Complaint Review: Sears Home Improvement - Nationwide

I had a young man sitting at a vendor type table at a local store ask me if I would like a free estimate for any home improvement project I was considering in the future. I wanted an estimate for windows and my kitchen and said "sure". I gave him my contact information and received a call from a scheduling representative later that afternoon.  Before I hung up, she had said that both myself and my spouse would need to be there to meet with the person coming out to give us an estimate. This rang a little warning bell in my head, but I figured that this is Sears they must have a decent enough reason. My appointment was set for 6 pm about 10 days later.

I had two salesmen show up to my home and thought that one was for the windows and one was for the kitchen.  Oh No. They didn't even discuss my windows and went right to the kitchen. These two men were dressed in business attire and looked like they had never ever done any kind of home improvement work in their lives. That aside, they asked us what we were wanting to do and then started asking us what we liked and didn't like about our current kitchen. (We had torn out our old kitchen about a year ago after what was an innocent enough project to change out the flooring. After removing the flooring, we found there was some major issues that had to be dealt with and we were unable to salvage the old cabinets due to water damage that the previous owners had slapped a bandaid on long enough to sell the house. We had new flooring placed and had bought some lower cabinets from IKEA along with a new sink and faucet that were only about 6 months old. We did all of this ourselves, but given our work schedules currently, things were taking a long time to complete. We did not have upper cabinets or countertops. We had makeshift countertops of plywood covered with contact paper.) I told the salesmen that I liked my new cabinets (soft close shut and the hidden drawers), but he marked them as "neutral" on the survey he was filling out. They then proceeded to show us a slideshow on how Sears has been in business all these years and how they were #1 in the US for home improvement over the other home improvement stores in the nation. Funny enough, I didn't even know Sears did home improvement until seeing that vendor table and I've done many home improvement projects in the past.

Only after several more minutes of them pimping themselves out, did they show the samples of their cabinets, backsplashes and countertops. Now during that long presentation, they sat and and talked about how many choices they have, but in reality, they are pretty limited. For example, I really like my black cabinets, but all Sears has for black cabinets is one style (shaker) with only the one type of door for upper and lower. The backsplash samples are paper wall paper type material so you don't get a really good idea what they would actually look like. The countertop samples are only about 3"x3". I know that may be common in home improvement stores, but in some of the samples that have a lot of variation, a sample can look vastly different than the completed project.

The salesmen said they couldn't "use" my current porcelain apron sink and that I would need a different one. They do have apron sinks, but not double apron sinks and it was only 6 months old to begin with along with the faucet. They said it would be up to us then for a sink and faucet. So I "decided" on a "pearl" colored cabinet, a off-white subway tile backsplash, and a river rock countertop. I noticed at this time, it was now almost 9:30 pm (our appt had started at 6 pm) and was ready for these two to go so I could eat supper and get ready for bed since I had to be up at 0500 the next morning for work.

At this point with our current kitchen remodel taking forever, I thought this might be the way to go so that I could have my kitchen together by the 4th of July next year. It wasn't exactly what I had in mind for my completed kitchen, but it be an ok alternative.  That's when they said they would get some figures together and came back with a figure of $23,000 for cabinets, a basic subway tile backsplash and quartz countertops. I know kitchen remodels are very expensive, but this seemed a little high for what we wanted.  In the meantime, I had gone upstairs to get a few things done while my husband chit chatted with one salesmen while the other was outside. WHen I came back down, they started talking about various financing options.

My husband and I said they could run his credit to see what he could qualify for. It seemed like he signed a lot on their digital penpad for just a credit check. Mind you, we had not received any kind of print out or seen any list of what we would actually be getting by going through Sears. I started asking them about the sizes of cabinets they would be putting in and they started rattling off sizes that are much smaller than my current ones. (Ikea seems to have more "custom" sizes than what Sears seems to have). I told them I didn't want the smaller ones and wanted the size I have now. They said that with their corner cabinet, I couldn't  have any other size. I also asked about what they were planning for over my kitchen window since there is not enough space between the window and ceiling for a cabinet and they said nothing.

I said they couldnt leave that area with nothing since it is a log wall. (We live in a log cabin with rounded log walls). That's when they said they would put in a valance. One of the salesmen went outside to make a call while my husband and I stepped aside and we both agreed that this is not for us since they weren't being upfornt with us. We all came back into the kitchen and they said my husband hadn't been approved for the credit through Sears but had been through another company, but at 24% interest. We said, "No thank you". That is when they wanted me to give my information to run my credit for the project. I looked at them and said, "no" and that "we're done".

So to sum up the story, kids...What I was expecting to take an hour and a half, took over 4 hours. This seems absurd to me. Two salesmen showed up to tagteam us on one of our two projects. They quote you a price, but don't actually tell you what you are buying or what sizes. You have no idea what the various items cost. To me, if a company is so great like they claimed, they wouldn't have to be selling themselves. You don't see Apple or Windows on the corner bragging about how great they are to get your sale. They let the product sell themselves. Sears doesn't actually do the work. They have a project coordinator and subcontract the work to other local companies. They don't have a lot of choices for cabinets, backsplashes, sinks, pulls, or faucets.

I flat out told the salesmen I didn't shop at Sears because it was outdated, very unorganized and inferior quality items compared to their competitors at the beginning of the appointment. Between this and how they run their "home improvement services" I don't see Sears staying in the running very long for much of anything. Even Craftsmen is no longer sold primarly at Sears.