Shenanigans at Sears

Seven years ago we bought a vacuum cleaner from Sears. I loved it and still have it, although it's now relegated to the basement to clean up cat litter and lint off the pool table. One of the wheels is missing so it would scratch my wood floors upstairs. It also produced an odor like burning cat fur and old man's underpants. I can't throw it away as it is still soldiering on and has seen me through the lean years.

Craig bought me a new one - the very same brand from Sears. It came with two heads - one with a rotating brush which immediately stopped working, and a flat-one that broke off the second time I used it. Needless to say I'm very sad about the quality of the new model as my old one is such a trusty little soul.

We took disgraced number 2 to Sears today and explained that even though we didn't keep the receipt we did indeed purchase it from that store on a debit card, so it sould be easily traceable in their system, and that we wanted to return it as it was broken. Our teenage assistant (who I will refer to as "smug trollop") informed us that we were in their system for buying numerous items over the years but that the only vacuum cleaner we had bought from them was seven years ago.

This blows my mind - she actually insinuated that we were returning a seven year old vacuum. How absolutely desperate or insane would you be to return a vacuum 7 years old for Pete's sake??? Okay, so my blood isn't actually boiling at this point but I'm ready to do some business with someone other than smug trollop.

When I asked to talk to the manager, s.t. whispered to her " the only record we have is of them buying a vacuum in 2001". How I didn't drop-kick the little cow I don't know.

Long story short, they eventually found us in their system. They regretfully informed us that we'd narrowly missed the return date but we could pay to have it fixed. I regretfully informed them that I was ready to have a conniption on the shop floor and so they gave us a replacement vacuum.

I know times are hard. I know Sears is probably hurting in this dead ecomony like everyone else. But Sears is supposed to be our friendly neigbourhood DIY store and they made us fight REALLY hard for an hour for what should have been a simple and fair return.

Interestingly, I took out a 2-year maintenance plan on vacuum 3 and I have a feeling I'll be seeing miss smug trollop very soon. It's quite tempting to take old faithful back and let her get a wiff of old man's underpants.......