I got a notice that I had $140.00 in Shop your way points for about 3 years of using my credit card. It's 12:09 at night - and finally after searching for items on their website, I finally found 3 things.

Who develops a website and then puts "Not available" on item after item? Or, even though they know your zip code, display merchandise that says "Not available for shipping to your zipcode" (really? We're supposed to think that a capital city doesn't have postal service? Or UPS?) and "Not available for pickup".

And then there was the promise that you could purchase a gift card to use up your points?! You know at a legit store like Home Depot, Lowes or Applebees? Heck no -- enter the dollar amount and viola! An xml error message.

So how about technical support? Nope. Nothing but a poorly done AI emoji at the bottom of the screen. Over and over -- whether it was socks, a kitchen aid (they have zero inventory there despite displaying a KitchenAid mixer as part of the category), sweaters, toolboxes, nightgowns -- blocked, blocked, blocked. But after 12 hours of hell - with some timeouts, I got a set of drill bits, an impact driver, I laid out $ 6.54. We'll see how long it takes for it to come in.

And then I'm cutting up by credit card into tiny pieces and spending all that money using my Amazon card.

Eddie Lampert has drained the company dry, and left an embarrassing shell of a company. But in 2022, I never thought it'd be this bad. I even tried to download their app to see if that would resove the error message on the gift cards. And the reviews on that app said "Doesn't work - downloaded it and all I got was a white screen.".

It just looks like Sears just shut down, and isn't even bothering to hide that their warehouses are gutted and Eddie Lampert is just hoping that Amazon will make him a nice offer on the scraps of the Sears empire, and then cash out leaving the US taxpayers stuck with the bill for the pension funds that will be left high and dry. Supposedly, what I ordered will be available at the hometown store. Once I pick them up (if they show up at all), that card is going into a shredder and will be returned with a note that will be tossed aside into the wastebasket along with what used to be an average store.

Cute hoodies / jumpers.
Most things are at a good price..

Both a scam and fraud!
FRAUD AND SCAM
FRAUD! I bought a water filter for my fridge at Sears appliance in January. I didn't have my Sears card With me so manager called it in. It took a really long time to charge the $58 filter to my Sears card, tons of questions to answer. Then I didn't get a bill from Sears so I stopped in to pay my bill in February. They said I could pay right there. Got a receipt and a cancelled check.
I had been getting what I thought we're credit card offers from Shop Your Way, which I just tossed. Then I opened one and saw that it was a bill fir $58 and $60. I called immediately, spoke with Karen. She looked and said their records showed I had indeed paid Sears in full. Shop Your Way had taken over Sears card. No one told me in my contacts when I bought and paid for my filter. Her records showed I owed $0.00. Great bit them she asked me to pay $5! I asked why should I give you $5? For what? Her response was to ask me for $3! I said no.
Then I got another bill for $3 I think. I called, spoke to Jennifer. She looked up my record and said I didn't owe anything it would I send $5. No I said, I don't owe you any $. Then she asked for $2. I got upset. She told me she would take care of it, that she changed the record. Great I said.
Then I got another bill for $3 and a late charge. I called again and told the call employee to stop this scam. This is fraud. She wanted to drag me through another 30 minutes of looking up my bill, eventually telling me the records showed I owed nothing, etc. I said no, here is my name, this is fraud, you are trying to make me give you $ so you don't wreck my credit rating. FRAUD AND SCAM. She kept insisting she had to look it up to help me. No, I have my name and said to stop contacting me.
Still the bills come. I think the next one was for $3 PLUS late fees! Unbelievable. More bills, then a letter saying my bill was reported to TransUnion Credit.
I will never give this CRIMINAL organization a dime. It's like they hold your credit fir ransom. I wonder how much they've racked in getting innocent people to pay them $5, $3, $2?. Each time you call to straighten it out, you get dragged through a bunch of questions you've answered and then some they ask so you will be scared about them collecting information on you. Trying to use up your time, drag you through their process, make you wait, listen to them give their speech, ask for money even though you owe nothing and then unless you give them money, they will keep billing, make you callI again, send more bills.
I sent a letter to the Federal Trade Commission. I am sending a copy of this to each of the credit companies. Credit Karma already has an email. This is one of the sickest scams where they harass you for $ in every way possible. Thank God I kept my receipt and my cancelled check. One credit esker said it was like Medicare Fraud where a fraud ring bills a huge number of people # of people for a small amount and Medicare pays because it's so small. The fraudulent company makes millions if the do it enough. Truly evil. Check review sites, you'll see the words scam, scamming, scammer over and over. One can write the company and start having to do it l over and over by mail instead of telephone.
No way to email them because they want the process to be as time consuming as possible unti you give in and give them $5 or maybe settle your "late fees" for even more$. What makes people do things like this? I read also that their rewards were impossible to collect on, same kind of scam. I hope they get shut down. Citibank should divest from this crooked operation. Or else Citibank should be reported for fraud to Federal Banking oversight. DO NOT USE SHOP YOUR WAY FOR ANY REASON! RUN!

