made its window). Perhaps he could be rerouted. No, said the computer operator; once he had cancelled the call, it was not possible to put me back in his queue. Or anyone else's queue. But as a very special favor, they would let me stay home from work again tomorrow and wait.
Now, at this point, I have no furniture, so waiting is not very comfortable, even though I can work. After yelling quite a bit, and pointing out that after eight attempts and five fails it behooved them to try a little harder, I was redirected to a supervisor. After putting me on hold for half an hour, she reported that it was not possible to get through to dispatch. This is not the first time I've heard that excuse, either. Apparently, dispatch consists of one man with prostate problems located a very long hallway away from the nearest bathroom.
I gave up. My landlord will have to deal with this. But this experience was so extraordinary that I had to blog it. The amazing thing was not the serial screw ups. The amazing thing was that Sears has set up its service program so that, first, you have to wait at home on a work day; second, the technicians, probably because they are overbooked, are actively looking for any excuse at all to cancel their service visits; and third, the people who take your call cannot in any way expedite your service after you have been left sitting at home for the sixth time. On the contrary, the people I talked to after today's visit were every bit as bored by my stupid complaints as the ones I encountered when scheduling my very first Sears Service No-Show.
I understand why computer companies work this way; most of them don't expect much in the way of repeat business. But Sears isn't selling a cheap commodity with razor thin margins that can be fedexed to tech support or thrown away. It's selling very big ticket items with 20 year potential lifespans, and also, purchases for which no good substitute is available--your mother probably cannot let you borrow an extra refrigerator. The quality of the repair service is actually something upon which people base their purchase decisions.
Obviously, they have lost a customer in me. Though I have reluctantly agreed that if my car breaks down in a remote northern town where Sears is the only repair vendor, they can fix it, they'll be holding ice festivals in Beelzebub's back garden before I will voluntarily purchase so much as a $1.59 box of nails from them. I am also making sure to tell as many of my loved ones as possible so that they do not make the mistake of lashing themselves to a company that thinks a good way to save money is to use customer vacation days to backstop overbooking. And, of course, since I love all of my readers, I made sure to tell you.
The best part in all of this is that I wanted to offer Sears an opportunity to respond, to explain how this had happened and why my experience was sadly unique. (It isn't, but what else are they going to say?) So I called their press office. Sears is the only company I have ever heard of that has its media relations people on a voicemail tree--Press 1 if you want to talk about new products, and so forth. Most companies rightly believe that if you are trying to convince the world that yours is a good and competent company, the last thing you want to do is send the reporters who write about you through 20 minutes of transfers to get them to the right person. They pay some 22 year old straight out of college $25K to tell you to whom you should speak. Sears may find it hard to believe, but in the long run, it's a savings not to leave reporters with a vague impression that you are both incompetent, and do not really care what people think.
There was no option to press if you wanted to ask how they had come to design a customer service program with seemingly only one purpose: to thwart. I tried to bypass the tree, but the electronic voice informed me, somehow managing to sound annoyed, that I was calling outside of business hours. This seemed odd, given that it was about 3:00 in the afternoon. But on further reflection, this made perfect sense. How many times has one heard a company say that customer service is not an afterthought, but part of a holistic whole? (Well, plenty . . . if you're a business journalist).
Eventually, I chose option three, "talk about other products and services", which seemed the closest to the questions I wanted to ask. This put me through instantly to . . . the voicemail of Larry. The message informed me that Larry is out in the field on Friday, and cannot be reached at this number. I am pleased, of course, to know that Larry has the opportunity to get out from behind the desk every once in a while and see Sears operations firsthand. But I am slightly concerned that it is Tuesday and he is still not back. I am afraid he may not be coming back. I am afraid that while he was in the field, some errant Sears employee mistook him for a customer.
So I'm afraid that Sears was, as we say in the trade, "unavailable for comment". There's a 50% chance that in the next few weeks someone at Sears will discover this post and send me an email explaining just why their customer service was so horrifying. If they do, I'll post it as a follow up. Otherwise, that's all she wrote.
Except this: I actually feel sorry for Sears management. When your company hits a slump, there are a lot of ways to cut corners, almost all of them bad. Once you've fired some management layers, you're still stuck witha lot of real estate, and a lot of store employees. Do you lay some off, keeping the stores dirtier and less well stocked? Do you skimp on the quality of your goods? How about pissing off big real estate developers by breaking leases at major malls? Customer service is a tempting target; it's a cost center, not a profit center.
And if you're just in a temporary slump, it's probably a good target; you can save more money than you lose in customers, even future revenue streams. Unfortunately, if the slump continues, it's lethal. I suppose it's conceivably possible that in twenty years, if Sears has consistently been touted for its outstanding customer service, I might buy something from them again, but it's not exactly likely--and now they need to provide substantially BETTER service than their competitors to win me back. Even computer companies have had to up the quality of their outsourcing, because customers were starting to make this a major factor in their purchasing decisions.
GM made similar sorts of decisions. Labor costs were strangling the company, but instead of going to the mat with the unions, or finding some innovative way to make a better car, they cut costs on inputs. That's why American cars have a reputation for crappy quality; they used cheaper parts and materials and gave the surplus to the unions, so that a $24,000 Buick was, even before you talk about styling or features, going to be an objectively worse car than a $24,000 Toyota.
