Monday, March 10, 2025 12:00 am

Jonathan Schlefer has a delivery problem with his new Sears refrigerator. Despite repeated promises, the company won't deliver it. Can he get his money back?

Q: I ordered a refrigerator two months ago from Sears online and paid $803. I received an email stating it would be delivered two weeks later. I never received the refrigerator, even though the site says it was delivered.

When I log in to my account on the Sears site and access the refrigerator order, there's a notification that if I need help, I should call the Sears 800 number. I called and an associate told me I would receive another call within four days with information about a new delivery date.

I got no call or refrigerator, so I called a week later. This time an associate told me I would receive a call two weeks later with the delivery date. Yet again, I got no call and no refrigerator.

I've tried using the "Contact Us" feature on the Sears site, but it just links to standard canned questions and answers. I tried replying to the email from Sears about the delivery, but Outlook said "The recipient's domain location information failed." I've tried several executive emails, but they are bouncing.

I'd like my money back so I can order the refrigerator from a place that will actually deliver it. Can you help? -- Jonathan Schlefer, Jamaica Plain, Mass.

A: Sears should have delivered your refrigerator when it promised to -- within two weeks.

Delays can happen, but when they do, it's on the company to update the customer. It appears that in your case, Sears completely failed to keep you posted. Quite the opposite, actually. It claimed to have delivered your appliance even though it hadn't. That's unacceptable.

What happened? I asked Sears and, true to form, it had no response. I'm only left to speculate. Sears has had a rough couple of years, and it wouldn't surprise me if it had a few supply chain snafus. Certainly, its website -- the one that erroneously told you the refrigerator had already been delivered -- needs an upgrade.

How do you fix something like this? I think you followed all the right steps, but let's review those. You used the site to contact the Sears customer service department. Unfortunately, it just supplied you with a pre-written answer that didn't address your problem.

Next, you tried the Sears executive contacts, including those on my consumer advocacy site, Elliott.org. It looks like those bounced. It's hard to know why. Sometimes, executives will abandon an email address when too many people know it. Other times, they will manually bounce an email from a consumer when they don't want to answer it. I have no idea what went wrong, but I can tell you that my research team will go back and research the addresses to make sure they're correct.

This is definitely not acceptable for Sears or any other company. Telling you that you already received your refrigerator was a bizarre twist. Who knows, maybe Sears wanted to keep your appliance and your money. I certainly hope not.

You reached out to my advocacy team and I contacted Sears on your behalf. The company responded by refunding $99 of your $803 purchase -- yet another bizarre twist in your dystopian appliance story. I reached out to Sears again, and this time, it refunded the rest of your money.

Christopher Elliott is the founder of Elliott Advocacy (https://elliottadvocacy.org), a nonprofit organization that helps consumers solve their problems. Email him at chris@elliott.org or get help by contacting him at https://elliottadvocacy.org/help/