I have made all major purchases for my home at Sears. We are a very brand loyal family, so starting with my Great Grandparents, my family's history with Sears is pretty lengthy.

I have purchased:

A stove, garage door openers, bi-annual carpet cleaning, 2 refrigerators, 2 air conditioners, received an estimate that I WAS going to initiate on central air conditioning this summer, 2 washer, 2 dryers, 1 dishwasher, 3 treadmills, and 2 ellipticals, etc. from Sears over the past 6yrs; not to mention the countless tires and oil changes I've received, in addition to the optical services, and apparel and shoe shopping my family does.

My problem came with the purchase of my last treadmill.

After going in circles with the salesperson who kept selling me products that turned out to be unavailable, I finally settled on a Nordic Trac treadmill. I was sold a 3yr warranty for this Nordic Trac, and told I would receive the option to renew when my 3 yrs were up. I was familiar with this process.

I purchase warranty agreements on all major purchases. As you know, the service agreements that Sears provides includes yearly maintenance. While scheduling my yearly check up for the refrigerator, washer and dryer, garage door, and elliptical, I asked for the treadmill to be serviced as well.

When the treadmill technician came to my home, he was quite surprised to find a Nordic Trac treadmill. He told me that Sears does not provide warranty services on Nordic Trac equipment. I pulled out the service agreement, and again the repairman was quite surprised. He said that his order was to service the ProForm treadmill. I informed him that I no longer had the ProForm. I had upgraded to the Nordic Trac and purchased the warranty. The technician was very pleasant, and accommodating. He completed the service on my Nordic Trac.

The next 2 years I repeated this process. The same technician came out to the house both times and completed the service.

When I went attempted to renew all of my service agreements, the customer service representative would not renew the treadmill agreement. According to her, I should have never been given a service agreement for the Nordic Trac, and the person who sold that to me made a mistake.

I told her that was 3 years, and 3 maintenance checks later. I needed to renew the agreement. She refused, but told me to call Nordic Trac to obtain a warranty and future service repairs.

I called Nordic Trac, explained the situation to them, only to have Nordic Trac explain to me that unfortunately, because 3 years had elapsed and Sears did do maintenance work on my treadmill, I no longer qualified for a warranty through Nordic Trac; but they were more than happy to charge me an exorbitant amount to service the treadmill (not including any repairs that may be needed).

The point of this is to say that sometimes a company (i.e. SEARS) needs to suck it up when they make a mistake and put the customer in a situation where they can't be helped by the company that was supposed to take care of them in the 1st place. It is not my fault that I was sold a warranty by mistake! Had I known, I would have simply bought another treadmill so that I could have received the maintenance service!!

Sears made a mistake, but instead of keeping the word of their representative, they passed the buck, didn't apologize, and left me with equipment that is now suffering because I haven't been able to get the maintenance service that I WAS PROMISED!!

Oddly enough, this is the year that I was going to upgrade my treadmill again...but I refuse to spend another dime in a Sears store.