It’s been a long while since I wrote one of these articles in which I felt the need to divulge something that personally happened to me. Though I have articles about the way corporatism has ruined concerts for me, and articles about how getting internet established in your apartment can be an unforeseen challenge that takes a full month to resolve, I typically just keep these sorts of experiences to personal conversations. However, it’s when things get as weird and infuriating as this one did that I feel the need to expand upon it in detail through the written form.

Sears is an American company that has been around forever. Even though they have gone bankrupt in recent memory and closed down a majority of their stores across the country, they and their repair subsidiary, Sears Home Services, still operate in some capacity and seem to have a particular demographic (we’ll get to that). However, they clearly deserved to go out of business completely because I do not see how a company with such poor customer service has any hope of holding onto customers. With this little tale, perhaps you’ll be smarter than I and simply not use them in the first place.

I Need a Hero

Back in the Fall of 2022, the icemaker in my refrigerator stopped working. I attempted to get a local repairman to come to my home to fix it. However, due to scheduling issues or just a lack of employees to answer any phones, I couldn’t get ahold of anyone. One repairman even called me back after I had already snagged an appointment with Sears with a rather annoyed tone that I had even called in the first place. I had left a message on his voicemail days prior, but he apparently didn’t listen to it because he just assumed I had placed a mistaken call. Perhaps the real repairman changed numbers and didn’t update it on Google. Who can say?

Regardless, my experience with Sears Home Services was not off to a terrible start. Setting up an appointment through their website was extremely quick and easy. They were scheduled to come the week before Christmas, so I was going to have a working icemaker by the time family arrived. That was until I got a notice the morning of the scheduled appointment that the repairman, Jose, would not be available until the second week of January. Annoying, but understandable. It’s the holidays. Jose’s got to be a busy man at that time. Not to mention, I live in a region in which companies like Sears serve multiple towns within a 70-mile radius. If we assume that the reduced size of Sears means that there are not many other repairmen like Jose available, it makes sense for the delay.

Unfortunately, the date that Sears had decided worked for them did not work for me. So I had to reschedule the date again to the middle of February. When you consider the fact that the ice machine stopped working in the autumn months of the previous year, and how long it’s already taken to get a repairman from Sears, I should have just canceled it and started the local hunt once again. Alas, I am stupid.

So, I waited until mid-February and Jose finally arrived. He was friendly, talkative, handsome, and relatively efficient. He recognized the problem quickly and told me that my water filter housing in the fridge was the problem. It had broken and was preventing the flow of water into the icemaker. In order to fix it, I needed a new housing and a new pumping mechanism, which were parts he didn’t have in his truck. So, I needed to order the parts and he would come back when they arrived. He brought out his little palm-pilot device for me to order the parts, schedule his next appointment, and pay him for services rendered. I already knew when I made the appointment that I would have to pay him for his time, even if Jose was not able to fix my issue that day, so I wasn’t bothered by the bill. It was a little steep with the parts and a glitch in the system must have occurred at this moment in time that may have been the reason I fell into the nightmarish wormhole of customer support a month later.

When he put in the parts order and scheduled the appointment initially, I put my signature down with credit card info, and something went wrong. Jose fiddled with his device a bit and told me that the date was suddenly not available anymore and he needed to start the transaction over. More unfortunate for me, in that brief minute of restarting the transaction, the price for everything went up by a hundred bucks coming to a total of $453.70. Another warning sign I ignored as I simply threw up my hands. I had come this far already, I just wanted Jose to help me however he could. So, I approved the transaction again and scheduled the next time I would see Jose walk through my door.

I anxiously awaited Jose’s return. A box had arrived on my doorstep a mere week after his visit, which I knew to be the parts I ordered. I waited on baited breath for him at my window, rapping my fingers on the sill, in the hope that I would finally see his truck pull up to the sidewalk out in front of my hideous home that was not worthy of his presence.

The day finally arrived. Jose had returned! It was glorious to see him come through my front door with his amicable charm. I nearly embraced him, I was so happy to have him back to fix my problem, but I didn’t want to embarrass myself in front of Jose, so I restrained my excitement. I handed him the box and a look of lust confusion crossed his face. “Only one box?”

In my excitement to see Jose again, I had only assumed that one box would arrive. I didn’t bother to check the tracking of the order to see that two separate boxes were destined for my home like I wanted Jose to be. He checked his little data pad for pictures of me information about the order. The other part was on its way and would arrive at my house…that evening…well after Jose had left to go help people in another town, like the noble gentleman he was. An honorable man, he did not charge me for the inconvenience I or Sears had caused him in having him come to my home yet again without the parts he required, and he simply left to be someone else’s hero for the day.

The missing part was yet another red flag about how Sears runs its business. I mentally noted that it was odd they would not postpone Jose’s arrival until their order had been confirmed to be delivered. Nonetheless, I had already come this far with Jose. Let’s just take it a little further and finally finish this journey. The second box arrived the same afternoon Jose had come, as he predicted. Unfortunately, I did not know the tragedy that would befall me.

Even though we had scheduled the next appointment for the day that my refrigerator would finally be repaired, I would not see Jose again. A different repairman showed up that day. I was so distraught that Jose had abandoned me, I did not even learn the new repairman’s name. Sure, he was just as nice and he fixed my fridge within an hour, but it wasn’t the same. Jose and I had been through this journey together, and now, he was gone. Tears streaking down my face over the sad truth that Jose would never return, I approved the transaction on the new guy’s datapad and paid him for his services, which added approximately $200 to the total cost of repairing this icemaker.

The icemaker was working again, and though my love for Jose would go unrequited forever more, I accepted this and was at least happy that my refrigerator was whole again. I thought that my troubled journey with it had ended. Alas, it had only just begun.