HawthorneVillager.com

Needed a new mattress set for Kevin (our 3 year old), as he's over grown his crib and jealous of his older brother who has a double mattress. We bought his bed frame last week from the Brick, was waiting for mattress set sales and Sears had a great one last weekend so went online to order from them. Over the weekend they had various Sears-o-pedic all on sale. Since he's only 3 years old, we planned to buy a brand-name but close to the cheapest double mattress & box spring set they had. Sears had some Serta and Sears-o-pedic Mix-And-Match sets at really great prices between $200 to $250 at the low end, and they're normally around $399 minimum for those mix-match sets. At the same time Sears had an online coupon code for $50 off any order for $200. So it was really some great deals. They had 4 different mix-and-mattress sets between $200 to $250. Picked a double-mattress set, paid for it online with VISA on Sunday Jan 11th, got an email with an expected delivery date for Jan 14th.

.. but then the nightmare started.

Got phone call Monday from Sears confirming my Twin Double mattress order delivery time for wednesday. I said yes,but it's a Double right? Not a "Twin Double" which doesn't exist. The person just said no sir, we are delivering you a twin-double not a double. I tried to say a Twin Double doesn't exist. It's either a Twin set or a double set, I was pretty sure your sending me a double set. He said no, your getting a twin double set. So he said he'd escalate it to investigate and Sears would get back to me.

Then got phone call on tuesday from a different person saying your Mattress Foundation is ready for delivery and wanted to confirm it would come on wednesday. I said, wait, it's a mix-match set right? Mattress & box-spring (not foundation, which is slightly different than a box-spring). He said no,it's a foundation we're delivering you. I said again can you please investigate as I ordered a mix match set (I didn't even to think to ask what size).

That same day tuesday I got an automated call (not a live person, but it went to my voice mail) just saying my delivery is expected next day

Then wednesday morning I got voice mail from a sears person saying my "foundation" order has been cancelled because the item is no longer available.

Called back, on hold about 6-8 minutes (which feels like a looong time when your on hold) to get a person saying that yes, my "Queen" foundation order has been cancelled due to it not being available. Tried to explain my order was a Double mixed mattress set not a queen foundation. She said in our system it shows I ordered a queen foundation, and that it's no longer available so they had to cancel my order. I tried to explain again to please go back and look at my phone call history, that just on monday Sears called me saying I was getting a "Twin double" mattress set delivered, now your saying it's a "Queen foundation". On hold for awhile as she investigates. She comes back saying sorry but our system shows you ordered a Queen foundation, she then starts to read the description of the queen foundation and describes it as a "Twin Double Eurotop mix and match set" ...WTF.. I'm saying wait, your saying I ordered a queen foundation but when you describe the order your saying it's a "Twin Double Eurotop Mix and mattress set". The description of the order, and the item name your saying don't seem to match. Why are you saying queen foundation if your telling me the queen foundation is a twin-double mattress set. Put on hold again for 5 minutes as she investigates.

Comes back saying there is some technical difficulties with my order. That's why the item name and detail description don't match. But either way the order has been cancelled in the system. While I was waiting on hold I was actually checking sears.ca website and noticed all the Sears-O-Pedic mix and match sets were gone / not listed online anymore. They don't list have any double sears-o-pedic mix match sets for sale anymore, and the other mattresses all start now at around $399 for those mix-match sets while on sunday they were $200 to $250. I try to ask if they can just price-match then from the sales they had on sunday on ANY sears-o-pedic double set. Put on hold again. Comes back saying no they can't because what I ordered was a pricing error and that's why it's no longer available. I said earlier you said it was cancelled because it's out of stock, now it's not available because of pricing error? I asked what about any of the other double-mix-match sears-o-pedic sets that were on sale on Sunday. She said all were pricing errors, sorry, can't order any of them. Hard for me to believe their entire weekend sale on mattress sets was one big error.

At the end she's mailing me a $50 gift coupon that should arrive in 4 weeks.. But I'm still disappointed with my experience. I had used an online coupon to get $50 off the original order anyways. Now all the sales prices are gone, and the regular prices are back up to $399 minimum, with no brand-names but they won't honour any of the prices that were there from sunday.