Management had terrible choices to make. It's all very well to talk about finding "innovative ways to make a better car", but what that ultimately means is "finding a way to make cars with fewer people", which was exactly what Gettlefinger et. al. were trying to prevent. They were hamstrung by state legislatures from finding innovative ways to distribute a better car, and they couldn't even get very far on purchasing, because there was the UAW at their parts suppliers, resisting any price pressure that threatened their jobs or wages.
Management took the easy short term path of cutting corners rather than take ugly and radical action that would have resulted in a strike and a major one-time loss. And now they want $34 billion for a do-over. I don't want to give them one. And I'm sure as hell not planning to give Sears another opportunity to cost me 8 work days, nearly $200 in laundry charges, and my temper.
Classic post, and I sympathize.
Don't know if I agree with you on the costs point, though. In particular, if you do a Lean program properly you can both realize cost savings and increase quality in the short and long term.
In this instance, it sounds like you could improve things pretty easily and save money just by applying basic 'first time right' principles. It costs them a fortune to send multiple people out to your place and have you call them multiple times. Likewise, you hate the process. So, if you can figure out a way to do the job correctly the first time, you save money and make the customers happy. Not saying it's easy - consultants make a beautiful living telling companies how they can 'just' do the job correctly the first time - but the principle is simple and in cases like this it's usually pretty doable.
All of this is a long way of saying that poorly run companies tend to be poorly run companies - they're more likely to not really profit from an upswing, to get into trouble earlier in a downswing, and to economize in a downswing in inappropriate ways that leave them less prepared to profit from the next upswing. Sounds like it's all at work here.
Wow.
I've had some horrible customer service stories in my life, but your beats them all together.
But, I am curious about one thing. What was the footnote you intended to write about the TSA?
Keep up the great work!
Ach, sounds like they're outsourcing their customer service to Verizon.
Troubleshooting my internet service the other night: one tech gave me a series of instructions that effectively shut down the vestigial service I was getting. The next tech reversed those same instructions and restored that vestigial service. Three days later, and I'm still waiting for someone to come look at the line.
I worked at Sears when I was in high school and I don't think it was just my 17-year-old arrogance talking when I thought I was the most competent person there. Like the old saw about "turtles all the way down," at Sears, it's incompetence all the way up.
This is why I treat things like washers as disposable. $300 and if it lasts 5 years, great -- buy a new one.
Clearly much of the problem has been caused by the Divine Ms. MM herself: If I were told to arrive between 8:00am and 12:00pm, I'd think that I have a comfy 16 hour window in which to show up. Megs, use "noon" instead.
See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post_meridiem#Confusion_at_noon_and_midnight for discussion. (Please really read this even if "know" "for sure" that the time you designate as 12:00pm is only four hours after 8:00am.)
Seriously, just use "noon" and "midnight". You'll be much happier.
Bonus suggestion: never believe someone who gives you a "standard time" in the summer. New Yorkers notoriously list everything as "EST" even in June when their clocks are set to EDT (Eastern Daylight Time).
Megan, Sears's media relations people will probably never see this post, as they are probably unfamiliar with the concept of "blogs."
Concision helps here: Eddie Lampert is toast.
In any event, two questions: (1) why not foist this problem on your landlord to begin with? (2) surely the time you spent waiting for this "service" is worth far more to you than the cost of a new washing machine?
As to point 1: the solution is simple. Withhold rent from the landlord until he fixes the problem.
As to point 2: washing machines just are not that expensive. A cursory review on froogle.com suggests prices from the mid-hundreds to just over $1,000. Is your washing machine gold-plated? Personally--and I realize everyone has a different calculus--I would rather shell out money for a new machine, solve the problem thereby, and get on with life.
I suspect that similar private sector tales of woe can be told by Cablevision customers, though that one is hard to top.
Sears is just one of those businesses where it is hard to believe they are still around. When I pass one (and I always pass them by) I think : Sears, really? Where's the Mongomery Ward? Like I feel like I'd just walked onto the set of Mad Men.
The only surprising thing is that this is the first time you've experienced such bad customer service.
Here's the deal -- with appliances, you have to find a good, independent appliance guy, and stick with him. It's like finding a good mechanic for your car or a good plumber. If your Sears machine conks (which it will, since this isn't your father's Sears), call up your appliance guy and have him fix it -- even if the Sears Piece-of-Crap Washer is under warranty. They will never fix it right, and you will always have to deal with their unreliable and incompetent system. You have to pay your appliance guy, but you have a much better chance of having him show up and actually doing decent work. And, of course, never, ever, especially with a place like Sears, sign up for the extended warranty deals. You will only be consigning yourself to hell for a couple of extra years.
This is a case where dealing locally works out a lot better. It's better yet if you buy your appliance from your appliance guy -- bigger cost up front, but how many days of work have you missed by agreeing to give Sears your money?
Didn't bother to read the whole rant, but I believe Sears contracts out their repair services. So a generic washer repair man who is a certified sears tech gets the call from Sears after you call up Sears and place a service call.
This doesn't abdicate Sears by any means, but it does mean if you had issues with a particular service there is hope (slim?) of getting him removed from the installer list.
