Canada-Complaints.com » Electronics and household app. » Complaint / review: Sears Kenmore Elite - Poor quality and warranty policy | #2326

Sears Kenmore Elite
Poor quality and warranty policy

Following letter details complaint. Head office sent it back to call centre who offered $50. Refused this and asked to speak to someone in authority on 24 Nov. To date, no response. Can only conclude that Sears Canada does not take customer service seriously and would recommend avoid buying appliances from Sears.

&&--Date: 9 November 2011

Calvin McDonald

President and CEO

Sears Canada Inc. Headquarters

290 Yonge St., Suite 700

Toronto ON M5B 2C3

Dear Mr. McDonald:

My apologies for writing to you directly with what may appear to be a minor customer service issue.

However, the inability to date of your customer service staff to get back to me on a timely basis and address the issue led me to believe that a letter to you, that could be directed to the appropriate executive, may be more effective.

Our issue is the following. We purchased a Kenmore Elite bottom freezer 10 November 2009 (Model 501-78353, Serial Number MRSS12126), both for the features as well as the high reliability highlighted in consumer reports.

However, in less than two years of owning the fridge, the door seals went and one of the storage bins broke. Our kids are older and are not rough on the fridge, and we can only conclude that there may have been a design or manufacturing flaw that would lead to such a result. While I know formally speaking, there is only a one year warranty on such parts, I would expect them to last longer on again what we perceived to be a premium product of high reliability.

In any case, we had this fixed (your technician was timely, courteous and did a good job on October 27th – Service Order 77458311). Subsequent to that we contacted your Customer Service by email that day, to note that we were not happy that such a repair had been necessary, and that we thought Sears should cover the cost of the parts ($275.97 plus HST); we would cover the labour costs in the spirit of compromise ($191.98 plus HST).

Customer service sent us the standard automated response message and promised a reply within 3 working days. To date nothing has been received. Today, I called your Customer Service number and discovered that they do not have access to the email complaints, so I repeated myself and she was unable to do anything, likely given company policies.

As you can imagine, this leaves us with a sour experience both in the product and the service, one that will influence future purchases and advice we give family and friends. I would appreciate any attention the appropriate member of your executive team to devote to addressing this complaint and providing a solution agreeable to both of us.

One other point I flagged in my original complaint was more as an observation to help you provide quicker customer service. The new checkout process involving a Playbook, Blackberry and printer took your technician 15-20 minutes to process, given he had not yet been equipped with a card swiper. As someone used to the 1-2 minute checkout procedure at Apple stores (the gold standard), you may wish to revisit the procedure as over the course of the day you may be losing the potential for one additional service call, and reduced hanging around time for customers while the lengthy process is executed.

I look forward to hearing from one of your colleagues by phone or email (your corporate site, understandably, seems designed to insulate the executive team, hence this snail mail letter).

Thank you in advance,

Sincerely,

Andrew Griffith

Date:

Company: Sears Kenmore Elite

Country: Canada   Province: Ontario   City: Ottawa

Category: Electronics and household app.

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