My problems with Sears started last October. The remote for my mom’s TV was broken. She took it down to the repair center at the Value Village mall. They tested it for her and told her that because it was under warranty they would replace it. Great! But… they didn’t have a replacement in stock and they would call when it came in. Well, what are you gonna do? I mean the guy couldn’t give her one if he didn’t have one right?

So now we’re waiting for them to call. October goes and November arrives. November goes. Now I’m calling them every weekend to find out what’s going on. I never get a satisfactory response from them.

Part of our problem is that my mom doesn’t drive and I can only help her on the weekends. So it’s partly our fault that this is dragging on. When I say partly our fault I mean we should have been constantly demanding the service we were due.

Finally, mom happens to be near the Value Village mall. She goes in to ask what the deal with the remote is. They tell her to just bring in the old one and they’ll replace it. You see they keep a bunch in stack all the time for just this purpose. At this point I’ll refer you to the top of this page where they told my mom that they didn’t have any in stock.

When she told me this I had to think back to make sure I wasn’t all whacked out on glue. Since I didn’t remember abusing solvents that day I came to the conclusion that the people at Sears were making a lot of model airplanes in the back room.

On Saturday I went in with the remote. I told the guy there my story. He took the remote into the back room. Now I’m thinking that he’s getting the replacement. No. He’s testing the remote. He doesn’t want to give me the new one. He wants to keep the old one for few days to try and figure out what’s wrong with it, then fix it and give it back to us.

"Didn’t you hear me say it was tested in October? And that the guy we spoke to then said it would be replaced?" I was incredulous.

"Well I can’t just give out replacements whenever I feel like. I can lend you a universal remote for the time being."

"You know I don’t care. We’ve been waiting for over two months for it to come in. Then the other day we find out that you’ve always got one in stock. Now I come here and your not going to give me the remote. I can’t believe it. We’ve been using a universal remote. All it’s good for is turning it on and off, changing channels or adjusting the volume. If the power goes out we won’t be able to reset the TV and so a universal remote will be useless to us. We can’t even move the TV because it would need to be re- programmed.

"Please…can you just give me the piece I need?"

After a few more minutes of back and forth he gave me what I wanted. And I wish I could say I’ve never been back, but next time I’ll tell you about the vacuum cleaner belts.