At least I believe that's how it works... I would hope for Sears' investors sake they aren't paying dozens of repair/installers in every state to just sit around waiting for the phone call to run out and fix a part.
I had a dishwasher repairman out yesterday and it didn't go well. He did show up within his 4 hour block, but he didn't actually do anything to fix the problem! Told me to run some vinegar through the dishwasher to fix the drainage problem and to move the drainage hose up. Charged me $92 for the advice. I can buy a new dishwasher for $300, get it installed and the old one removed...and get a new warranty.
But, I don't like living in a society where it's cheaper to dispose of a "durable" good than get one fixed. This falls on both the manufacturers (who could make better products) and repair people (who could charge less money - $92 for a 24 minute appointment)..Arghhh!!!
Agree with Josef--have you ever dealt with any customer serice besides government agencies before? The private sector is far worse than government on this front in my experience. Although in their defense, the government doesn't have to make house calls---they make you come to them.
Horrible customer service is very much the norm, to the point that I'm shocked if I ever have an experience that's not awful, much less one that's pleasant. The only private company I've ever dealt with that I thought had good customer service is DirecTV. Every other time I've had any problem it's been a nightmare to deal with it.
McArdle: My first shopping trip outside Zabar's is worthy of an epic.
This is how everything works these days, you nit. Imagine being ill and that's your insurance company.
Sears has been doing things like this for a long time. They used to get you with the "double double" in the stores: You go to one of their departments that doesn't stink or look like K-Mart that just woke up in Target's bed and pick up something say a tool from their pretty good tool department. Go to the counter . . . there's no one there . . . go over to someone in Womensclothistan . . . get out your wallet . . . have them look at the hammer and say "you have to pay for that over in tools" . . . you say "there's no one in tools" . . . . yeah, you get it . . .
I don't know if this counts as beating your experience, but I had a Sears guy repair a washer at my rental years back and though he fixed it correctly; he spent a considerable amount of the time repairing it and trying to convert me to his church.
Sounds like you need to try an EECB (Executive Email Carpet Bomb). Go the the Conumerist for details:
http://consumerist.com/consumer/complaint-letters/how-to-launch-an-executive-email-carpet-bomb-259713.php
There is contact info for Sears' CEO, along with at least one (sort of) success story, but I don't want to flood my comment with links.
What has happened to the world? The government works a lot better than this. Even my IRS tax audit worked a lot better than this. It took less time, and I won it.
Maybe this is why libertarians are losing their convictions. If the private sector wants to be seen as better, it has to actually be better.
Well, we buy our appliances from Sears and service has always been top-notch. Your solution: move to the Burlington-area suburbs of Boston! :-)
Surely as someone who is obviously intelligent and can write like you do HAS to be smart enough to fix a widget that "does not have so very many moving parts". Any homeowner/renter, with the interweb, can easily fix a washer or dryer on the cheap and in a short period of time.
If you are renting why wasn't the landlord in charge of getting it fixed??.
Nice to see all the posts -- my wife and I got reamed out by Sears over a washer/dryer too...
Megan,
I feel your pain, and thought my recent Sears mishap couldn't be topped, but yours may take the cake. I recently went to Sears for a public "friends and family" sale to buy a steeply discounted Samsung Washer and Dryer set. The sale started at 6 pm, so my wife and I arrived at 5:30 pm. The saleswoman said she could ring us up immediately. In fifteen minutes, the order was complete, and we thought the whole circumstance was the least painless Sears experience we've ever had, but we were so wrong.
As we were leaving, my wife noticed that the saleswoman had forgotten to input our new address -- we had moved -- and instead used the address on record. Since the order was complete, she said the only way to change it was to void it, but by doing so, our delivery changed from 2 days to 2 weeks. She voided the second order in an attempt to get a better delivery date, but it jumped another two weeks making it a month long wait!
At this point, we were at the store for about an hour, and we spent another 90 minutes fighting with them. Eventually we left with the month long wait, and a $200 discount, but we didn't end the fight. We picked it up again on Monday and Tuesday, when finally the store manager intervened, and upgraded the order to a step up model. But wait, it doesn't end there.
When the delivery arrived, the workers severely banged up and scratched them bringing them into the house. After having no luck with the corporate number, I told my wife to call the store manager and threaten to return them and take our business elsewhere (after all Black Friday was a few days away and I was privy to similar sales offers from Lowes and Best Buy). The manager responded immediately, and offered two choices, more discounts, or new replacements. We opted for the replacements, and the second time was a charm.
We're now very satisfied with the Samsung washer and dryer, which BTW Consumer Reports calls a best pick, but in the end, we'll take our business elsewhere because even as inept as Home Depot and Lowes are, they aren't as bad as Sears.
MW
My most recent experience with Sears is less heinous, but still annoying.
First, a bit of backstory: my father is semi-disabled. He has had some severe knee damage and has to use either a walker or cart to get around. So shopping is quite difficult.
He wanted to buy a necklace for my mother for Christmas. There was one advertised in the Sears newspaper insert. So, figuring that he better check it out before he went to the effort of going out and looking for it, he tried finding out the length, and details of the clasp on Sears' online site. No go. For that particular item number, the DID NOT LIST THE LENGTH*
*which leads me to suspect that it's actually a choker, but whatever.
