A tale of incompetence.

On September 18, the oven glass in my Frigidaire range exploded with no provocation. The oven had not been used in days; just out of the blue, boom! – glass all over the floor. Apparently this is not uncommon, but Frigidaire typically calls these occurrences “customer damage” and declines to do anything about it.

So being a do-it-yourself type of guy, on 9/18 I went to Sears Parts Direct online and ordered a new sheet of glass for the oven. I got a text message saying “thanks for your order, it will be delivered on 10/6.”

Three weeks without an oven? That’s won’t do, especially with a wife who loves to bake.

So on September 19th, the following day at 10:52 AM, I called Sears Parts Direct and told them I wanted to cancel the order. The agent (in an practically incomprehensible accent) asked me a thousand questions, demonstrated that he didn’t really understand what part I was referring to, and then assured me that the part would be shipped in 24 hours and would arrive in 3 days. OK, fine, I won’t cancel the order.

Guess what? I get another text message saying “thanks for your order, it will be delivered on 10/6.”

At 1:05 PM, I call Sears Parts Direct again. I explained the situation, and this agent told me, “I see in the notes that you are concerned about delivery time. No action has been taken on this request. We cannot promise 24-hour shipping. Your delivery date is still October 6th.” The previous agent simply lied through his teeth to keep me from cancelling the order. So I told this guy to cancel the order, I would find a part somewhere else. Fine. Order cancelled. Check in 5 days to make sure the refund has been processed.

I get another text message saying “Your parts have been ordered, Estimated delivery Friday October 6th.”

Cute, but I thought I’d wait until today to see if my refund has been processed. In the meantime, back on Tuesday, I went to Frigidaire’s website and ordered the part from them – about $40.00 more, but the part arrived in 3 days. Yay. Glass installed. Wife has oven, wife happy. That’s the important thing.

But today, 9/25, I get a text message from Sears saying “Your Part(s) have a delay for your order [number]. Track your part(s) and order details online [address].” The funny thing is, when I went to the website for Sears Parts Direct, uBlock Origin blocked it, and Malwarebytes blocked it for potential riskware with “coupleze.com.” Nice.

So back to the phone. Today’s agent said “I see the cancellation request, but because you requested cancellation more than 24 hours after the order, we can’t do anything here. The request has been submitted to our cancellation department.” I told him that I had nightmares about this extra part arriving on my porch, and if that happened I had no intention of sending it back. “Nothing we can do here,” was the response.

And, just as icing on the dung cake, another text message: “Your Part(s) have a delay for your order [number]. Track your part(s) and order details online [address].”

And an email this morning:

Dear Christopher,
We have not-great news: The item you ordered (W935098) is delayed because the product is temporarily unavailable.
Like most sellers, Sears PartsDirect is struggling with product availability because the global supply chain has been severely disrupted. As a result, our customers are enduring long waits for products shipped directly from our manufacturers.
We’ll notify you as soon as your order ships.
Unfortunately, our call center agents don’t have any additional insights into order status. We’ll email you the moment your order is on its way.
As soon as we have the estimated ship date, we’ll provide it to you. You can track your order at any time online here.
Thank you for your understanding and patience.
Your Sears PartsDirect Team

With customer service like this, it’s amazing that Sears Parts Direct manages to keep going at all. I’ll keep hammering at them until I get a refund, one way or the other. If they send me the part anyway, it’s their loss.

The Old Wolf has spoken.