The Sears Saga Continues,
Here is the latest reply from Sears:
Hello Ms. Tucker,
Thank you for your patience while dealing with this issue.
We have reviewed your letter and the corresponding notes in our system regarding your protection agreement sale call. We will address each incident and explain the Sears policies regarding the way in which the associates handled the situation.
You had received a call from the protection agreement sales department regarding the renewal of your expired agreements and the sale of your vacuum agreement from Teresa. As you had stated the phone number in which the call is made from appears as an unknown number. All of our outgoing calls from the protection agreement can appear as an unknown number to our customers phones. Unfortunately, this is not a feature in which the sales associate is able to change.
As you had stated, Teresa had tried to speak to you regarding your air conditioning unit and furnace in which had not had their maintenance checks completed. This was to assure you that she was in fact a Sears associate as well as to help you as a customer, as the service in which you had been paying for was not being used to it's fullest potential. The maintenance agreement checks cannot be used during a previous date if the service is not used annually. This is why this issue had been mentioned.
In order for a transaction to be completed for a protection agreement sale, the credit card number must be stated by the customer, and under no circumstances should be read to the person over the phone to prevent giving confidential information to another person other than the card holder. Reading gout the first 4-5 digits of your card should have never taken place.
Due to the Canadian privacy act all credit card numbers that have been provided by our customers will be mashed in our system to avoid credit fraud. Our associates are able to see the customer's first 4 or 5 digits, however, the rest of the information needs to be stated by the customer so we do not give our customer's credit card number to another person over the phone. This is for your protection, and for the protection of your personal information.
The sale for the protection agreement had been finalized by yourself and Teresa. As stated later on in your email the transaction had been cancelled as the information was not in our system. This could have occurred for a number of reasons, however we are unable to determine the actual cause of the transaction not being finalized at that time.
Once the transactions had been completed, and realizing that the protection agreement may have been added to the wrong unit you had initially called to confirm this information, and as a result have spoken to a number of employees from the customer service second level associates. This is the escalated line for our customers to have more difficult issues resolved by our associates.
Our second level associates are trained at a supervisory level and are able to resolve all issues, and have the authority to make important decisions regarding all problems. They have been trained to resolve all issues on their own without escalating a call to their acting managers as long as they are confident that they are able to resolve the issue. If a customer requests a supervisor they will be contacted by the supervisor within a 48 hour period if requested.
Throughout these calls you had a number of associates who had spoken to you in a rude, unfriendly, and unhelpful manner, and for this we do apologize. Under no circumstances should the associates speak to our customers in this manner. We also apologize that you concerns we not addressed regarding the customer service aspect, rather than the sale. We also apologize for the breaches that may have been made during your initial call regarding the associate reading out your information. We are further researching these associates to ensure that they are coached internally by their acting supervisors.
We apologize that you were not able to resolve your quality assurance issues with the supervisors in which you have spoken to. Unfortunately, on the most part our associates were following Sears policies and procedures regarding, escalating calls, forwarding you to different departments, and regarding the privacy of your information.
We would like to apologize for the chain of events that as a consumer made you weary to give out your personal information regarding the original call, including the unknown number, the unclear information regarding your credit card number, and the mixed responses from the different departments in customer service. We have formally noted your comments and concerns regarding these issues. We cannot guarantee immediate changes as a number of complaints must be made regarding the same issue from separate customers before we are able to address an issue an implement changes to better our customers experiences.
The protection agreement has not been charged to you, and an invoice has been sent to provide you with further information regarding the protection agreement offer. If you wish to confirm that this charge has not gone through you may call JP and Chase at 1-800-265-3675.
Due to the inconveniences that you have experienced during this process we would like to offer you a 1 year protection agreement free of charge. If you wish to accept this issue you may do so by replying directly to this email with your response. We do appreciate your business and regret that you have had such a time consuming and troublesome experience. If you have any further questions or concerns regarding this issue please do not hesitate to contact us.
Regards,
Courtney
Sears Corporate Office
Monday, August 02, 2010
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