So he calls the store. Gets put on hold for five to ten minutes. Finally gets a guy. Asks the guy about the necklace. Guy puts him back on hold. Guy comes back. Asks the item number again. Puts my dad BACK on hold.
Finally, guy comes back to say:
we're sold out of them. We might be getting two in tomorrow, you can come out and see.
My dad said: that is not what I asked. I wanted to know how long the necklace was.
Guy: I don't have that information. Check our online site.
So, my dad called another merchant that had a comparable item. The woman - without putting him on hold - told him (a) how long the necklace was (b) what the clasp-style was and (c) "We have several in stock; do you want me to hold one for you?"
Guess where my dad bought my mom's Christmas present?
It makes me sad because Sears used to be such a staple place to shop, but I suspect they're going to die out in a few years from sheer incompetence.
Oddly enough, in the last week I've gotten several wrong-number calls from Sears about scheduling a repair for my washing machine. Next time I get one I'll direct them over to you, Megan.
The simple lesson is this: Never ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, buy anything from Sears. I personally recommend GE - they farm out their warranty service to locals who care about your business. You even deal with the local service after you schedule the appt through the automated line - humans actually answer the phone and everything! The tech has a cell phone and will call you! Why do you think GE is one of the best run companies in the world, and Sears has sucked since about 1910?
My brother-in-law worked for Sears in the corporate offices in Chicago. He left after just a few months. I wasn't surprised.
I will also not be unhappy if Kmart disappears. The Kmart world HQ in suburban Detroit is a next-door neighbor of my parents' church. It's one of the most hideously ugly buildings ever built. It looks like a fortress. I'm seriously hoping someone scraps it.
Unfortunately, we had an experience almost exactly like Megan's with our GE dishwasher. The whole story is too long to go into, but the stands out:
After the sixth (or perhaps) seventh scheduled visit (the first five or six having either been useless or no-shows), I got hold of a dispatcher who promised that she'd schedule us as the first visit the next day. When no one had come by 10 AM, I called GE, reminding them that we were supposed to be first, and was told "That's not possible. We don't make the schedules, the technicians do."
I don't know about the people saying this is the norm. I get great service from the merchants I deal with. Of course, I buy almost nothing except guns, hunting gear, and auto parts, and any time I have a problem, I tell the fat bearded guy over the counter that I need to get my wife off my back, so could you please fix this? Now?
Also, when things go really wrong, my wife and I are both lawyers and we have different last names. So there's the "Good morning, my name is Robert Lyman and I'm an attorney representing [my wife]" trick. Works wonders. I highly recommend it.
I guess my experiences in life have been a little too varied for me to make the gov't/private sector distinction Megan does. I've had great service from both sectors and stupendously awful service from both. Lousy service is lousy service, and distinguishing between whether I've paid for that service with my tax dollars or purchase money is a distinction without any meanigful difference when I'm dealing with morons.
That having been said, I feel a little more satisfied when I have good service from the Post Office and the DC DMV than when I have good private sector service simply because those two organizations have such lousy reputations.
Except this: I actually feel sorry for Sears management.
Why? They'll make millions in retention bonuses as they steer Sears right into the ground, and then either Sears will get a huge payout from its completely-cost-free "too big to fail" insurance, or else all the Sears executives will jump ship and get the exact same job at some other retail outfit, because despite their record of failure they (and only they) have the requisite "experience" to helm a major corporation.
That's how it works for America's parasitic CEO class.
Come now, people.
"The Private Sector" is not the same as Sears, and there's no reason here for libertarians (or anyone else) to lose their faith in it.
Sears is going to fail; but that's a failing of Sears, not the private sector.
I agree with Josef - now that you have an appliance that Sears can't competently maintain, find a local repair company (assuming you ever want to handle it yourself, again).
They, unlike Sears, have incentive to serve you well - they don't have the delusion that their Name And Reputation will keep them afloat for years despite a decline in quality (at least until Granny's generation are finally gone), and they live off of referrals.
It is, as usual, a matter of incentives.
(Similarly, the Sears repair subcontractor in your area appears to be overwhelmed by the quantity of business - or simply doesn't care about service quality because Sears is paying him no matter how bad it is.)
I understand why computer companies work this way; most of them don't expect much in the way of repeat business. But Sears isn't selling a cheap commodity with razor thin margins that can be fedexed to tech support or thrown away.
That was the old Sears, such as it was. The new Sears, such as it is, can be found flailing in the same caged deathmatch as all other North American chain retailers to wring the last bloody dime out of the Chinese turnip -- hoping with their eyes wide shut that they just struck a deal with a reputable manufacturer in Shenzhen province, and not the half-cocked crackerjacks that just opened a shop next door and are still negotiating material supply contracts with Niq-Xov-Qin's 24/7 Lead Distribution & Baby Food Supply Service.
I'm with the other posters on this one, you need to either get in touch with a local appliance service operation, or start learning how to do it yourself (no, really -- you have some basic mechanical dexterity, and you took a week off from work anyway, so why not put it to good use learning a new skill?). A modern washing machine has a motor, a transmission assembly, a couple flow control valves, some miscellaneous plumbing, and a control panel. That's pretty much it, and a failure in any of these is usually fixed via modular replacement. Disconnect the plug, shut off and disconnect the water, and go crazy.
