Last month, I posted a deal on Converse Chuck Taylor cutaway sneakers at Sears.com. I love Chuck T’s, and $14.99 was a great price for these, especially with a bonus 5000 Shop Your Way points reward ($5) back on each pair dropping them to a cool $9.99. Throw in the “Spend $50, Save $15 instantly” on shoes and free shipping, and this was adding up to a pretty sweet deal on the five pairs of shoes I ordered on July 19th.
At the time of my order, the black pairs were not available to ship to my house, but they were available for ship-to-store. I chose that option and sent them to the Crystal Lake, Illinois Sears. Four days after I ordered, I noticed, as did some readers, that the 5000 bonus points per pair weren’t automatically applied to my Shop Your Way account. After emailing Sears, they credited 10,000 bonus points to my account – enough for two of my pairs of shoes, but not all of them. I figured the rest of the points would come when the rest of the shoes shipped.
On July 24th, I picked my two black pairs of Converse up at the Crystal Lake Sears, and I’ve been stomping around town in my new Chucks ever since. I love them, and I couldn’t wait for my red pairs to come too.
But, on July 25th, I received an email saying that the rest of my pairs of shoes had been cancelled:
I found this very strange, as when I went to Sears.com, the same red Converse cutaways were still $14.99 and available to order in my size. (In fact, they still are right now.) So, what happened?
I called Sears, and a less-than-helpful customer service representative told me that the store these were to ship from didn’t actually have them in stock. I wasn’t sure what she meant, and I asked, “These don’t ship from a warehouse?” “No!” she exclaimed, explaining that when you order from Sears.com, the system looks for a store that is showing the shoes in inventory, and they ship from there. If the store that Sears.com assigns your order to doesn’t actually have those shoes in stock, the order is cancelled.
The representative said I could just reorder the shoes online and try to get them from a different store. I pointed out that the bonus 5000 Shop Your Way points offer ended on July 20th, and I said I’d only reorder if I could also get those points added to my account, as the net $9.99 price was the reason I ordered in the first place. “Sorry, we can’t do that,” she said. I was frustrated, said goodbye, and hung up.
But my love for my new Chucks persisted, and I kept thinking about my red shoes that I didn’t have. Seriously, I could not wait to wear those red shoes with my favorite shorts:
(Tell me you understand. KISS is on tour right now, guys. Rocking out in these shorts, and those shoes, would totally make the rest of my summer.)
A few days later, I was catching up reading some posts at Consumerist.com about Sears’ poor customer service. It reminded me of my bad experience with Sears, and I checked my Discover card to see if I’d received a refund for the three pairs of cancelled shoes. I hadn’t! That prompted me to call Sears’ customer service again. This time, I asked for a manager as soon as I got a rep on the line.
I explained the entire situation, then asked why I hadn’t been refunded for the three pairs of cancelled shoes. The manager I spoke with was sympathetic, and she said she would put in an order to refund the money for the three pairs of shoes again.
Then we got talking about the shoes, and I said I found it incredibly frustrating that Sears couldn’t make this right as it was their error that caused the order to be cancelled. She said that I could simply reorder the shoes as they were still in stock.
Then, I said that the last rep told me that Sears.com orders don’t ship from a warehouse. Was this true? I found her reply so surprising that I wrote it down while we were on the phone!
She said “I can tell you honestly that we don’t have these things in our warehouse. We found a store that accepted the package, but the item was no longer available for them to ship. We can place the order, but we cannot guarantee that the item will be in stock to ship.”
I said “So if I order again, right now, can you guarantee that I will get the shoes?”
She said “We cannot guarantee that. I am just being transparent to you.”
I said “When a store doesn’t have the item in stock that they committed to ship, your system doesn’t simply reroute that order to another store that has stock?”
“No,” she said. “Our system can’t do that. It just cancels the order.”
I was incredulous. Sears is one of the biggest department stores in the country. What a crazy way to do things.
She asked if I wanted to “try” ordering again. There were two pairs left in my size. I said that the 5000 Shop Your Way points were no longer in effect, and they weren’t as good a deal — and I’d already been told there was no way to retroactively apply points from the original sale.
The manager called Shop Your Way to see what she could do. I was on hold for awhile, and when she came back, Shop Your Way agreed to apply the $10 worth of points to my account after the new order. I said that would be great, but I also had a free shipping offer at the time of my original order, and to make things right, I’d like to get the shoes for the price I paid when I first ordered.
The manager said that she could place the order, then immediately credit back the $6.38 shipping charge that the cart would charge, plus $7.16, her figure for the prorated value of the “Spend $50, Save $15” instant savings that was also in effect at the time of my original order.
This was a long phonecall. But after the order was placed, she transferred me to Shop Your Way, where the rep manually added $10 worth of points to my account.
Whew.
So, on Monday, I checked my Discover statement online again. No refund yet for the $38.22 worth of cancelled shoes on my original order. But Monday afternoon, I received a check in the mail from Sears!
Funny how they could back-credit my account for the shipping costs of my new order right away, but the cancelled order came to me via check. Anyway…
Today, August 6th, a box arrived from Sears. Finally, my red Chucks were here.
Oh, but this long story’s not over yet. Stay with me a moment longer, and look closer at my shoes:
Both pairs have security ink tags. Unbelievable.
Now, I guess I’ve got to take the shoes shipped from a Sears back to a Sears to have the ink tags removed before I can wear them.
What a fitting denouement to this story.
I think I’m done posting Sears.com deals.
UPDATE: 8/8/13, 2:26pm Central: A Sears escalations representative called and apologized for all of the hoops I had to jump through to get my order. Sears is sending me a $50 gift card. I did not ask for it – they offered, and I accepted.
willow9723 says
I say, send this experience on to Consumerist also…so that other people can see what Sears does with their fulfillment workflow and how ridiculous it can be. What a crappy series of events!
