My Sears Experience - Walking thru the River Styx

By Terrance Gavan

Pardon the Eruption - Managing Editor

How the Gav fell into a deep dark miasma of unspecified dung.

My letter to Sears after a frustrating 1.5 hours on the phone with several (6) Sears representatives.

At Sears.CA … Customer Service is apparently an oxymoron.

Dear Faceless Sears Canada Dreck:

I received an email with the following:

Terrance Gavan: In the subject line

Case Number : 1768082 re order number 1010089815-00002

We are contacting you regarding an order placed with Sears Canada. 

Before this order can be processed, it is necessary for us to verify some information with you.  For security reasons, we are unable to verify this information through email.

Best results are achieved by promptly contacting the Sears Help Desk at 1-866-816-1700 between the hours of 8:00 am - midnight Eastern Standard Time.

Don’t you dare … ever again to offer that number to a customer!

If you value your client base!

Hah! Jesus Christ what am I saying?

I must be having a sixties flashback.

Now: some background.

I am a writer, a columnist. And for the past two years or so I had carried a credit of $255 on my sears master Card ...

I checked in September and found that my $255 balance had suddenly been whittled to $199 or so. I inquired and was told "service charges" on a credit balance. Whoooweeee! You guys know how to make a buck!!

Let me remind you that I had overpaid old Sears card two Christmases ago. Never used the new Sears Mastercard .. not once.

Now being informed that my credit situation would be whittled to the big squadouche (nothing) in about eight years … so I decided I better spend the balance.

I bought a Boggle Sony recorder on Oct 1. On line

I even placed funds into the Sears account on Monday Oct 4 to handle the 30 dollars overage.

I done did dis’ thru da Internet Banking thingy ... hyup! Paid before receiving the bill! Imagine then my chagrin, shock and fucking awe when I returned from Curling to find a blathering email ... asking me to correct my problem.

WHHHHHOOOOOWWWWW! BACK THIS FREAKING TRUCK UP!

THIS IS NOT YOUR CUSTOMER'S PROBLEM!!!

THIS IS A SEARS PROBLEM. YOU SEE IN THISPARTICULAR CASE I - YOUR ONE TIME CUSTOMER - WAS CARRYING A FREAKING CREDIT!!! CALL A FREAKING ACCOUNTANT AND PLEASE HAVE HIM EXPLAIN THAT TERM TO YOU.  

OR GET A real person to phone me and ask away. Is that asking too much?

Please tell me it is.

And I will forward your response to the credit bureau of Canuckistan.

Now … I have been informed by email that there is a problem. Perfect. Beautiful. My attempt to use up a credit overage has apparently been scuppered.

I am apparently subject to a credit check. I phoned the service number and was redirected 6 straight times. S-I-X

I was redirected again - SEVEN - and was left listening to a ringing phone for three minutes!

On call eight I asked for a supervisor only to be informed that none were extant. I was told at that point that I had a credit card problem.

And that's when I told the young lady that my problem was not really my problem at all … but Sears's problem.

You see I'm an educated man. Have degrees in Philosophy and political studies.

I told the young woman - no profanity involved and I am quite adept at the latter - that I would be cutting my credit card into several hundred pieces and flushing it into the Drag River here in Haliburton.

I also informed her that I would be sending this correspondence to my Member of Parliament - Barry Devolin. Not an idle threat. Barry happens to be a neighbor. I told her that I had a CREDIT!

She said she understood. But you know ....I really don't think she did.

Because if I was on the other end of that phone - and I have done Internet support with AT@T while putting myself thru grad school - I would have said "I understand that Mr. Gavan ... This is a deplorable situation."

That’s all I needed.

Someone to realize that I was an educated and reasonable man who had just been shunted to the edge of an abyss … an abyss so bleak, sullen and so deep that I think I heard the Hounds of Hell howling into the bowels of a canyon cut by the River Styx.

Look it up Homer … it’s in hell.

I feel like Dennis Miller here!

Can a brotha’ get a sign? AMEN! AMEN my brothers and sisters.

It's called empathy ... can you look the word up please?

Like walking in someone’s moccasins.

Ah fuck - forget it!

Of course that's a friggin’ perfect world where a company actually cares about its customers ... and tries to keep ‘em.

When I said I would be writing to the President of Sears Canada that was apparently too much for the poor young woman to handle.

And she hung up on me.

I didn't bother to phone back.

I figured that eight separate calls to 5 different numbers was enough.

So I'm here in Haliburton.

Waving the white flag ... just another faceless peon asnd member of that forlorn and downtrodden lumpen proletariat (Ah shit you look it up yourself you uneducated cretin – pisspop, now I’m Kevin Spacey paying it forward) stomped, stuck and hogtied by the ugly face of THE conglomerate.

That’s you ,by the way. The feckless, flatulent and faceless dreck!

So do me a fecking favor por favor?

Forgive the ubiquitous use of F but alliteration relieves my fucking phone phunk stress levels.

Please cancel my order and send me the balance of my CREDIT CREDIT CREDIT!!! That's the black ledger???

In cash as I don't honor Sears cheques.

I will never be shopping with you again.

This of course will also make a nice column.

I write humor and sports for three blogs; a local newspaper, and my own sports website.