I don't know what world you live in but in my opinion customer service is as bad or worse than government service in a whole slew of industries. Try getting your cable repairman to make it to your house within an 8 hour window.
"Concision helps here: Eddie Lampert is toast."
When Fairholme Fund portfolio manager Bruce Berkowitz held a conference call for investors last week, one caller asked him, "Why are you and Eddie Lampert the only two people who still believe in Sears?" Berkowitz responded with an analogy comparing Sears bears to the Germans who voted for Hitler in the early 1930s.
"McArdle: My first shopping trip outside Zabar's is worthy of an epic."
That was funny. Actually, she could probably write a post about what happens when Zabar's announces the 'clearance sale' for its sandwiches toward the end of the day: the mores of civilization break down and Upper West Siders elbow past each other to get a dollar off a tuna sandwich.
Should have gone with a Maytag. After all, that nice repairman in the TV ads seems like he's got nothing to do in case the washer breaks.
PS, why do these type of things always happen to Megan? This tale of woe is not even the worst we've seen on her blog - the old Comfort Inn tale of woe was much worse.
one caller asked him, "Why are you and Eddie Lampert the only two people who still believe in Sears?" Berkowitz responded with an analogy comparing Sears bears to the Germans who voted for Hitler in the early 1930s.
In other words, "I support them because I have a tenuous grasp of reality and no internal monologue."
"sam" and others are correct: Sears outsources its installation and repair work. Some subs are good, many are awful, although Megan's experience of Soviet-style indifference takes the cake. One of the Boston-area TV stations has done repeated consumer nightmare segments about Sears repair service, so I'm glad to hear from "ncz" that at least up in Burlington, they've got a good rep (for now).
"In other words, "I support them because I have a tenuous grasp of reality and no internal monologue.""
Berkowitz has a great track record, but I think he's wrong on Sears and Lampert.
Berkowitz has a great track record, but I think he's wrong on Sears and Lampert.
Well, I think he's wrong on Hitler voters.
re Eddie Lampert, from Wikipedia:
"Between September 19 and October 24, 2008, Lampert saw his nine largest equity stakes lose $5 billion. The losses were broken down as follows:$3.6 billion from Sears Holdings, $587 million from Auto Nation, $480 million from AutoZone, $174.7 million from Home Depot and $162.4 million from Citigroup[11]."
So Eddie Lampert has already been toasted.
When will Sears come begging for a bail out?
I learned never to buy anything with a motor from Sears before I could shave, i.e, mid-70s. Nothing like a perpetually broken electric typewriter to make term papers a special hell on earth. Some have said Sears got better but there is always a story such as this to tell the truth. My aunt bought a Sears lawnmower and after the 4th time not starting when she went out to cut the grass, she made them take it back. Anyway, when I can buy a similarly or lower priced items that doesn't involve Sears, why risk it.
Words to live by: "If it says Sears on the label, run fast as you're able"
Of course, you have to include their other brands as well and even national brands if Sears will be involved in the repairs.
It takes a special company to create an impression that keeps you from buying from them for 30 years. Sounds like they've perfected the art of customer alienation.
This is how everything works these days, you nit. Imagine being ill and that's your insurance company.
You must be living in Canada or something. The only customer service experience I've had that rivals Megan's was with Dell, and I've long since quit doing business with them.
My health insurance company is no trouble at all when I call them. They're even American, I think.
I had an on-site extended warranty on a snowblower from Sears. When the discharge shute cracked last December 20th, the soonest they could offer to have someone show up was February 2nd. February. On a snowblower.
The main difference between Sears and the DMV is that when Sears gives sucky service, you can go somewhere else for a washer.
Oh, and Sears at least makes a pretense of caring.
Two words: Appliance Samurai. http://fixitnow.com/.
When our washer conked out last year, I was able to diagnose the problem, order replacement parts, and get that puppy working again with 1 hour of labor and $30. OK, we're both handy with a wrench, but still--way better than waiting for the repair guy.
Dan, you're a lucky ducky!
Hopefully you don't have any real health problems. That's when the definition of insurance is money you pay to be denied coverage.
On the broader point, Sears screws us no more or less than the rest of the me-first gang. Pity MM has to have this inconvenience disturb her agitation for oligarchy.
Umm, didn't the silliness of that sort of reach out to you at some point? It certainly doesn't amaze me that Sears "Trained & Authorized Technicians" work on ... work days. Or should the repair people have to work Saturdays & Sundays to meet your schedule?
However, if anyone could solve that problem of "working on a work day," the market would sure reward them, wouldn't it?
We'll also note that Sears "Authorized & Trained Technicians" represent a sort of ... privatization, if you will. How much would you bet that the situation might improve if all involved were actual & well-paid Sears employees?
One last question: You were kind enough to let us know what countries the "nice woman" & the "horrified call center operator" "sounded like" they were in, but you didn't let us know what country Larry's voicemail sounded like it was in. Why was that?
Re: Today is the day when a private company actually succeeded in giving me customer service as bad as that of a government agency.
