Customer Service, Corporate Office

As nasty as it can be to work in customer service, there are a few things you learn for life. It is not part of the Hispanic culture (from which I come from) to ask for a supervisor and complain about nonsense crap (I want a technician out today, I want you to lower my bill without downgrading my service, I want credit as I'm aggravated...). I would've never thought about asking to speak with a supervisor or manager if I had not heard those requests over the phone.

I moved in almost two months ago and I was looking for cheap, decent furniture to store my clothes. The only store that did not have dressers around 1000 dollars at the mall was Sears. I got the package through UPS without knowing it was a DIY thing. Screws were missing, so I could not finish the nightstand. After the manufacturer took a week to deliver them, I found out that the drawer was not in the right position (apparently, the manufacturer's fault). As I was working with the dresser I found out that it had missing screws too! some nails would not go all the way through, and it was taking me a lot of time to work with it. I called Sears and I was advised to return both items ASAP, as those 30 days would be almost over.

With my roommate's help, I went back to Sears to return the almost done furniture. I was given a return ticket, but the refund could not be processed. Even though I was calm and polite all the time, the guy in charge was nervous and decided to call his manager, and then he told him: "Tell him to mail it back to the manufacturer." I asked to speak to him. Politely, I let him know that he was actually asking me to take a dresser and a night stand that could not pull itself together to the post office and ask the manufacturer for a refund. He understood that that was "ridiculous". He agreed to take care of it. As he could not do it, he called his own customer service, asked for a supervisor (code 5526 or something), and he was told that they had been having issues with refunds. He was given a ticket, in which he said my refund should not take more than 3 days.

After one week, no refund had been processed, so I went back to look for that manager, which was not there. A new manager who had no access to the system (as she said she was new) promised to call me back once she got a hold of the other manager. I kept calling her every other day or so while I went on vacation, and she never called me back.

After another week I went back to Sears, and as the "new manager" was on a meeting, another different manager told me that as it was "third party" furniture, I would need to send it back to the manufacturer. "We can hold it on our storage room for a few days until your friend helps you take it back". I told him that I'd been given the runaround, and everyone was giving me different information. Being polite as I always had, I told them: "I don't know who could help me with this, I will have to call the corporate office". All employees in the office were stunned with those words, and one of them asked me for the card with which I had paid, and sliding it over a machine she processed my refund.

The corporate office is the place where big corporations don't want to hear complaints and that is what regular employees try to avoid at all costs. After working for a cable company, taking the role of a supervisor or even manager at times, I learned that even for invalid reasons, these companies don't want customers calling to complain, even if it is to ask for an invalid 20 dollar credit ("If he was threatening to call us, why didn't you give him that credit?!" they would say). As I had a valid reason to do it, why should they refuse to do it?

By the way, I've got new furniture that was simply delivered, and I'm happy not to have my clothes strewn all over the floor.