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Sears Home Improvement Services SHIPS, Sears - the store you have trusted since childhood Sears cheats their customers and employees alike Bridgeton, |
11th of Oct, 2011 by User274711 |
Sears trains their staff heavily in high pressure tactics to sell the customer on the first appointment because they know if you go to the store down the street you will find the same or better products for a much better price - they don't care about the customer. They train to sell the highest price on all products and if you sell below a certain dollar level to any one customer the employee will not get paid. We received poor training on products and were sent out before the training was completed and then deducted money from our promised commission for any errors. They find every and any way they can to cheat the customer and the employee. They cheat the customer on product and time frame of installation using very substandard installers and product and then claim the installation is perfect and the client is being fussy. They then cheat the employee out of commissions if they have to reimburse the customer. If the new hire has not been trained on a product and sent out to sell it anyway (which is common), they take the money difference for any errors (in charging the customer) out of the sales person's commissions. Folks, this means that all bids are bid high and padded so that the sales person does not get a hit, but Sears will hit them anyway if they don't go back and put the money where the product should have been - but wait, they haven't received that training. When a person leaves Sears they are never paid their final commissions. The managers tell the employee to go to the Human Resources department www.88Sears.com and they tell us to go to the manager (who refuses to talk with us and help us rectify problems). The employee must check leads daily at 7:30 AM even though you may have gotten home the night prior at 1:30 PM following a 3-5 hour presentation (no they are never 60-90 minutes). Leads are given daily because they are afraid you won't want to go to a dangerous area or travel 3 hours to get to your client. They care about nothing but getting the sale - they really don't care about how the customer likes or does not like their product - they are on to the next sale. They do not want the sales people to know that most of their clients are unhappy with the product or installation. They hire the same truck and ladder companies they ridicule to do their installation as sub contractors, even though we are taught they are dedicated to Sears - that's just to install a false confidence with the customer. The managers don't help the new hires because they are busy training more new hires to replace the ones they have just hired and know a high percentage of will leave. You are monitored on each slide to tell exactly how many seconds are spent to make sure you get your spin out there correctly to the customer. After less than one hour of training on a product, for example windows, we are designated "trusted advisors". How awful for the customer and the employee who is really trying to be that trusted advisor but cannot under these circumstances. The price of Sears products are WAY above the competition. We are run 2 - 3 leads a day starting at 10 AM and ending at 7 PM, however, again, the appointment is for 3-5 hours, NEVER a minimum of 3 hours (remember the monitoring) or we are chastised for not doing our job. Sleep is something you do not get when working for Sears, and that seems part of the plan - who has time to check to see if they are paying the correct mileage (cheated me out of over 1,000 miles) and they pay $0.21 a mile, far below the government standard - but the managers get $0.45 a mile and skim off our miles also. They do not care how this job affects your family and personal life - you won't have one. We were lied to about how far we would have to travel at the time of hire and one employee was fired because he told us, "I won't lie to you, this is a 16 hour a day job and you will be traveling much further than the 50 miles one way to a client they tell you". What we are told in class does not match what is listed on the computer, an example is we are told to tell the customer that quartz countertops have a life time warranty, however the computer says 15 years - and so will your warranty documents, if you get them. Most of my commission that I did get paid went to car repairs due to the extreme travel distances as well as to the high cost of gasoline. You do not get a company car nor gas. The method of payment of commissions and mileage is so convoluted that it is difficult to figure out if it is correct, and when you see that it is not, they will not correct it. I have worked on extremely complex mathematical projects and I found it difficult because of the vagueness of the documents - it is a systemic problem to Sears itself - they don't want you to understand. You will carry very heavy bags and cases of samples of doors, windows, flooring, and for the kitchen gals granite, quartz and kitchen products, etc. You will not be given a handcart nor are their reasonable wheels if there are wheels to help with the transport. If you do not sell to a customer, they drop the price and send someone else out after the initial sales person; the initial person does not get the sale. To the brave customers who want to have Sears come out, wait for the second person to come - at least the price will be less. Sears is a hard sell high pressure sales process - they want the customer to buy on the first appointment because if you wait and check with other company's price and product you will find just as good if not better for a much better price. I really tried to make it work, and worked very hard and smart, but I quit when I realized most of my customers were unhappy with the product and installation and Sears cheated me out of my commissions for one of a million reasons they use. I believed in Sears branding, which is why I went to work there, never again will I buy from Sears. |
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