I've never had a particularly bad experience with a public agency. Instead my customer service Hall of Shame is populated entirely by private businesses. Pride of place goes to Time Warner Cable, a ripoff transmission shop in Novi MI (forget the name), a certain Taco Bell in St Pete FL, Charter One Bank, and (all time lowest of the low) Expedia.com
Dan -
I'm in the US and have had many nightmares with my health insurance. My son needed years of therapy because of traumatic brain injury, and CIGNA and the hospital would bat me back and forth every year before finally deciding to cover it. CIGNA often put me off by demanding that I re-fax them every single medical record from my son's birth onwards before I could ask a question about the coverage decision, because their policy didn't allow them to look at their own past records, so they needed to have everything submitted at the same time before any review of each year's decision could be made. No matter how much I sent them, they would always say something was missing and I'd have to start over.
One year I counted 27 calls back and forth between the insurer and the hospital over a difference in their decisions (a difference that cost me an extra $5,000 or so, beyond my maximum out of pocket of $2,000). Each side simply kept saying "no, we're right, you should talk to them again". When I finally broke down and begged, they talked to each other directly and cleared it up in 2 minutes (hospital: "it's supposed to be billed this way"; CIGNA: "oh, OK, I'll change it").
The problem was that neither side that I had to deal with really cared if it got worked out. The insurance company wasn't particularly anxious to pay, and the hospital knew that they could force me to cover anything that it didn't get from insurance, so both sides were perfectly happy with the status quo and I was stuck in the middle. It's like Megan trying to get service after it has already been paid for.
Luckily, when things got bad enough, I could count on my employer's human resources people to step in and talk to the insurer, and finally my employer switched away from CIGNA completely. If the HR people hadn't stood by me, I doubt that CIGNA would have bothered to straighten it out.
I had problems with Sears when I asked them honor their warrenty.
I will not ever purchase anything at Sears again. If you can't honor a warrenty there is no point.
Josef's comment yesterday (9:31 a.m.) was right on. Even if your Sears machine is still under warranty, call an independent local appliance repairman. You'll pay, for sure, but he'll probably arrive around the time he says he's going to arrive, and the problem will most likely be fixed the first time.
We have Sears Kenmore laundry machines at our home - both purchased new in 1996 - and thankfully we didn't buy the extended warranty. And apart from a broken door switch on the dryer, which I replaced myself, neither one has ever given us any trouble.
When they do die off, though, I'm sure we'll go with Maytag.
I swore off Sears earlier this year after moving house and ordering new appliances SIX WEEKS in advance of our moving date. They never showed up on the date Sears agreed to and reconfirmed a week before. Twelve calls to their "call centre" got nowhere. They couldn't even find a record of the original order, pretending it had never happened even though we had paperwork showing it had and further showing we were long ago billed on our credit card. They told us it would be 2 weeks minimum before appliances came. This includes, let it be pointed out, a fridge, which is not an optional item in the summer months we had just entered. So our food could rot in the blazing heat while we waited for a fridge--that is the option Sears left us with. Nobody knew anything, nobody cared about anything, nobody did anything to right their multiple mistakes. I will, as with you, never buy so much as a pair of socks from them again.
I thought this was apropos:
The only reason to answer the phone when a customer calls is to make the customer happy.
If you're not doing this or you are unable to do this, do not answer the phone. There is no middle ground on this discussion. There are no half measures. Saving 50 cents a call with a complicated phone tree is a false savings. Think of all the money you'll save if you just stop answering altogether. Think of all the money you'll make if you just make people happy.
Good luck Megan.
Nobody else seems to have had any problems with road service. Boy have I got stories! We buy oldish cars, because we can afford them. So occasionally they break down on the road. We have Allstate Road Service. I don't know why they call it "Road" service, since they are almost useless unless you manage to break down at home. In the first place, we live in Chicago, and Allstate (which is headquartered in the northern suburbs of Chicago) has outsourced its road service dispatching to North Carolina. And the only way most of their operators know how to find a location is through zip code. Most of the time, if I break down on the expressway out in the boonies, I don't even know for sure what municipality I'm in, much less what zip code. I can give directions that any local 10-year-old could follow, including mile markers on the expressway, but that's not enough for Allstate. So for several years, our service has been maxed out by September or so because of "too many service calls", most of which never resulted in any service because the driver couldn't find us.
Well, yesterday was a bit different. This time my battery died in a parking garage behind a courthouse. I gave the approximate address of the courthouse, which I sort of vaguely remembered (though not the zip code), and the operator gave me the phone number of the local road service they were dispatching, and said they'd be there in an hour or so. About half an hour later, just to be on the safe side, I called the road service--and was immediately routed to a "mailbox" which was full. I still don't know if it actually belonged to the road service in question. So I called Allstate again, hoping to get the right phone number this time. Only instead, I was routed directly to a road service provider, to whom I gave all the address information. A few minutes later, a very nice gentleman pulled into the space beside me, and being a belt-and-suspenders sort of person, I asked him for a jump (I always keep cables in the trunk.) He gave me one, bless his heart, and just as I was about to pull out, the second road service tow truck pulled up. I thanked him profusely and sent him on his way. But I just KNOW that I'm going to be charged for BOTH service calls.