(P.S. Consumerist stories are always interesting…I added them to my FB just a couple weeks ago.)
Ruby Red says
We are still waiting for a credit from JANUARY that has not come through back when we had an appliance issue. It is unreal how many phone calls my husband has made and absolutely NOTHING gets done. “Yes sir, yes sir. Here is my direct line. Here is the new claim number, etc., etc., etc. We’re so sorry. We’re so sorry. We’re so sorry.” STILL waiting 8 months later…..
Coupon Maven says
One of my readers works for Sears and told me (via Facebook) to contact their “Sears Cares” rep on Facebook. I did that, asking what I should do about the ink tags.
Sears posted back a generic response: “Please send the following information – contact #, screen name (Jill Cataldo), phone # used at time of purchase to smadvisor @searshc.com. Thank you, Dee”
I replied that I simply want to take the shoes to a Sears store to have the ink tags removed – can’t I do that?
No answer. But they’re online and continuing to answer other blog posts. I would have thought this was a “Yes” or “No” answer.
If I have to ship these shoes back to Sears to have the security tags removed, I think I’m going to scream.
TeeKay1972 says
We only use Sears for appliances or tools as we still like Craftsman and Kenmore. I have had the best luck with those items in terms of delivery, warranty honoring or service calls compared to other stores that carry those. However for anything else I will not shop there for as I have had rude customer service, problems with pricing, problem with returns and canceled order. I find their website confusing, coupon codes or online deals never seem to work right, and half the time it links to a product from another store that is not even Sears selling it to you and then returns are really a hassle. I also like Kmart a lot less since Sears took over.
Patch says
a few years back, ATT was offering an internet special, all you had to do was
register and get a 100 dollar gift card, for cable.. So I signed up, the clerk at the
ATT store said I could postpone, which I did, BUT ATT canceled my phone service.
I did not know why they cancelled it, it took a trip back to the ATT store,
on a Saturday evening, luckily, the Manager was able to pull strings and get my
phone turned back on by Sunday morning.
Basically, I signed up for Cable through ATT decided I didn’t want it, and they cancelled my phone service (bill was paid and all that)
Back to your story, we live in such a stupid age with stupid people. I mean go into
a Walmart or local store and ask a clerk something, You might as well pull a monkey out of your butt quicker than you get an answer.
Of course, there are smart people in stores. but the idiots seem to get hired.
Coupon Maven says
I just got off the phone with Sears, and we had a nice talk. The escalations representative I spoke with gave me his direct number and apologized for all of the hoops I had to jump through to get my order. Sears is sending me a $50 gift card. I did not ask for it – they offered, and I accepted.
reddivine says
I have typically avoided shopping at Sears since the mid 80’s when my mother ordered a pair of shoes for me that were supposed to be available for pick up in two weekes but never arrived. Of course she had to call or stop in the store periodically to get any info on the status as she did not receive any phone calls or any other order status updates in the 3 months that she waited. She finally got so fed up that she spoke with the store manager. When that conversation went no where, she told him she would never shop there again. I have purchased mostly Craftsman tools there and a handful of other items over the years but I am constantly reminded why I do not shop there on a regular basis. They just don’t fully understand customer service. After 30 years of my own experiences with their customer service, I don’t think they ever will.
weilwaiting5 says
Way to use the site as a whining forum. Oh no, they didn’t bend over backwards to give you five free pairs of shoes, but instead only gave you one free pair!
Let’s cry to all the people who use the site for coupons. A note: we don’t come here to hear you complain about how some companies don’t give you free stuff (the only reason they do that is so they can get free advertising on your website) or treat you like a celebrity.
Grow up and get over it. Post the coupons. That’s why we come here.
rswehrle says
I was online with Sears.com looking at their freezers and found one that was originally $799.99 down to $499.99 as a “special offer”. I wasn’t able to get the $499.99 price in my cart so I “talked” to the online chat rep. After many minutes, they basically said that I could purchase at the $799.99 price and that they would give me a refund within 3-5 business days for the difference. This was far from acceptable to me, because I wasn’t convinced that I would get the refund. More back and forth with the rep, prompted me to say that I would send this webpage onto the U.S. Attorney General, because they were committing fraud by offering a product at a listed price, but not honoring that price. This didn’t seem to faze them, mostly because they were in a call center in another country. I still wasn’t able to get the price I wanted and I ended the conversation upset and ready to send everything on to the U.S. Attorney General in the morning. (Did I mention I was online at midnight?) I made sure I printed everything I would need along with the conversation I just had with the online rep and I even had them email me a copy of the conversation we had just had, but when I looked at the email, Sears.com had used multiple ** to block out prices and words. When I read part of the conversation, it made me look like I was cursing at the online rep, which was so NOT the case. I was very polite and courteous.
Here’s the kicker. The next morning, I went to the freezer website, which I had put on My Favorites the night before, and sure enough the freezer was priced at $489.99. It was TEN DOLLARS CHEAPER! What?! So, I put the item in my cart and purchased it with out a hitch and it is now sitting in my garage.
All that hassle with Sears.com and I still bought the product. However, I would seriously reconsider before ever purchasing from them again, online or in the store.
—I just checked the webpage and damn if it isn’t at $474.99. I need to see if I can get a refund for the difference, since I just got it this past Sunday. Wish me luck.
8/7/13 UPDATE: I talked to customer service and she did the adjustment no problem, but I don’t get an email stating a credit has been done to my card, I just have to wait and see. Wish me luck. :)
8/9/13 UPDATE: I received my refund on 8/9/13. Very nice. :)
GB777 says
Some of you people and your nastiness just amaze me.
Good bye to you!