Is This As Good As It Gets?

That's the question I was left to ponder after having a second team of Sears delivery men/installers at my house last week. They were sent out to check some vibration in our new washer and to adjust the hookup on our new dryer so we perhaps would have room to again be able to close the doors on the laundry area.

In all fairness here, I have to say that the initial delivery/hookup twosome were as cordial as you ever could want. This second duo, however, were at the opposite end of the spectrum. I guess I was a bit dumbfounded why a company that has been in business more than 100 years (Sears first was founded as a mail-order catalog business in 1893) would allow characters like these two in their customer-service ranks.

If my encounter last week is typical, though, then it's evident that some re-training needs to occur, starting with how you're supposed to treat customers. Learning how to do the job right also is necessary. This photo at right shows the incredulous way the second set of Sears delivery men/installers left the vent hookup on our new dryer. And this was after I had handed them a vent periscope, which they promptly said wouldn't work... before they even bothered to take it out of the box and examine it. At our insistence, they eventually removed the periscope from the box but still declared it could not be used for our hookup.

Then we had to listen to them bemoaning the fact that the newfangled washer and dryer we had purchased weren't designed to be installed in a laundry area like the one we have. They also didn't want to hear what we were telling them the saleslady had said about the fact the washer wasn't supposed to vibrate. Their retort went something like this: "Those sales people will tell you anything just to make a sale."

Both my wife and I grew so weary of listening to their "crap," we decided just to let them finish, so they'd be out of our hair. Once they were out the door, I grabbed my camera and took a series of photos of their shoddy workmanship, one of which is the photo above. We then called our son, Jeff, in North Carolina, and asked, when he had some spare time, if he'd mind coming by to see what he could do about hooking up the dryer so we didn't feel like we were taking a chance on burning down the house if we used it.



As a result of that phone call, Jeff came up to our place on Saturday and, using that same periscope the Sears people told us wouldn't work, assembled the tidy package you see in this photo. Now I ask you: If you had a choice of the two installations, which one would you prefer?

Later, we took copies of the two photos used with this story to the appliance manager at the Sears store where we made our purchase and explained the whole episode to her. She and an assistant wasted no time in apologizing for the debacle we had experienced and was more than willing to meet our request for scheduling a trained and fully qualified service tech to come to our house to check a couple remaining concerns we have with the new washer. That visit is supposed to take place this week, and I dare say I'll get satisfaction--one way or the other.