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After Sears cancels a work order for Gary Miertschin's cooktop stove, it promises him a refund. But the money never shows up in his account. What can he do?
Q: A valve on my gas cooktop, which I bought through Sears, recently broke. A technician from Sears Home Repair showed up a few days later, diagnosed the problem, and placed an order for the parts.
Sears required me to pay upfront for the parts and the subsequent repair once the parts showed up. The total came to $827.
Sears ordered four valves. Two showed up but the other two were backordered. The backordered parts never arrived, and Sears unilaterally canceled the work order. I only found out about this when I called to follow up.
A representative told me at that time that I would receive a verification of the refund within seven business days and a full refund within 21 days after that. It never happened. I have called numerous times to ask about the refund. It is very difficult to talk to a live person and when I do they are only able to tell me that the refund is pending and I should hear something shortly. I'm hoping you will be able to help me get my refund. -- Gary Miertschin, Houston
A: Sears should have fixed your gas cooktop quickly. But if it couldn't do the repair, it had an obligation to refund you right away. The foot-dragging only made a bad situation worse.
I think Sears also had an obligation to tell you if it could make the repair. There must be a way for Sears' suppliers to notify it when they no longer support a product. Why couldn't they tell Sears so that you could take your repair needs somewhere else? I have no idea.
But the real problem here is the refund. Sears, like most other large businesses, issues refunds to the original form of payment. If it goes back to your credit card, there may be a delay of as many as two billing cycles, which means two months of waiting.
I've found this lag time is a license to delay refunds, even those that are legally required. Companies simply blame the credit card company for the delay, even when it's clearly their fault.
It's impossible to know what was behind your delay. Was it your credit card or was it Sears? EIther way, it doesn't matter. If Sears promises a full refund within 21 days, you should get it -- and by the time you contacted me, you had been waiting more than three months.
A brief, polite appeal to someone higher up at Sears might have helped. I list the names, numbers and email addresses of the Sears customer service managers on my consumer advocacy site, Elliott.org. A succinct email to one of them might have pushed things along.
I contacted Sears on your behalf. A few days later, you had a full refund. I guess they figured out how to solve that little problem of waiting two billing cycles.
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/