Now today, went online and just noticed my credit card was charged today for the whole order. Called them back this morning..on hold again.. get someone...they bring up my order and start again about yes sir your Queen Foundation order has been cancelled (I don't even try to explain it wasn't a queen foundation) I say I realize that but you still charged my credit card, it's just showing up today as a VISA charge. She says she'll transfer me to someone else who can help. On hold for 5 minutes again. Get a different customer service person, who of course asks me to start again from the beginning... then she asks if I can email her my billing statement. Wasn't sure what she meant, so I emailed her my Sears order confirmation that had the amount. She gets it afterawhile and says no, she needs my visa billing statement. I do everything online. Try to explain that to her but she says she needs to see my billing statement from VISA. So basically have to wait awhile longer until my next billing statement comes in the mail. She did say that it might reverse itself in 10 business days, so will have to watch.

Either way, been wasting so many phone calls with them back and forth and I always had to start from the beginning on each phone call.

I'm going to do what I can to avoid ordering things from Sears Canada online anymore if I can avoid it. They have some great online sales sometimes, but looks like they don't stand behind their online sales, and their computer system must be a joke to not even track what they're sending, or what the call history is from one call to another.

Post a link to this thread on their Twitter page.

This kind of stuff drives me NUTS.

Not the first time I've heard the whole game of "Order on sale, delay, mistake, then oops out of stock" baloney.
Thanks for sharing.

Best bet when ordering from Sears us to contact Gerry Marsh and the local Sears Home Store. Then you are, a) supporting a great local merchant, and b) getting personal service to help if there is a snafu.

Gerry provides great service! I wouldn't write off Sears, just change how you place an order.

I actually feel guilty that I wasn't my normal polite self on the phone. I don't think it's the persons fault who is speaking to me on the phone. They're following their scripts, computer systems, and the information they have in front of them.

But for their to be so many errors, and not seem to be able to track one conversation or interaction from one day to the next just shows poor management (in my opinion). The time I wasted on this (and stress) was already too much. If it happens to me, must be happening to others as well, and they are going to lose customer good will over things like this. Sorry I just wanted an avenue to "tell my story" and hear other opinions on the experience. Posting this thread is sort of self-therapy for the experience.

I have had nothing but good experiences with the Sears store in Milton and Gerry Marsh (great guy) and his staff. This was all based on sears online sales. I like the convenience on some things like this just being able to order it all online late at night after kids are asleep.

Rick, call the Visa and tell them the story. Tell them you want this charge reversed and that Sears is not cooperating. let them deal with it.

Sears is totally out of business now you should shop at Costco.ca for beds

you mean target is out of business?

That's why their dying on their feet. Sears is essentially starting a slow dismantling of their Canadian operations.

Always deal with Gerry at the sears outlet thing on nippissing.

So much easier.

_________________
Kelly
Amesbury

I have had good experiences with Gerry at the Milton Store. Usually Sears is quite good with orders/delivery but they are losing ground and may be the next major retailer to call it a day in Canada.

Sorry to hear Rick, we were in a very similar position over the last couple of months with an online order with The Brick. Five minutes is nothing compared to these yahoos, at best I got a 20 minute response time. Plus, they don't open their call centre until 11am. From the point of order, it took 5 weeks to receive our goods, of which it was 2 weeks past the committed delivery date. In our case it was a washer and dryer, and we got rid of our old set a day before the informed delivery date which never happened. Thank god for good neighbours as they let me clean my poopy drawers at their place. Going forward for applicance & big furniture purchases, I am only doing in store. Heck, we didn't get anything off either like you did.

What a cluster%^&.

Who's on first ?

If you don't want to deal with Sears, I'd just go to another mattress store and see if you can bargain them down. Mattress prices and "sales" are a joke anyway, including mix-and-match. They have some sort of fake sale every two weeks. We got a King mattress and boxsprings that were listed retail at $3295 for like $1280, tax & delivery included. And it wasn't on sale either. They tried to get me on the mix-and-match BS at the Milton sleep country, and said they only had 2 sets of those particular box springs left in Canada. I ended up getting the exact same mattress at another sleep country location for $300 less, and no mix & match. Ridiculous. Don't trust those guys as far as you can throw them.