Sears eCommerce debacle

by | Jun 10, 2014 | Bargains, ecommerce, Uncategorized

No wonder Sears is getting kicked in the rear by Amazon and others. I want to buy a socket set, cool it’s on sale at sears for $17.99 regularly $29.99. The Newington store has two in stock. Continuing with my iPad I start the order.

I notice on the checkout page,it say something about use your “shop you way rewards points”. I think I may have some because we bought some school uniform pant’s for Jameson last fall.I login and sure enough, I’ve got a 7,000 surprise points good for $7 off the order. I click the apply points button and it places the order without applying the points. Great.

That’s OK, I’ll just cancel the order and be more careful the next time. After hunting around for a while, I find the hidden cancel order button and cancel the first order and I find the set again start a second order. This time when I click the apply points and checkout button I see there is a “enter your pin code” text box several inches over and down with some tiny text about rewards points.

Great so once again, I’ve ordered without the credit so this time I call customer service…no help there, the first level rep and supervisor both tell me they can’t apply the credit after the order is placed.

While on the phone with the reps who are continuing to be unhelpful, I use my desktop and start a third order. This time I enter a usual pin code and click apply. No that’s not it. I try another likely code. No that’s not it. OK I’ll try one more I use sometimes and it’s still not it. Still on the phone with the rep, I say it won’t take a pin code, what do I do. He says enter your zip code. Wow that works! How I was supposed to know that my pin code is my zip code I have no idea. I know I didn’t set that up.

Good, now I can place the third order however it’s now showing 3-5 day before it will be ready. I know that both of the two in stock are being held for me. I ask the rep how long before the system will catch up and return to stock the first one I purchased…three to five days.

I was tempted to cancel the second order but I’ve decided to leave it, when I go to pick it up, I’m going to make them cancel it and fulfill the third order with that set. Wonder how that’s going to go.

How a half price coupon for a state inspection almost cost me $700 at Portsmouth Ford.

by | Apr 5, 2014 | Bargains

…or how the service department at Portsmouth Ford tried to get me to purchase unneeded services for over $700.
March is car tag and state inspection due month for my 2010 F150. Being thrifty, I looked online at Portsmouth Ford’s coupon specials and found a half price coupons for a state inspection and another for an oil change. Portsmouth Ford is conveniently just across the highway from my office so I dropped it off on Monday. They called a couple hours later to tell me the front shoes were “frozen” and had ruined the rotors and that the rear rotors were “rotted”. Of course it wouldn’t pass inspection until I paid over $700 for calipers and shoes all around. It didn’t sound right to me, I had my last oil change at Bill Dube Ford in Dover in September. I called them and they checked my records and said my front shoes were half worn at the time.

I decided to get a second opinion and called Steve’s Accurate Auto in Madbury. They were highly recommended by a good friend, and I had recently discovered that Jeff Sinon who we used a decade ago was one of their mechanics. Jeff and I put together a chicken coop a couple weeks ago for the PCA fund raising auction.

Steve’s checked it out and the rotors were fine and the pads pass as well.

I may file a complaint with the state.