I figured it out.

At $25 per year service charge; my account would be fully drained in eight years.

I'm just wondering.

Will you still be in business in 2018?

Wait!!!

Of course you will.

You'll continue to attract a plethora of customers on the basis of your stellar and salubrious service.

My god.

It remains absolutely inconceivable to me that you would treat a customer who not only pays his account on time, but overpayed it so regularly that he ran up a $250 credit.

I am flummoxed. Speechless. Moribund. Hiccupped and hog-tied!

Downright slack-jawed.

Wait, I just saw Don Quixote - he told me to stop tilting at windmills.

I told him it's none of his effin business.

Oh shit he just fell of that goddam’ horse again.

I'm calling 911.

Where was I?

Oh yes tilting windmills!

I remain absolutely riddled with wonder and awe at the unmitigated gall of your service department and your on-line staffers and the people at Chase credit Card services who offered 5 minutes of card number punching before informing the customer that … Oh right, by the way ... this five minutes you just spent --- hah! guess what?

We closed at nine! Call back tomorrow.

Sucker!!!!

Holy cantilevered porcupine shit.

That's genius.

Who the hell thought that one up?

Give him the Peter Principle Award.

You know the one ... where the guy is promoted to his own level of incompetence.

At which point he stops progressing … and is finally sent to the Sears Service Desk!!

Whoooo weeeeee.

I’m spitballin’ here faceless dreck!

But I’m pretty sure I’m close.

Here's a hint ... Just tell me that you're closed when I make the goddam call??

Is that an idea? Is it a good idea?

Is it a customer-first Idea?

Wait ... I'm assuming way too much here.

I'm assuming that you actually care about your customers. 45 minutes spent talking with your service representatives (by the way in this case service representative is oxymoronic) - is all it took for me to figure out that you actually don't give a tinker's damn about your client base.

And oxymoronic?

Happy Sears customer.

By the way ... oxymoron is a contradiction in terms.

Jumbo Shrimp / military intelligence / sears service.

Cash me out please.

Release the hostage.

Go ahead ... take the money.

I give up.

But next time.

Next time you decide to play fast and loose with my hard-earned cash.

Could you please at least have the decency to send a hoodlum with a gun to my door?

I'd feel a whole lot better handing it off to a wise guy - than to a faceless pirate.

It would also make for a funny anecdote.

Unlike this sad, sullied, slimy slide from the silly to sublime.

Ah shit ... you know … I thought I was doing the right thing paying off my credit card bills as soon as they appear.

Apparently I was wrong.

Ah what the hell ... order me a $5000 John Deere snowblower … it’s almost ski season here in cottage country.

I'll pay the minimum $60 stipend per month for the next 40 years ... heeeeeeeee hawwwwwwwww!

Ahhh shit ... I feel liberated already.

Can a brotha' get an amen??

And remember ...

I WAS CARRYING A CREDIT!!!

CREDIT!!! CREDIT! AS in:  I overpayed my fucking balance!

CREDIT!

THEM ARE THE BLACK NUMBERS.

DO YOU HAVE AN ACCOUNTANT STANDING BY?

PLEASE …. PLEASE tell me … tell me you have an accountant.

Tell me you didn’t send me this alien probe of a credit screed inquiry on the basis of some whimsical exploitative dalliance with your client base.

Please tell me you have something better than “Oh, this mother hasn’t used his fucking Sears Mastercard once … and he’s carrying a CREDIT! Let’s bust this motherfucker!”

In case you didn’t get the reference it’s Jack Nicholson in “A few good men”

All I’m looking for is ONE good accountant!

“The truth? You can’t handle the truth!”

 Find that accountant please!

ASK HIM TO EXPLAIN IT TO YOU.

I'm too fucking tired. I just came back from curling 9 ends.

I have two stories to write before 6 am!

I'm copying this to the president of Sears Canada and Barry Devolin. My MP and next Speaker of the House.

I can honestly say that you guys broke the record tonight.

I can testify that I have never been treated so shabbily and with such complete and utter disregard and contempt.

As. I. Was. Tonight.

And hey!!!

I used to work in advertising. So that's one high friggin’ bar you cleared tonight ... with your wee sally forth into the twilight zone of customer service.

Yours quite enviously,

Because I am absolutely amazed that you still have a client base to abuse.

Terrance Gavan

Managing Editor

Pardon the Eruption

www.pardontheeruption.com

Sports / Humor - County Voice - Haliburton

And……..

Former Sears Customer -- with a

CREDIT CREDIT CREDIT CREDIT CREDIT CREDIT CREDIT.

Jesus freaking Christ, what do you do to people who have the temerity to max out at $20,000? Send the Panzer Tanks into fucking Poland???

Vas ist up vit you mein herr???

Dost itzen credit?

Vas iss los?

Duuuummmmkopfffffrf!

Ahhh shit it's da’ Blitzkrieg Baaaaaabbbby!!!

Run for the hills … Hide the nun.

I’m making  a break for Switzerland!!!

Call the Von Trapps!!!!

Yours in vituperative vindication.

gav@pardontheeruption.com

PS

I'll send you the column.

TGav

Oh, and “pardon the fucking eruption.”

But you guys really know how to drop a fucking ball!