| Original Comment |
Went to our local Sears store to purchase a home entertainment system, towels and hopefully a pasta maker for our Kitchen Aid. We spent about 10 minutes looking around the electronics department before one of their associates finally approached us. We asked the price of the system, he looked it up and then said "if you need any more help just ask", and walked away. He never asked us if we wanted it or offered to show us another system. We continued to wander around the department while the employees spent their time watching the football game on TV and ignoring the customers. We found a retro popcorn maker that we were interested in but it had no price. We walked around and around and around the display and no one came to help us - there was a group of about 5-6 appliance employees standing about 10 feet away, engrossed in their conversation and ignoring us, the customer. No one came to help. By this time I'm really annoyed as the customer shouldn't have to hunt down the staff, especially when there is an overabundance of employees with absolutely nothing to do. We took another pass through the electronics department and just happened to physically run into an employee bursting onto the floor from the back room. He asked if he could help us with anything. We told him we wanted a home entertainment system. He asked if someone else had been helping us and we told him no, someone just gave us the price on a system but did not help us. He said, "well, if we can be of any help, just let us know.", and walked away. Unbelievable. Now I was really mad. We went to the towels and I found several colors I liked but only one or two towels, so we were unable to make that purchase. Again, no sales associate ever approached us in the entire 20+ minutes we were in that department. We went to small appliances thinking we could find the popcorn maker there - no luck. We made a final pass through the electronic department and finally got a sales associate to reluctantly help us. He told us that the home entertainment system we were originally looking at was a piece of junk and he doesn't know why they carry it. He showed us a Sony system, we were happy with it and decided to make the purchase. He was very put out at having to get us the price on the popcorn maker, but did so. We were going to make that purchase as well and also purchase some extra controllers for our Wii, sheets and towels I found in another color. This sales associate told us that the Sony system we wanted was not in stock and could not be ordered, so we couldn't get it and walked away. My husband yelled after him to find out if there was a comprable system and he told us no and continued to walk away. He never offered to sell us the floor model, nothing. I put back all of the merchandise and we left the store. On the way out, my husband found a t-shirt for our son on the clearance rack but it didn't have a markdown ticket on it. He asked the cashier how much it was and she just pointed to a price check machine in the clothing department. It didn't work. We found another price check machine since the cashiers were now all busy with other customers and the t-shirt was not on clearance. We went to K-mart, Sears sister store, and found everything we wanted with no hassle. We'll never visit Sears again after that lousy customer service experience. |