I had $187 in points to use and it was an absolute nightmare. The whole thing is very misleading and seems to be purposely difficult so people give up and don't use their points. I thought it would be nice to use the money to pick some items to gift for Christmas. The website is SUPER confusing and misleads you to believe you can buy whatever you want with your points but that's not the case. After a long time of fighting with it I figured out that you can filter your results to show items that are redeemable with points. It's only items sold by Sears and Kmart directly NOT anything on their website. I was logged in but not really it has you verify again and gives you troubles logging in. I called customer service and after hours we got the email verified again. Apparently the system updates and needs to reverify the email whenever it wants to. Got logged in again got the items into my cart and got an error message saying some items were out of stock or not available in my area. Many many items come up as not available. It is maddening to even pick stuff that will even be able to be shipped to you. I spend DAYS adding items and getting messages of issues. After all the items in my cart were redeemable with points, not out of stock, available in my area, and Free shipping I went to check out and it wouldn't let me. After another several hours on hold they advised they are having system issues and to just wait and try it again later. I wanted the items for Christmas but it took me so long to get through the nonsense that they are now going to be late. I kept getting an error message that something was wrong on their end so I called back. Customer service is rude and not helpful at all. After being transferred to every department and not getting answers I got to a supervisor who wasn't much better. I managed to get the order placed manually with all the item numbers with a rep on the phone. Their total ended up being way more than mine for the exact same items. After 2 hours of that I finally just told them to take stuff off. I chose Only items that were free shipping but that is also a lie. It cost me $20.03 for shipping to redeem my points with Free shipping. After all that I just paid the stupid shipping to get it over with. I have $47 left over that is just going to expire because I can't do this all again. Today I get an email that one of the items was not in stock and they refunded my points. FML Never again. The worst experience I have ever had using rewards. I will be getting rid of the card very soon. Its very blatant that they don't want you to be able to redeem your points.

The Shop Your Way model essentially bribes SYW members to shop more often. To do so, SYW members have to put up with online orders that are too often incorrectly fulfilled with wrong items. They have to put up with returns to a non-local Kmart or Sears that can cost a huge amount in return shipping deductions because of per-item ship label deductions that are taken even if all items fit in the same (original) shipping box and come from the same order.

SYW members stand to save money but the perks of the rewards program comes with a growing share of headaches. If, for example, it becomes necessary to update the name on a SYW account, customer service reps will insist on speaking to whomever is named on the Membership Card even if all linked payment information and contact information are linked to yourself and/or are incorrectly linked to someone else due to death, divorce, marriage or clerical error. Logging into the SYW website isn't any better because there is no way to see, short of choosing to print a new member card, who in your household SYW actually regards as the member. (This is problematic if the information in their database is incorrect as they don't allow for joint members and will not change the name even if the person listed calls them as my own spouse has done many times in the name of getting my SYW membership to correctly reflect that I am the only one actually making use of the account.)

