In part 1, I went over how I needed a brave soul like Jose to repair my refrigerator. In part 2, I spelled out the mistake that was made by Sears and the utter disregard they had for my attempts to remedy the problem. This is where things start to get frustrating, infuriating, and weird.

A BIZARRE TURN OF EVENTS

I was getting pretty irritated by this point that my emails to Sears Home Services were going ignored. I was tired of getting passive-aggressive threats from Sears for not paying the amount of $453.70 when I, in fact, had. I was saddened that Sears was actively making me regret my brief time spent with Jose. This had to end.

I went back to the internet for help. I looked up the locations for the Sears Home Services stores closest to me. According to Google, there was one right in my town. However, I immediately recognized it as a location that had closed several years ago. Nonetheless, I decided to call the phone number listed for the location. I was greeted over the phone by the typical robotic voice of an IVR (interactive voice response). The options it gave me to progress through the interaction, much like how the website is organized, were not focused on billing. There was no “billing” option at the top level of the IVR, so I selected the “other” option to see if I could get to the subject eventually. Where it led me was a bizarre surprise.

After pressing a few buttons on my phone to connect with an agent, the robot voice informed me that Sears had a special offer they wanted to give me before I could talk with a customer support representative. Fine. Whatever. Try to sell me whatever you like, Sears. I don’t care what it is, I just want to talk to a person who can help me.

“[redacted] Medical Center. I’m [redacted]. Can you hear me?”

Confused by the fact I had been redirected to a supposed medical center, I paused in my response. “Yes… Can you hear me?”

*click*

She hung up on me. Maybe she didn’t hear me, but that didn’t change the fact that I was getting really frustrated by this point. I had finally gotten to a person and it wasn’t even for the company I was trying to reach. Maybe they had answers, though, so I tried again. What follows is a paraphrased version of my conversation, as I do not remember the exact details.

“[redacted] Medical Center. I’m [redacted]. Can you hear me?”

“Yes, I can hear you. Can you hear me?”

“Yes. Sir, I have a special offer for you today that I’d like to tell you about. In the event that you are home alone and unexpectedly fall, our special alert system can save your life. It’s an inconspicuous device you can wear around your neck that you can use to immediately contact emergency services with the press of a button. Let’s go ahead and get you signed up today.”

“No, no thank you. I’m just trying to reach Sears customer support and I was redirected to you—”

*click*

Livid is a gentle term for how upset I was. That being said, I was also laughing at the bizarre nature of the situation and how Sears operated as a business. Everyone I have told this story to chuckles with surprise when I get to the part about the Life-Alert button, and I never call it by a brand name that people would recognize. I describe it just as I have done here, so the people listening/reading can come to the same conclusion that I did through simple context clues. This strange detour in the Sears IVR has revealed the demographic of their customers, which is quite fitting when you consider the fact that Sears doesn’t seem to have any method of communication using a technology that came about after the year 1995.

Determined to see an end to this without being offered a life-saving button in the event I fall and break my hip yelling at the damn kids on my lawn, I went through the IVR one more time. I chose different options to hopefully find “Billing” buried in the abyss of various subjects the stupid robot voice could discuss. Navigating through “Repairs,” I finally found it. At last, the IVR would connect me with a customer support representative in their Billing department and I could finally get this sorted. Right?

Nope. The ever-so-helpful robot on the phone told me that if I had an issue or question regarding my bill, I should go to another useless FAQ page on the Sears Home Services website and it did so by spelling out the entire URL with its multiple hyphens, twice. It told me the URL for the webpage twice. Then, it disconnected the call.

I was starting to wonder if Sears was even a real company now. Had my refrigerator been fixed by someone who didn’t actually work for Sears and the company was just trying to claim the money I paid him as theirs to keep? Was Jose just a nomadic hero, wandering from town to town, benevolently helping suffering fools like myself with their home appliances? I needed to see if a person even worked at this company, so I got in my car and drove to the location that Google said still existed, hoping for any answer I could find.

When I got to the supposed location that I knew had been closed down, I was neither surprised nor hopeful. There was nothing indicating if the Sears location might have moved or where it might have moved to. No one standing around out front knew anything. The nearest other locations according to Google were hours away, assuming they even existed at all. It made me start to question this whole situation.

I decided to take an alternative approach. Rather than just reaching out to Sears Home Services, I called a number of a parent store that I knew existed in the San Francisco Bay Area. I was able to connect with someone immediately, and my hope was briefly restored. After bringing them up to speed that I needed to talk to someone about my bill, the person replied:

“Unfortunately, we’re not really connected with the Home Services part of the company.”

Yeah! Apparently, no one is, because this company might as well not exist!

She then suggested I talk to my credit card company about potentially contesting the first payment. If the first payment was written off by my credit card company, I could potentially pay the invoice and still be even at the end of it. So, I went through an online chat session with a representative from my credit card company who had a very hard time understanding that the charge of $453.70 was actually approved, but I might need to undo it in order to resolve the situation. The conversation was brief, but it brought me nowhere closer to resolving the issue of the $453.70. If I undid the charge, would I lose the leverage I had with my initial receipt if this situation were to escalate further? If they didn’t receive my payment the first time, why should I attempt to pay them now? The customer support representative in the chat could not give me straight answers to this or how to handle the situation.

No. I couldn’t rely on my credit card company to take care of this. I needed to resolve this with Sears before it got any worse. So, I returned to their website’s Contact Us page. This time, I found an email address for making appointments. Using this address, I sent a copy of the same email I had sent to the previous addresses a dozen times. Within seconds, I got an auto-acknowledgement of receiving my email.

Clearly, the department responsible for handling incoming appointment requests had more effort put into its communication infrastructure than the Billing department. A few minutes later, I got a very short reply with nothing in its content other than: “Please the repair services- 800-###-####”

As you might suspect, this did nothing for my mood. At least I knew a person who worked for this nebulous company responded, unless their bots were rude and bad with grammar, anyway. So, I immediately replied with the following:

“I have called this number and several others that just redirect me somewhere else with no answers. Please, tell me how I can be put in contact with an agent. Thank you.”

Following this message, and the auto-acknowledgement, the agent requested my phone for someone to reach me, which I then provided. A few minutes later, my cell phone started to ring. The call was coming from somewhere in Florida, and underneath the number, two words flashed brightly:

“Scam Likely”

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