"The only reason to answer the phone when a customer calls is to make the customer happy"
Sounds like Seth Godin's never had to work a shit job just to pay the bills. Newsflash, hipster: $10 per hour Tyrone really doesn't give a crap if you're happy. The sort of people who would care, won't work for $10 per hour, and the company can't afford to pay enough to get people who are really interested in your complaints. Remember that Seinfeld episode when Elaine complimented the busboy on the soup? Remember what Jerry said? "Why are you telling him that? He's the busboy -- it's all he can do to keep from killing himself". It's sort of like that. No one gives a shit, Seth. Deal with it.
And by the way, how do you screw up the purchase of a tea kettle? Jesus, just go to Target and buy a stainless steel one, you pretentious fuck.
Fred:
I fear you may be missing the point. I can say from personal experience that it is possible to give excellent, world-class, leave-every-single-person-you-meet-smiling customer service working a $10.00/hr job if you design your service culture the right way. It is not all about the money. Employees take their service cues from their supervisors and managers.
It is counterintuitive, but giving great customer service builds a sense of accomplishment and job satisfaction: customers come to you with problems, and you take ownership of those problems and solve them. Often the problem is that the company has not designed systems that allow you to solve the problem: the systems are designed to get you off the phone quickly, which is not nearly the same thing. Both the customer and the customer service rep know that the rep is lying: a lot of the reason the rep doesn't give a shit is because decent people can't lie on the phone for 8 hours a day and still give a shit. It has nothing to do with pay.
To be sure, giving great customer service means you have to charge more per-item to cover the costs of your no-questions-asked policies or even the times when the customer is downright wrong. I contend that from the customer's point of view AND the company's, the premium is worth it to have happier staff and happier customers.
For more information about this, I highly recommend my old boss Ari Weinzweig's book "Zingerman's Guide to Giving Great Service."
But that's just my opinion. If you want to keep "saving money" and buying from places which don't own their problems, and deal with customer service reps that don't give a shit, that is your right as an American.
I will not ever purchase anything at Sears again. If you can't honor a warrenty there is no point.
And yet people still take jobs coaching for the Raiders.
There is no such thing as service anymore. Some examples:
1) I go to my neighborhood Target. A group of employees are having some sort meeting that blocks one of the major aisles (looks like it includes some management, not just kids). I'm going down said aisle with my cart. Not a single one moves to let me through. I wait a few minutes til it breaks up and the employees practically run into my cart in the process, nor do they apologize for blocking the aisle. As Fred said, no one gives a shit.
2) A neighborhood grocery store chain hires only kids (they cost less...) to work the registers and bag groceries. The cashier is surly, the bagger throws bags containing canned goods on top of bags containing bread, eggs, etc., and another kid sent to do price check (in a relatively small store) takes 5 minutes to, in the end, report back the wrong price, thus requiring a 2nd trip. As Fred said, no one gives a shit.
No big company worth it's salt is ever going to spend money on good customer service. Why? Because we tell them over and over again that WE DON"T WANT IT. Good service costs money, but we are unwilling to pay for it. What we want are rock bottom prices on everything we buy. What we want are high share prices for these companies (achieved by cutting costs) to prop up our 401k's. That is why we get appliances that are shit and repair service that is shit. Doesn't matter what store you go to. I've bought appliances at all the major big box stores, and they all suck. Customer service in the store, from the installers, and the repair people.
Solutions? Buy local (can't compete on price, so they do it on service), learn to install and repair things yourself (I did), and don't go back to stores that treat you bad. But then again, you may find no place left to go.
Good service costs money, but we are unwilling to pay for it.
How would they know? It's not like paying more can get you decent service or product. It's the same shitty stuff you get everywhere; it breaks in the same amount of time no matter where you buy it; and the cashier is just as surly at Mom And Pop's Computer Store as they are at Best Buy - because he was fired from Best Buy and the Mom and Pop place was the only place that would take him.
People would pay more for service, if paying more actually got you service. But what the free market gives you is the illusory reputation of good service in order to charge a premium for it. I mean that's the best business plan, isn't it? Charge more for good service but provide average service and pocket the difference?
I have had the usual frustrations that everyone here enumerates. I take a stab at a historical explanation for our communal predicament here:
http://talentedearthquake.blogspot.com/2008/12/megan-mcardle-has-customer-service.html
Bottom line: there are only a certain number of people in this country who have good mechanical aptitude, solid people skills, and are competent, ambitious professionals. 50 years ago, those people would have worked for the local repair shop, or for Sears, which is one reason why Sears was wildly successful for decades. Today, many of those people have college degrees and work for Dell or your local ISP. Or maybe even NASA.
Sears has been a REIT that sells some consumer goods on the side for some time now. The bad customer service should hardly be surprising.
"Bottom line: there are only a certain number of people in this country who have good mechanical aptitude, solid people skills, and are competent, ambitious professionals. 50 years ago, those people would have worked for the local repair shop, or for Sears, which is one reason why Sears was wildly successful for decades. Today, many of those people have college degrees and work for Dell or your local ISP. Or maybe even NASA."
