Sears

Full review
I guess I dodged a bullet today. Now that I read some sears.com reviews, I'm glad all I lost was some time. After seeing two items on early bird special today for black friday, I tried to buy a small trampoline and an electric shaver on sears.com this morning. After trying the website, experiencing site down messages for hours, waiting a while, and trying again several times throughout the day, twice calling the 800 number for web help and they couldn't access the system, I just about gave up. I had finally succeeded in getting the two items in the web cart but it would not complete the transaction giving me the proper discount price for the sale today. I refused to put my credit card in unless the price was in there correctly. The webpage said today's discounted black friday price but when it put it in the cart, it had the discount price on their as well as a regular price, but unfortunately, it showed that it charged the higher price. I had one last idea to call the local sears in plano texas at 8:30pm and obtain the products through them, asking if they would honor the doorbuster and web prices if I came to the store. I even had a print out of the shopping cart showing the cheaper price quotes for today. Strangely enough, at 8:30pm the main number played a recording that said the store was closed (they really don't close until 9pm). I found another sears phone number and reached someone, who transferred me etc etc, explained my story about 6 times to different people, managers, etc. After 30 plus minutes on the phone I was told I would have to call the 800 number for sears.com because the sears stores and sears.com were separate entities. I gave up. No transactions were made.
Now, the interesting thing is that I think Sears lost so much money in sales opportunities today. The sears.com call center employee told me that he had been working for 8 hours and had not been able to complete one single order yet, because the call center uses sears.com to place orders. It had been down all day. Having been in IT (information technology) for 11 years, and several years in consumer products (for both Footaction and Cadbury Dr Pepper Seven Up), I cannot believe that sears is going down like this. And they will go down. I plan to keep an eye on their stock and check the business section to see if anyone reported on their website woes and its affects on their quarterly sales. When the analysts get a hold of this problem and try to quantify the lost immediate sales opportunity, lost customers and loyalty, frustration amongst all parties.... their stock will be worth a lot less I bet. People expect websites to work properly, even on high volume days. Then if that doesn't work, they expect to be able to order by phone. Especially from Sears, who invented the catalog! If none of that works, people expect the local store to honor the prices and act like they are all one Sears entity. I expected better from Sears. Everyone was nice to me on the phone but the bottom line is I didn't buy their stuff and neither did anyone else. The loss of sales, loss of customers confidence equals death in the competitive market we have. The recording telling me the store was closed at 8:30pm was an ominous warning of what the future holds for Sears. I feel bad for the IT folks trying to salvage the CF implementation that is sears.com. People, consulting firms, etc will be sued over it. I can't even imagine. Misuse or poor use of technology destroys businesses. I have seen it before.

Update 11-26-07. Found an interesting article about the technical aspect on Valleywag, the self proclaimed tech gossip rag. There are also some customers who made orders and haven't had them process.
http://valleywag.com/tech/breakdowns/searscom-out-on-black-friday-326036.php
Also, yahoo finance is showing Sears (nasdaq) stock is down several points already this morning. That follows an overall trend since January 2007. The blogs say they are expecting several more bad quarters.

Very sad - Sears is a great company... atleast it was. Maybe they can turn it around. I don't know if the batch of customers they didn't serve this season will ever go back. Not sure I want to give them a second chance myself. My personal opinion is I want an acknowledgement that they messed up (in regards to their website, 800 number and store communications), an apology, and the opportunity to make the purchases at the prices promised for black friday. Then I would come back to the store and make transactions in person. I will never do transactions on the sears website again.