George Graham

A Scam? Or Incompetence?

If you give Sears the benefit of the doubt, you will probably conclude they aren’t actually running a scam with their home appliance protection plan. You will just call them grossly incompetent.

After three grueling weeks of nagging, I may finally be getting our washing machine fixed after all. On my third phone inquiry yesterday, DLS Appliance Experts (the company Sears had assigned to fix our washing machine) said they’d found the missing control board.

Someone named Maria said it was in their mail box.

On my previous calls, Maria had insisted DLS hadn’t received the part. She said they were “opening all the boxes” in their shop to see if they could find it.

Someone at Sears had told me – finally after dozens of calls – that they had sent the part and that DLS had received it on Saturday.

Oddly, DLS is closed on weekends so there was nobody there on Saturday to “receive” the part.

You will remember that I reported the dead washing machine on June 30. DLS sent a technician to check it out on July 5.  Sears “estimated” the part would be at DLS onJuly 12.

Nobody has been able to tell me why it wasn’t.

I must have made a hundred phone calls to find out about that missing part. I have never been subjected to such a runaround in my 83 years on this planet. I even sent Monday’s blog to Sears in a futile effort to get some answers.

Anyway, Maria at DLS promised me a technician will come and fix our washing machine on Thursday. That’s tomorrow.

So perhaps – just perhaps – our weeks of waiting may be coming to an end.

I still can’t help wondering if Sears was trying to make me give up and just buy a new washing machine.  If not, then it’s no wonder the company is in trouble. They have to be among the most incompetent outfits in history.

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About the author

gwgraeme

I am a Jamaican-born writer who has lived and worked in Canada and the United States. I live in Lakeland, Florida with my wife, Sandra, our three cats and two dogs. I like to play golf and enjoy our garden, even though it's a lot of work. Since retiring from newspaper reporting I've written a few books. I also write a monthly column for Jamaicans.com