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This year has been an expensive year for us and appliances. It started with replacing an old washer and drier. Then it was replacinig a small freezer with a bigger one. At this point things started to snowball. Our oven went on the fritz. Before we had even got a bill for the oven the refrigerator quite last Wednesday. The following is a true story about the hijinx that ensued trying to get it replaced.

Wednesday when I went to fix lunch I noticed the food in the freezer side of the refrigerator had started to thaw. I moved that food into our new freezer and checked on the refrigerator side. It was starting to warm up as well so we decide to move that food as well.

Rachel and I then had the discussion on whether to get it fixed or replace it. Since we had already put some money into fixing it in the past, we decided to just outright replace it. After work we went in search of a new fridge. Since we had purchased the other new appliances from Sears and we were moderately happy with them we decided to go there. Knowing we had a space constraint we didn’t find any we liked. We also had a wedding to go to out of town over the weekend so we were looking for something that would be delivered on Friday.

When we got back from shopping I headed online to find our fridge. I found one on the sears website that was in our price range, was available for delivery, and would fit into our space. Bingo. I ordered it for delivery on Friday. Thursday night we get our confirmation call that we had a delivery scheduled for between 10:00 AM and noon on Friday.

Friday 1:00 PM the refrigerator hasn’t shown up and we haven’t heard anything from the store. So I call the company. There was an error and the appliance didn’t make it to the warehouse. They had only found out about it at 9:30 that morning. 9:30 to 1:00 PM seems like a long time to know about a problem and not be notified about it. So after some haggling and a $50 dollar gift certificate we had a new delivery date of Tuesday. We would be traveling on Monday so Tuesday was the soonest we would be home to receive the refrigerator.

So we go to the wedding and have a great time. We get home after a 4 hour drive on Monday and have 4 calls from Sears. They had schedule the delivery for Monday and then preceded to try and deliver it while we were not home. So another call to the company. At this point we are so frustrated that we just cancel the order.

I then call up my brother to borrow a truck and off we go shopping for a refrigerator. I was going to get this taken care of that night. 4 stores and 2 hours later and nothing is in stock that will fit in our kitchen. So it’s back to sears again. I get to the store and they have the refrigerator in stock that we ordered. I buy it, we take it home, and 1 hour later it is in place. Hooray.

I really, really hated given my business back to sears since they had done such a horrible job with the deliver, but I didn’t have another choice given the fact that I’m not going to be tearing out any cabinets to get a new fridge in. All I can say is I better get my refund for the first fridge I bought from them and they are now a last resort for anything else I might want to purchase.