Month: August 2009

Sears sucks! (part 2)

Ok.  I ordered an item this morning at 8am on the Sears website.  It was in-stock and I chose to pick it up from the store.  I went ahead and ordered it online so that I would just have to pick it up.  I had hoped it would save me some time.  Wrong.  At 3:30pm this afternoon the order was still “pending”.  I got online to chat with a Sears rep to find the status and got banned from using chat! 🙂  Awesome.  Here’s a transcript:

Welcome!

Please wait while we contact the next available agent…

This chat may be monitored or recorded for quality assurance purposes.

To ensure proper servicing, please do not close this window until your chat is completed. Thank you!
You are now speaking with Sue M.!
Sue M.: Welcome to Sears. My name is Sue M.. How may I assist you?
you : I placed an order (# xxxxxxxxx) this morning to pick up an in-stock item in my local sears…it is STILL pending…i need to pick it up in about 30 minutes
you : i placed the order early this morning…no reason it shold be taking this long…there were several of the items in stock
Sue M.: One minute while I check your order, please
you : fyi…i placed it at around 8am this morning…the store opens at 10am…it is now 3:20pm and still no confirmation email…5 items were in stock when i ordered it.
you : and for the record, this is one of the most poorly-run Sears I’ve been to..i should’ve known better to order something online and try to make it easy on myself…but it is always so painful to find a salesman and pay for items that I thought this might be worth the risk…apparently not
Sue M.: Your Sears agent is currently researching your question. Your chat is important to us. Thank you for your patience.
Sue M.: Your Sears agent is currently researching your question. Your chat is important to us. Thank you for your patience.
Sue M.: Your Sears agent is currently researching your question. Your chat is important to us. Thank you for your patience.
you : hello?
Sue M.: I am back
Sue M.: I am sorry for the delay, I was making a call to try to follow up. I will explain
you : great…thanks
Sue M.: For some reason you credit approval just came through sometime after noon and now the order will process, and move on to the store. You should have your pick up email in a few hours. The email goes out when they actually have the item at the pick up desk for you
you : yeah, but i’m leaving work in like 20 minutes and need to pick it up then…can i just take the order confirmation and get them to get me one?
you : this is ridiculous
you : i could’ve just gone and bought it but i was trying to save some time
you : obviously, THAT was a mistake.
you : when i chatted with someone 2 hours ago they assured me then that it was “being sent to the store”
Sue M.: I am sorry, I can cancel the order and you can go to the store to pick it ul, if you prefer
you : so now 2 hours later is still hasn’t been sent?
you : if it has already been charged to my card, why cant i just go pick it up?
Sue M.: again, I am sorry. Would you like the order cancelled?
you : yes…cancel the d*** thing…maybe i can find what i want somewhere else and avoid Sears altogether…every time i try to buy something at Sears it turns into a fiasco like this.
you : i tried to purchase 3 items a few weeks ago and had to be rung up 3 separate times on 2 different registers
you : because the people working there were so incompetent…
you : more of the same here…please cancel
Sue M.: I will cancel this order. You will get an automatic email of the cancellation. Are there any other questions I can assist you with today?
you : only this: why does sears insist on pissing me off every time i try to buy something..that is all…thanks
you : sorry for the sarcasm…just cancel the order
Sue M.: I think we are through with this chat and I will need to block y ou if you continue to chat this way
Sue M.: Good-bye, and have a great day!
you : please cancel
You have been banned from using Click to Chat.

What a proud moment.  Very mature.  I took my frustrations with Sears (see other blog posts) out on some poor customer service person.  Although she never would answer my question about just being able to pick it up from the store since I’d already paid for it.

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Warning when cloning a hard drive

I ran into a little tech puzzler this weekend.  I’m simply documenting it on my website both for me (in case in happens again in the future) and for anyone else who might have the same obscure issue.  I found the solution elsewhere and will link to it here.

Basically, I got a new 500GB IDE (PATA) drive to replace my old 160GB.  I used a USB/IDE cable and cloning software (in my case, Apricorn) to clone the old hard drive onto the new drive.  Once I did that I simply swapped the drives and it worked.  However, the next morning I had a nasty BSOD (blue screen of death for the uninitiated): BAD_POOL_HEADER Stop: 0x00000019.  Yeah.  Nasty.

I did many of your basic things any good nerd would do: ran defrag, checkdisk, made sure all firmware and controller software was up to date, etc.  Nothing helped.  Then I came across the link above and that fixed it.  Whew.

In a nutshell, cloned drive still keep around some old info about the old hard drive.  I use MozyHome to do backups and apparently as part of that process a volume shadow copy snapshot is made.  When I initiated a backup it BSOD’d.  Yep, that was the culprit.  Luckily, the fix outlined in the link above worked perfectly.  It involved going into Device Manager, telling it to Show Hidden Devices, and then deleting all of the Storage Volume items.  Windows will recreate them after a couple of reboots.

I’m just posting this here in the hopes that someone might find it useful when googling around trying to figure out a similar problem.

Sears sucks!

Ok.  They have some good tools and appliances, but do you want to know why I think the store sucks?  I purchased 3 items today and had to be rung up 3 different times–at two different registers!  Let me explain.

We went to purchase a mini refrigerator and a microwave for Amy’s classroom.  While walking into the store I saw a t-shirt on clearance for $5 that I liked so I picked it up.  We went upstairs and tried to purchase everything.  First, the salesman explained that he had to ring up the refrigerator and microwave on separate tickets because they were in different departments (despite the fact that they were sitting right next to each other).  Fine.  Whatever.  He rang up the refrigerator, I gave him my card and we paid for it.  Then he rang up the microwave.  He attempted (for 5 minutes) to ring up the t-shirt but could never get it to scan.  Whether that was his fault or not I have no idea.  He finally asked if we would mind going downstairs to purchase the shirt.  So I had to go downstairs and stand in ANOTHER line.

In summary, TO PURCHASE THREE ITEMS AT SEARS I HAD TO CHECK OUT THREE SEPARATE TIMES!  No wonder Walmart is eating their lunch.  It is sad, but a store that used to be customer-focused has lost its way.