Complaint Review: Searscleaning.com - Lorton Virginia

I will never use and recommend any air-condition/heating, hot-water system and air-vent cleaning services provided by Sears Home service (provide service to Maryland and Virginia) to anyone. Don’t believe the quote they give you. It is a trap for more money. A few hundred dollars repair or cleaning job might be ended up to a thousand dollars bill. They not only have a non-professional technician but also have a bad customer service. All their doing is to suck the maximum amount of money from your pocket.

I had a dryer vent clogged. So I called Sears Home Service for cleaning the dryer vent. The sales man told me that they were running promotion now, and that they could offer me $189 to clean 10 vents and 1 dryer vent.  The cleaning was scheduled on Wednesday afternoon from 12 to 6:00pm. However, the technician didn’t show up. Instead, I got a call from Sears at 5:30 pm on Wednesday, telling me that the tech could not make it and they had to reschedule the cleaning on Saturday afternoon. On Saturday afternoon, the technician still did not show up. So I called Sears Customer service, and was told that they forgot to click the button to confirm my appointment on Saturday. After many attempts of trying, they finally agreed to send a technician to my house to clean the vents. When the tech arrived, instead of cleaning my vents and dryer vent as stated in the contract, the technician went into our furnace system, and told me that my furnace is dirty and that I should have clean my furnace cleaned for additional $600, otherwise, he would not clean the air vent for me.  Additional $600 on top of $189 was way too expensive for cleaning the furnace, plus he did not even bring the right tool to clean the furnace, so I declined the furnace cleaning. After he learned that I don’t want to clean the furnace, the tech told me that he would not clean the vent if I don't clean my furnace and then he packed everything and left. After his left, I found that we didn't have hot water. The air-conditioning and heating was no longer working either. I had to call Sears again, but the customer service told me that the technician said that he had never come inside the furnace; it was my responsibility to fix the air-condition/heating unit and hot water tank. When I told them that we saw the tech was there to check the furnace, otherwise how he can tell that the furnace was dirty. I was told that the tech could not open the furnace since he did not bring the tool, and that the $600 charge is just a quote given to me based on assumption that the furnace is dirty.  When I tried to explain that the tech didn’t need the tool to open the furnace panel, the customer service said that they only believe their tech not the customers, however, they are willing to send the technician to our house to check and clean the furnace on Wednesday.  That means that I have to live without air-condition/heating and hot water for another 3 days. I called another company, Supreme Comfort Heating & Air Conditioning, explained the situation. The guy from that company showed up earlier next morning and found out that the knob of my hot-water was turned to the vacation mode and the switch inside the furnace was turned off as well (actually the switch inside the furnace was damaged, very hard to turn it back on). He managed to turn both switches on and video-taped everything upon my request.  He then cleaned my furnace, 10 vents, 1 dryer vent, and 1 outside coil unit for only $350.

I called Sears and talked to their supervisor, Ms, Brook Demetri, and told her that I have a video to prove it that the Sears tech turned my system off and damaged the knob. She told me that unless Sears came to do the job, otherwise Sears was not responsible for the repair. I told her that after all had happened, how I can trust the tech, and what happen if they came over and told me that my system had some problems, I had to pay additional $1000 to fix it, but in fact it was just the switch inside the furnace was turned off.  She told me that I should read the contract; Sears stated in the contract that they are not responsible for any problems, but they will provide 30 day warranty on the service itself. I went back to read the contract, it only said that they will make their best attempt to resolve the issues, never said that they are not responsible for any damage caused by them.

So before you call Sears for the service, please be very careful, and do not fall into the trap they set for you. This is the worst service including worst customer service I ever have.