Can Sears save my Easter dinner?

Lynn Contino can’t cook Easter dinner because Sears can’t install her stove. What will she tell her guests?

Question

We purchased a duel-fuel stove from Sears recently. Sears promised delivery and installation and removal of our old stove on Friday, April 18, in time for the Easter holiday.

We have family and friends coming in from out of state for dinner. On Friday, the delivery men arrived. They refused to install or remove the old stove because they are not certified. They left with the new stove still in the truck.

We called every 15 minutes all day on Friday to find out where the stove was and we told them we would even install it ourselves. Finally, they told us they would deliver the stove on Saturday morning. We should expect a call at. 8 a.m. to tell us what time it would be delivered. No call.

At 10 a.m., we called and were told no delivery was scheduled for Saturday. We could expect to receive it on Monday – too late for Easter dinner .

A Sears representative said they would check and call us back 25 minutes later. Still, no call back. We called again and were told they do not make Saturday deliveries, and that they would probably deliver the stove on Tuesday.

We are being given the runaround and being transferred to every department in the Sears organization, but no resolution. Can you help? — Lynn Contino, Feasterville, Pa.

Answer

If Sears promised your oven by Friday, it should have delivered it. And if for some reason it couldn’t, then you’d expect the company to be sensitive to the fact that this delivery was happening before a major holiday, and that the appliance is critical to food preparation.

Travel Leaders Group is transforming travel through its progressive approach toward each unique travel experience. Travel Leaders Group assists millions of travelers through its leisure, business and network travel operations under a variety of diversified divisions and brands, including All Aboard Travel, Andrew Harper Travel, Colletts Travel, Corporate Travel Services, CruCon Cruise Outlet, Cruise Specialists, Nexion, Protravel International, SinglesCruise.com, Travel Leaders Corporate, Travel Leaders Network and Tzell Travel Group, and its merger with ALTOUR. With more than 7,000 agency locations and 52,000 travel advisors, Travel Leaders Group ranks as one of the industry’s largest retail travel agency companies.

We’ve had complaints about botched Sears deliveries in the past. Sears should have sent someone to your home who was qualified to install your oven, of course. But if the technicians weren’t certified, they were absolutely correct to back off. And it’s a good thing you didn’t try to install the oven yourselves. Otherwise, you might not have survived Easter.

You did your best to notify Sears of the problem, although I might have written more and dialed less. I list the names and phone numbers of Sears’ top executives on my site, and you might have reached out to them. If you have the name of a regional manager, you can also email that person. Email addresses at Sears are [email protected]. (Here’s how to contact the CEO directly.)

If you ever order another major appliance like an oven or refrigerator, make sure you have a backup plan — either a spare refrigerator or a microwave to cook your food in. And give yourself plenty of cushion before and after a major food holiday, like Easter, Christmas or the Fourth of July.

My advocacy team and I contacted Sears on your behalf before Easter. A representative responded the following Monday and said that your oven was delivered and installed on Saturday afternoon, just in time to cook your Easter dinner.