Why Sears will go out of business….

Alright, I may be overly dramatic with the title of this post, but honestly, could they make it any more difficult to do business?

Our remote keypad for our garage doors is kaput. We’ve had it in service for over 7 years and it finally gave up the ghost. No biggie – let’s run off to Sears and pick up a replacement.

We arrived at Sears and were greeted by a very pleasant associate, who was setting up cups full of popcorn and offering beverages to all who entered the store. Nice touch, but no thanks, I just need a remote keypad. I quickly tracked down the aisle where the remotes were displayed.

Hmm – they all look exactly alike, except that there are four models depending upon your garage door model. The only way to tell them apart is based upon the color of the reset button, located on the garage door opener (which I had failed to notice, since the last time I setup one was 7 years ago. Yes – my bad for not checking the garage door owners manual before coming – EXCEPT this is 2011 – why doesn’t Craftsman offer a SINGLE universal remote to work with ALL their openers? Why make it difficult?

Undaunted, I had to choose my “reset button” color. Hmmmm.. Blue? Gray? Black? I vaguely remember it being red.. Oh well, let’s grab the remote that works with the blue button.. After all, if I guessed correctly, it would save me another trip back to the store.

Purchase completed, I arrived back home and took a quick look at the reset button color, which turned out to be RED. (Which, for those of you not following closely, was not among my store choices of blue, gray or black.) Okay, let’s find the garage door manual. Thankfully I’m married to someone who is so organized that she should be running the Library of Congress. My wife tracked down the owner’s manual within a couple of minutes. My openers work with remote keypad #139-53684. I write down the number and proceed back to the local Sears store.

After a quick return, I wandered back to the keyless remote section once again. I scanned all the remotes and none of them are the number I need. Finally I dared to check the tag above an empty peg. There it was….. out of stock.
Another friendly associate offered to check stock in other Sears stores. Of course, the only place that had one was on the other side of the city. Not wanting to spend more on gas than the remote cost, I decided instead to order it online.

I didn’t expect the online experience to become a scavenger hunt.

But it did.

After returning home I logged onto sears.com and typed in the model # in the search bar. Nothing. Nada. I was hoping to arrive at the exact remote I needed. Instead I had to type in “remote keypad for garage door opener” and was returned many pages of results of garage door openers and all the accessories. I scrolled my way through several pages where once again I was presented with several choices of keyless remotes which all looked the same. None of the product descriptions contained the model number I was looking for. Still stumped, I found an obscure link to the product owner’s manual and clicked on that. And there it was… confirmation that I had found my prize.

And so I ordered it. Good news was that it was 10% off at the online store (my prize for having found it). Bad news is that Sears shipping charges (slowest service) was $7. And so now I’m feeling frustrated and feeling ripped off.

It is now costing me more than had it been in stock at the store. And I had to take 2 trips and win a scavenger hunt for the privilege.

Sears would do well to spend less time popping popcorn and spending more time making it easier to do business with them.

Before it’s too late.

End of rant.