Sears.com Review

About Sears.com

Sears.com has several categories of items to choose from but nowhere near the amount and variety as their stores. They have clothing, accessories, household items, jewelry, electronics, and more. They also have several online only specials that you supposedly can't find at the brick and mortar stores. Navigation is a bit confusing but there are tabs for every category and there are several ways to search. Finding what you want and getting it in your cart can be a chore. I THINK I put items in my cart and, at the end of my shopping, I find out that the items are out of stock or otherwise unavailable. That is so frustrating.

Paying for the order is straightforward and it is shipped to your home. I cannot find an option to ship to the store. If everything is OK, celebrate. If not, get ready to go round and round with customer service. First of all, they charge a 15% restocking fee on several categories of items if you return something. Even if you take the item to a local store for an exchange. That is so unacceptable to me. Sears has no need to charge a stupid restocking fee on anything.

When an order I made for Christmas was lost by them, they were rude to me and essentially said, "Oh well." I was told to make a new order and they would rush ship it with no shipping fee (I already paid shipping once). I tried but all but one item was out of stock. I bought the one item and was charged shipping even though they said I would not be. They explained that the offer was ONLY if I duplicated the first order. I TRIED! It wasn't my fault they were out of stock after losing my first order. They didn't lose the order via shipping. They lost it in their warehouse. It was never even shipped out so they sold my stuff to someone else.

Dealing with things like this is nothing new to me but the customer service reps were so unhelpful and so rude! I am used to dealing with Victoria's Secret or Sephora, where customer service is top notch. Sears must train their CS reps to make every customer feel frustrated and at fault for whatever problem crops up even if they are at fault.

Moving on, shipping is based on weight and can get very pricey. Now and then, they have a weird free shipping promotion where you pay for shipping but send in your receipt and they will refund the shipping charge. I did that three times and never received my shipping charges back. And customer service was clueless.

In all, some of what Sears.com sells is decent and the prices are good. If you don't mind the shipping charge, the possible restocking fee if you need to return something, and the chance you take that they will get the order right and get it to you in a timely fashion, you may have a good shopping experience. However, if you run into issues, watch out. It's a hassle. I now just go to the brick and mortar Sears and buy what I want and don't bother with the site. It's too iffy.

My Viewpoint

Sears.com should run like a well-oiled machine. It's been around for a long time and Sears has a good rep. Maybe my experiences have been isolated ones. However, I think, with such a big store as this, with brick and mortar stores everywhere, if you can get to one, you are better off. The site is not run as well as it should be and you could end up with a big hassle on your hands not to mention a big shipping fee you could avoid. I give the site 2 stars. They should know how to run a site better than they do and customer service should be taught to treat customers with respect or at least patience.