That's one of the dumbest things I've ever read on a blog: we can't get good service at Sears because Sears is losing the battle for minimum wage talent with NASA? Heck, if all the smart people were going to NASA we wouldn't still be sending up astronauts in the space ship equivalent of an Aries K-car. Listen, you can still get good and pleasant customer service, just not in parts of the country where everyone is miserable, like the Northeast. I'm sure you can still get service and a smile in the Plains states, for example (if NASA hasn't poached Iowa's Sears cashiers yet).
In defense of Target, the girl at the returns desk doesn't give a shit why you are returning something, which is a good thing. If Seth Godin bought a normal tea kettle at his local Target, first, it would have worked properly, and if didn't, he could have returned it and gotten his money back, no questions asked. Instead he had to be a hipster douchebag about it.
On the other hand, a satisfied customer of Sears Canada:
I bought a condominium last month and it came with a Kenmore (Sears' in-house brand) dishwasher, about twelve years old, in tasteful Harvest Gold. I'm replacing other older Harvest Gold appliances with white ones. I hesitate over the dishwasher, because it still works really well, and I don't have money to throw around.
Now, this dishwasher is Harvest Gold because it has a Harvest Gold front panel, which can be reversed or replaced to display another colour. The reverse of the Harvest Gold front panel is Black, which would be an improvement, but white would be nice.
The owners' manual, which the previous owner of the condo thoughtfully left behind, says you can order a white front panel, and gives the part number. Or, you could have ordered one twelve years ago.
So I call Sears Canada, asking for part number XYZ, and the nice man is happy to order one for me, but he advises "to save yourself time and aggravation, you may want to call Whirlpool (the maker of the Kenmore dishwasher) directly and see if they actually have the part I'm ordering for you. I'm not optimistic, and you'll find out faster than if I order the part and contact you after we find out we can't get one."
Whirlpool says they don't have the part, and stopped making it years ago. I ask "Look, dishwashers are all basically the same size, and I can't believe that this is the only model with a replaceable white front panel that will fit in the slot on my dishwasher. Is there a white front panel for another model that will fit mine?" The lady on the tells me "There may be another part that fits, but we've no way of finding that out. I'm looking at w a computer here." Which is fair enough.
Nonetheless, I give Sears Canada another call, describe the history to the new person on the phone, and aske her the "Is there part from another model that fits mine?" question, and she says, in a strangely authoritative voice, "Give me a minute."
In a minute she's back and says "The model that was the predecessor to yours takes the same size front panel, and we have it in white. We physically have it. In our warehouse." And a week later I have a white dishwasher.
Sears put in the (white) microwave/range hood on Tuesday uneventfully and on time (with a new electrical box). Next Tuesday the (white) gas range arrives. No Harvest Gold anywhere. (The fridge was white to begin with.)
So, somewhere in Canada (in Saskatchewan, I think) there's a woman who's smarter than her crappy job, who saved me about five hundred (Canadian) bucks.
"Think of all ... you'll save if you just stop answering altogether."
Facetious though it may have been, this seems to be the strategy currently being used by the Labor Department of the state of Rhode Island. As the nation's leader in unemployment, (with Michigan closing in fast), the critically down-sized Labor Department is overwhelmed by the current need for service of those of us unfortunate enough to have lost our jobs. For weeks now the department's "solution" to their staffing shortfall has been to offer the following recorded answer to any attempted phone contact, "Thank you for calling the Department of Labor's call service center. Due to the high volume of calls, we are unable to take your call at this time. Please try your call again later." ... followed immediately by dial-tone. Well, at least they did say "thank you."
Of course, dogged repetition, targeted timing strategies, and alternate phone numbers have all resulted in hearing the same canned dismissal time and time again. And did I mention that my claim processing is suspended until I can speak with someone?
While you may be thinking I should just go on-line or go down there, you should know that there is no longer a "there" to go to, and for my particular procedural hold-up, I was instructed (via computerized message) to call to speak with someone. I anticipated it would be an agonizing multi-hour wait on hold, (I even bought a new battery for the phone so I'd have enough staying power) but I didn't imagine I would just get what amounted to a shoulder shrug and the equivalent of "better luck next time" -- and at least not for days on end.
So, with my finances dwindling, I have been playing a seemingly impenetrable lottery; a dialing for dollars roulette always stacked in favor of the house. It is, as you said, the perfect, paralyzing combination of witless and ironclad.
My increasing hysteria and primal desire to hurt someone began to alarm me as did my genuine financial duress. So, I started making calls to lawmakers. I didn't think anyone could help me really, but I wanted to tell others in the state administration what I thought of such a stupefyingly idiotic "solution."
But lo and behold, after speaking to someone at Sen. Jack Reed's office yesterday, (I went federal), someone at the department called me today, albeit somewhat tersely. My procedural sticking point was resolved in a two-minute call that took two weeks of concentrated effort, a certain amount of trouble making, and outside intervention to accomplish. I'm still reeling a little from my sudden release from the effort.
My sister (who recently suffered through the Sears washer repairman gauntlet herself), directed me to this blog entry because of the days of my incredulous ranting that she had to endure. She thought I'd find your writing funny and gratifying -- and I did.
Thanks.
Wow, Robin, that's the worst story yet. I'm glad that it was finally resolved! Good luck with your job hunt.
How soon before we hear the clamor that we must bail out Sears; it's too big to fail!!