Why Sears Doesn’t Want Your Business

I had an unfortunate experience with Sears in-home repair about 5-6 years ago where I sincerely felt over-charged for an in-home service of 3 appliances, the oven needed a replacement filament, the dishwasher line was plugged and the washer needed a replacement belt.

Now whether or not $175 per appliance, plus parts for an in-home visit that ran less than 30 minutes is fair is not why I am writing this post. The reason I am writing this post is because when it came to resolving my concerns, Sears representatives were less than helpful, at times even stepping over themselves to avoid communicating with me at all.

Now surely, I would never call Sears for an in-home repair again, I was less concerned about placing an order on-line for clothing and household items which I did order from Sears.com in the past few days.

That brings us to today where noticing an over-charge on my Visa, I contacted Sears Customer Support only to be told I was incorrect as to the displayed price of a particular item, (a shirt showed $2.99 in-cart and billed at $4.99) and that I was not charged a shipping fee even tough a separate charge for $6.40 had in-fact been debited and cleared my account.

The promised $50 gift-card I was promised 5 years ago in response to my original complaint never materialized, and I am highly doubtful Sears will be more responsive to the more recent concern based on the pass the blame e-mail that I received today.

I don’t know why Sears has abandoned the consumer during the follow-up support process, but I am guessing that ‘ignore and the customer will go-away’ has become an everyday manner of handling customer complaints at Sears.

For the above reasons I am confident in my belief that Sears doesn’t want my business. The question you should ask yourself is does Sears want your business?

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WTF? Washington State? Really, Handing Over Kids to a Madman?

News breaking about the tragedy in Washington State where Josh Powell kills his two sons in an apparent murder-suicide plot by blowing up the house with some type of home-made explosive.

Why would a single? State Child Services employee be the only one present and why would anyone, knowing the volatility of the situation place the children in the home without first scouting the location to insure the children’s safety?

This sad news did not have to happen and I am hopeful that the forthcoming investigation puts better protocols into place to prevent similar events.

I don’t know what else to say except may the two boys rest in peace and God bless the family already victimized by this sick individual.

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Who Was Your First Foot Visitor?

I like traditions, and I especially like traditions that I can incorporate or adopt as my own. New Years traditions are pretty basic with singing Auld Lang Syne and making a resolution so when I heard about the Irish tradition of ‘First Foot’ I was excited to quickly bring it into the fold of the New Years celebration.

The tradition basically revolves around whom crosses your threshold as a guest in your home first in the New Year. Your luck or misfortune for the coming year can be determined by whom this guest is.

I am going to keep my first foot visitor a secret this year but alas they were treated like royalty just in-case. May your first foot visitor bring you all the luck that you desire in 2012. Happy New Year!

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Google Tackles Original Authorship Head-On

Authorship, or verifying the original author of an article or publication will go along way to reducing the benefits scrapers who often blindly scrape away your work will receive in Googles’ index.

Google with recent introduction of its authorship verification methods has begun tackling the issue head-on and I for one am excited at the possibilities this brings to the table.

Of course, verifying original authorship’s benefits are not only limited to the issue of reducing scraper sites and sites full of re-posts but of the more important timeline and social interaction that now receives indexing preferences.

+Nick J. West

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The Little Things in Life Add Up

Year-end is a natural time to reflect on the past year or even past few years. Today I am doing exactly that and in doing so I came to the realization that I enjoy routine as much as I enjoy getting away from it all.

I recently returned from a short-jaunt to San Francisco. Do I love that city. Wouldn’t want to live there full-time but I enjoy the city fully every chance I can get. The visit to the city included a Sunday which is when I usually get a chai tea at 9th and 9th so my routine was changed, leaving me perplexed at how to deal.

In the past I may have substituted with a local coffee shop’s chai tea but that usually ends up just as bad, sorry 9th and 9th has it spot on!

So, this weekend we went to Bob’s Donuts. Delicious and I can’t recommend the place enough, Bob’s on Polk Street near Sacramento St.

Anyway back to the point of this post: Life’s little things matter. Take note of what your list of the ‘little things’ in your life is and reflect on them, just for a few minutes.

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