I am a big bargain hunter and I was looking to replace my 23 year old Kenmore Downdraft Slide in Range. When I stated shopping I found out that Jenn-Air is the only company that still makes built-in downdraft ranges and they are on the high side for cost so I headed into a Sears Outlet Store and after several visits and after consulting with several lady friends I decided I just had to have a duel fuel (gas on top & convection for the oven) range. So I went into the Sears Outlet web site and found exactly what I needed but ended up back and forth between the 800 help folks and my local Sears Outlet store and I was told they did not have the model advertised at any of the stores at the advertised price, $ 250 below the Sears.com price. The advertised price was a range of $1033 from low to high which if you don’t know allows the outlet stores to drop the price if it does not sell. Good for bargain hunters like me to know since the longer it sits in the store the lower it drops but bad news if it sells than I lose the bargain.

I follow the financials and I remember hearing that the Sears brand and stock are on a big resurgence so I decided to contact their corporate office and see if they could help. It took me about 10 minutes on the web to track down the main corporate number in Chicago and here are the details on contacting Sears:

The main switchboard number for Sears Holdings in Chicago is (847) 286-2500. I have found that if you are calling to a main corporate office for any company it is best to keep it very very concise, with reason for call and department involved. As an example “I am calling to complain about the pricing on an appliance with your outlet stores.”

The switchboard operator put me through to a real live person (first name begins with K) who happened to work for one of the head honchos over the Sears Outlet Division. K explained that they are very concerned about complaints about Sears and they read them daily. After a couple of days I got a call back from real nice gentlemen (first name begins with J) and just to keep this short he found me a store that did have exactly the model I was looking for and at the advertised price but not at my low low steal of a deal price of $ 335 off of the advertised price and I had to drive 300 miles to get it. But it is a fair price just not a steal!

I normally don’t put these issues out on the web but maybe it will help a few bargain hunters like me get a good deal and sorry K and J I don’t want to create allot more work for you guys, you did a great service for me, I just want to keep the stock going up!

And as a final note this posting is not meant to help the guys that bought a range that is marked down from $2650 to $ 223 because it has 14 dings, a smashed oven door and the base is not sitting level. You should be buying this for parts and not expecting this range to actually work!