Cory
San Antonio,#2Consumer Comment
Fri, August 27, 2004
I hate Sears with a passion. With that said, I have to agree with Sears on this one. You called the guy out on a service call and then didn't like his prices because they were higher than if you went and bought them yourself. His time, travel, and knowledge are worth something. The only thing different should have been 1 service call and ignitor at $150 and the second at $75. That would have been fair. Just don't blow yourself up by making a mistake when you do it yourself.
Becca
Boise,#3UPDATE Employee
Thu, August 26, 2004
I am sorry you had such a frustrating experience. I work on the parts end of the business and see many people like you who would rather get the parts for a repair and do it themselves than pay labor charges. The job charges are based on the average time and cost that go into a given repair. This includes obvious things like diagnosis and parts installation. It also includes things like travel, scheduling, bookwork and part ordering, which people generally don't think of as being a part of their repair. Your particular repair may take more or less time, it may even take two trips in the event of a part order, but the cost stays the same. This is the way Sears has chosen to simplify the price structure for repairs. You may agree with it or not, but at least I hope you can understand that the people you talked to weren't trying to mis-inform or cheat you. I haven't researched oven repair costs in particular, but on the smaller appliances, which I deal with on a regular basis, I have checked prices of local repair shops and found them comparable. I did this on my own so that I would be able to make the best recommendations to the people I see every day. I, like you, sometimes find that the cost to have someone else repair something for me isn't worth it to me. This is why Sears has parts centers with people like me, for people who don't want to pay for the labor costs. I hope you got your oven working well again. Best wishes.