Sears Oakville. Avoid.

Get good service, tell a few friends; bad service, tell them all. And that is what I am doing here, in an off-topic post.

Executive summary: Avoid Sears Oakville, and in particular their clock and watch department.

I took  my Omega watch in to them a few months ago to have the battery, which had recently finally died after several years, replaced. This is a thin watch and is hard to handle. The last battery was installed there too, but by a watchmaker.

The current manager of the clock department, Nancy Kaye, told me she was not a watchmaker.

That became obvious. She broke my watch. I got it back not working, with the dial turned. She tried again: now completely broken, and the dial dented.

“We have no way of knowing it was working when you brought it in”, she and Sears say. Cost: $350 plus tax. My cost, they say.

So beware, when you bring a perfectly functioning watch (and not a cheap one either) into the clock and watch department at Sears, and they break it, you end up paying, and they wash their hands of it. Implicitly accusing you of lying.

This is not acceptable. My letter to the Better Business Bureau has gone out. Facebook is next. Small claims court too, maybe. Thousands of you now also know that having Sears do anything is taking a huge risk. I assume this will cost them much more than owning up would. I hope so: this kind of running roughshod over the customer is not acceptable.

8 thoughts on “Sears Oakville. Avoid.

  1. Oh, Michael – watches are so much part of one’s persona, I feel for you. Take it all the way with your plaint- the big stores no longer serve anyone to any degree of satisfaction. I have visited three watch depts this week, hoping to purchase an exciting timepiece for a young boy: do you think anyone, anywhere, came to serve me? The kid will get the money instead! Bonne chance!

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  3. Indeed. As a small business owner myself, I cannot imagine treating customers with such contempt. “We have no way of knowing the watch wasn’t broken when you brought it here”: that attacks my character very directly and is actionable.

  4. Sears responded to the web form:

    “In order to better serve you, please provide your full address.  Also please note that for security reasons, we are unable to visit your blog or other websites to view your comments.  Please include a description of the issue you are having regarding your watch in the body of your email.  This information will be forwarded to a Customer Service Representative for further review.

    Thank you for choosing Sears.”

  5. Sears… lol
    I love walking into KNAR jewelry dressed in shabby jeans and a t-shirt with a light jacket on and the sleeve covering the Rolex on my wrist. First, the pay-duty HRPS officer is already giving me the evil eye… then I stroll over to the Rolex area and start looking… it takes a few minutes before someone walks over to see what I want… “I’m looking to see if you have anything in rose gold” … “I’m sorry sir, Rolex does not make anything in cheap gold”
    HUH???
    For starters, the colour of gold is based on the percentages of alloys mixed into the base gold. 18kt gold can be yellow, pinkish (more copper), white (more silver/zinc/platinum) or any other hue one desires. 18kt gold regardless of color is 75% gold, or “750” as known in other parts of the world.
    Oh, and FWIW, my Rolex is a rose gold Presidential Day-Date.
    After embarrassing the counter person, I left.
    Moral… know what you are selling an never never judge a book by its cover.

    ps… my next Rolex purchase was a cobalt blue stainless/gold Submariner, and it wasn’t from that establishment…

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