The Good Life at Sears?
If you didn't catch it, I wrote about Michael Burnett and his complaint about Sears after a 37-inch LCD Sylvania TV he purchased there stopped working after 2-1/2 months. Boo on Sylvania for not even bothering to call me back about Burnett's problem with their TV, but the brunt of his anger was directed at Sears for canceling service calls and giving him the runaround about fixing the set.
Boy, that column must have hit a nerve because I heard from more two dozen readers yesterday by e-mail.
Dorene Schmidt scolded me for only telling the bad story about Sears:
It seems unfair that you wrote such a derogatory article on Sears without seeking the other side.
In 1997 we purchased a 54" screen. We had a few problems in the first few months but they were quickly fixed. NINE YEARS later, we began to have one problem after another, having a repairman out to fix it. We maintained a service policy on our television and were told since they were out three times in a few months our television would be REPLACED. Although television similar to our were now selling for less then half of what we paid for it on sale, we were told to go to the store and pick out a TV for the price our television originally sold for! We ended up with a very nice 52" LCD television. We have never had problems with Sears in the 35 years we have dealt with them.
So if you're going to print ONE bad news story, making Sears look bad, than you need to do a story on the GOOD side of Sears.
No, I don't own Sears stock and am not being paid to e-mail this to you.
When I was growing up, my Mama and Dad used to take the mess of us (seven kids and a cousin) to shop at Montgomery Ward and Sears about once a year right before school started so we could buy one new outfit each. That's all they could really afford. So I have a fondness for Sears.
I've probably mentioned before, a lot of the companies I end up writing not so wonderful things about are companies I either personally do business with, have had good experiences with or experienced something bad there, too, but hopefully, if I'm doing my job, you can't tell.
In this particular case, I felt a little bad about taking Sears to task because of the memory of a good family experience there. But as I said in the column, Sears can't keep relying on its past. Since K-Mart bought Sears, it seems more and more like the company has no sense of identity whatsoever and struggles every day with finding a sense of its place in the retail world. That's a shame.
With that said, I don't want it to ever be said that I'm not fair. As regular readers of my column know, I'm just as likely to call a consumer out for bad behavior as I am a company. I try to be as fair as possible to both sides, knowing full well that both sides can make mistakes.
I shared Dorene's story with you to show that Sears does do right by some customers. if you're one of them, bring it on. I'll publish your good experience with Sears here.
And also to be fair, I'll post parts of the other angry e-mails I received about Sears. Either way, you'll see both tomorrow or Wednesday. So if you want to defend Sears and share your good story, do it now.
A native of Vietnam, 