Unhappy with customer service? Hit 'em with a hashtag.
I've been unhappy with Sears for quite some time, but my vacuum cleaner is still under warranty with them, and I intend to get my money's worth, so last week I decided to take it in for service. Now mind you, when I bought my vacuum cleaner at the Sears store in Santa Monica, I could just take it there for service, but then they closed that service center and sent us to Culver City for service. I wasn't too upset about this, because it was actually a bit closer for me, but then they closed that service center too, and now we have to go out to the Baldwin Hills Location at Crenshaw Plaza, which is a significantly bigger shlep. So I set off to take my canister vac to the service center, and as I try to enter the store, the door won't open. A woman approaches me from the other side of the glass, looks at me holding a toddler in one arm and a canister vac in the other, and points to the sign that shows they're not open yet. No smile, no friendly words, not rushing off to do anything else, just looking at me. We stand there for a while like this, staring at each other; me in disbelief, her looking at me blankly, as if to say, "wow, that must be hard to balance like that". Finally, I leave, because I have to be across town for a meeting.
Two hours later, I come back, and the door opens, and this time I'm greeted by a machine. The machine welcomes me to Sears, as if we are both standing somewhere far more exciting than a dirty back hallway inside a delivery gate. The machine asks me to enter my last name, and choose which type of service I'm there for. It then tells me to wait for a representative to emerge from behind the Employees Only door. I do, and as I wait, I listen to other people cussing at the machine, trying to get it to understand their problems.
Finally, a guy comes out, takes my vacuum cleaner and says I'll get it back in two weeks because it has to be sent out to Fullerton for service now.
Annoyed, I walk out and quickly tweet something about the crappy customer service at Sears these days, with the hashtag "searssucks".
Two minutes later, I get a message showing I'm now being followed by @Searscares. After 3 days of twitter and email exchanges (during which I try to seem polite, yet unsatisfied) I get a call from Kia, from something like the Don't-Hate-Us department at Sears, and she wants to hear me complain. I, of course, am only too happy to oblige! So I vent (but try to remain polite and not blame her for the lame company she works for). After she has validated my frustration, she offers to send me a $30 gift card. Woohoo!
I call my father to brag. He says, "That's nothin'! I've got hundreds of dollars in gift cards from them." I guess he complains a lot. Then I tell my mother, and she says, "They recorded your call to use for training purposes. It's like a focus group. They got your input for only $30 --- that's a great deal for them!" OK, way to steal my thunder, folks.
So now I'm thinking maybe I'll keep tweeting my displeasure with Sears once a week, and build up a nice passive income from their hush-money handouts. And maybe I'll start tweeting unflattering comments about other large retailers too --- maybe Best Buy or Walmart. I've never even been in a Walmart! But I'll bet they also have a team of negative-tweet catchers that will pay me something to stop. I don't even have to go in the store, I can just make stuff up. I won't use names, no one will get hurt. But they'll also probably just send me gift cards for use at their stores, and I'm not sure what I'd actually want from their stores. I don't think I'd want to buy a vacuum cleaner from them. So I was thinking that maybe, rather than making up childish hashtags to use when tweeting unpleasant, and possibly fictitious things about Sears or Walmart in cyberspace, hoping I might elicit a response (and a gift card) from their damage control people, maybe I could just blog about all this, and then you would click on some of these ads (Ahem, that's your cue, start clicking), then I'd make enough money to buy a new vacuum cleaner from a different store ---- maybe a nice local store, where I can just go tell the manager, or even the owner if I'm unhappy about something, and maybe that business owner will be kind enough, and care enough about my business to just open the door for me when I arrive a few minutes before they open holding a child and a vacuum cleaner.
Then I'll have to come up with nice hashtags.
Until then, #searsstillsucks.
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