This is the not-so-thrilling conclusion to my odyssey with Sears Home Services, a company with whom you should never do business. If you want to know how I got here, see the previous entries in this series.

FLUSHED OUT THE OTHER SIDE

Despite the fact that I expected a call from Sears, I let the call go to voicemail because I receive scam phone calls on a daily basis and this could have been yet another instance in which I could get connected with someone else who has nothing to do with Sears—I wasn’t about to listen to another aggressive sales-pitch about something I didn’t need. Thankfully, the person left a message and confirmed they were with Sears. Before I could call back, the same number called again. This time, I picked up and was finally talking with a real person who supposedly worked for the nearly non-existent company.

After giving him the summary of my situation, he routed me to an agent in their call center. This individual did not speak English as their first language but was intelligible enough that I was able to understand them and they were able to understand me. After apologizing for the inconvenience, they gave me instructions on how to finally resolve my billing dispute with them. Can you guess what they told me to do?

I was to send an email to them with the invoice details and attach the proof that I paid them. I was to send the same information I had been sending them in my previous emails. And, I was to send all this to the same email address I had already sent over a dozen messages with the same information.

Obviously, I was a little concerned about whether or not they would receive my message, so I told them to stay on the phone while I sent it this time. When I did, I got the first auto-reply from that address. After all this time and so many messages, there was finally life in this email address. Unfortunately, it said this:

When I asked the representative why I might have received the message, they said, “It must be because it’s Saturday.”

So you don’t get emails over the weekend?! Do you guys turn off your servers on Fridays after 5:00? What the hell is going on?!

At an impasse, I asked the representative what to do now. They suggested that I try sending an email again on Monday, despite my protests about how I did not expect this to work. Nonetheless, I confirmed that I would do so. I also requested that the representative add a note or something attached to whatever user account they had with my customer history that I had attempted to reach them and that I would try again on Monday. After the representative supposedly added that information, confirmed it with me, and hung up, I waited until Monday to try once again.

The result was the same as it had been many times before. No auto-acknowledgement, just silence. Then, a week later, I got a call from somewhere in Illinois. There was no warning of a scam this time. I let it go to voicemail and a very disgruntled-sounding individual left me their name and number saying they were from RMS LLC. Who is RMS? The abbreviation stands for Receivable Management Services and they are a debt collector.

Despite it being a week after my latest attempt to contact the company that practically doesn’t exist, all my rage came rushing back. I immediately called them back and was put in touch with a much perkier and more friendly voice than the one who had called me. I kept my voice calm and polite. Having worked in customer service for several years, I wasn’t about to unleash my frustration on this person who had nothing to do with what had transpired so far. She acknowledged that she understood my situation and asked that I send an email to their address with a reference number and the evidence that I had paid the $453.70. After hanging up, I did so and immediately got an auto-acknowledgment that they had received my message. A week later, I hadn’t heard anything from RMS, so I called again. I was once again greeted by the same friendly voice who, after checking against my reference number, told me, “You’re all good, sir. The charge has been overturned and nothing else is required on your end.”

Perhaps it’s an anticlimactic ending to the story, but it’s one that makes this whole situation better and easier for me to laugh at. This is the first time I have had to deal with a debt collector company, and it was a surprisingly positive experience in comparison to what I went through—after I had come to terms with the fact that Jose would never come back. I’ll admit, there was more I could have done to reach Sears before it got to that point. I could have used the more archaic methods like snail mail. I could have driven to the other nearby towns that Google claimed had Sears stores and hoped that these stores were still physically there. However, when you’re accused of not paying someone (knowing that you most certainly did), you’re far less inclined to go above and beyond to resolve the problem. I already felt like I had done more than I should have.

The moral of the story is that, even though they may not have enough people to manage their phones or make appointments, it’s still better to stick with local businesses and support them over bigger brands when you have the option. Oh, and never do business with Sears. They’re a terrible company and deserve to go out of business completely.