Sears and KMART recently made a change that diminishes the benefits of SYW membership. SYW points were formerly redeemed like cash. Now the presence of discounts of any kind, including earned Points, will mean that many customers miss the minimum order target to qualify for free shipping. SEARS also instituted a higher order minimum to qualify for free shipping as compared to competing retailers, which makes them less competitive and attractive to shop. This also makes SYW Points redemption into a mathematical ordeal at checkout.

The entire SYW program flies in the face of the old KISS axiom: Keep It Simple, Stupid. In contrast, I am also an Amazon Prime member and thus far I don't need to meet ANY minimum to get free shipping with Prime whereas now I have to spend $59 above and beyond any redeemed Points and applied discount codes to qualify for Free Shipping with SYW. Worse, the high Minimum Order Requirement applies even though I am a MAX (premium) member!

On one recent attempt to check out with a Sears online order I was just 13¢ shy of meeting the requirement for free shipping so I reduced my Points redemption by about 20¢ because I had already "stocked up" on numerous things I wasn't planning on buying to qualify for the free shipping in the first place. Frankly, I was tired of bouncing in and out of my shopping cart for nearly TWO HOURS to accomplish what Sears' minimum order requirements have made overly complicated when SYW Points are also at play during checkout. Backing off my redemption of Points by less than 20¢ should have put me in position to spend just over $60 after redeeming my Points at a lesser-than-eligible amount --- but Sears nonetheless slammed me with an additional $21 of shipping fees on a sub-$100 order, which falsely implied I had redeemed enough Points for my subtotal to fall under the minimum order! (As a MAX member they advertise Free Standard Shipping so for the life of me I don't even know why I'm being forced to pay shipping fees to begin with!)

I share this to make the point that the Shop Your Way program has become too complicated to continue on as a consumer-facing program. Because prices at retailers such as Sears and Kmart are already low to begin with, my proposal is that Sears and Kmart return to basics and focus on NO GIMMICKS PRICING and Quality Customer Service driven by an incentives program aimed on improving employee performance. Employees will perform better if they stand to earn quarterly bonuses and/or In-Store Credits providing their real-time Customer Feedback Score merits the "perks". (One of those ranking criteria would be tied, as an example, to the accuracy with which employees fulfill and ship online orders, which sadly has amounted to a lottery in recent years as to whether Kmart/Sears shoppers will even get what they ordered online in the size, color or item they expected. Incorrect order fulfillment is perhaps THE single biggest disincentive for people to continue to shop the Sears and Kmart brands.)

My proposal would simplify shopping for consumers, meaning everyday low prices sans the SYW gimmicks, and it would give employees incentive to provide top tier service because they would be on the target end of the "bribes" (incentives) that are currently aimed at SYW members. Better yet, it would allow Sears to par down their operating costs by getting rid of their cruddy overseas SYW customer (no) service team and all related overhead.

BOTTOM LINE

If Sears management, who has control of SYW but treats it like a separate entity, has any sense, they will take my feedback under advisement and restructure the entire retail operation around customer-incentives to provide feedback on existing transactions as opposed to a bunch of over-complicated Points redemption rules, exclusions and the like at the Point Of Service. As an example, supply every Sears and Kmart with in-store customer kiosks or a web link on the receipt and treat the entire Feedback Solicitation System like Vegas Slots. The customer is informed up front that a low ranking of their in-store experience or online order will NOT impact their ability to "win". (This is so customers will provide HONEST feedback.) In effect, the only way customers can "earn" Cash Bonus and Discount-Off offers is if they participate in a feedback lottery with a guaranteed discount or bonus point "payout" for their trouble. Under my proposal, there would be no more SYW Points awarded solely because a customer shopped a store or placed a website order. Customers who obtain discounts will have obtained them not for shopping but for each and every FEEDBACK they submit on a transaction-by-transaction basis, which in turn would track the employees they interacted with in a store or the employees who fulfilled or processed online orders (and returns). My model --- and folks, you read it here on SiteJabber first! --- appears in the hope Sears and Kmart will rediscover their A-game and begin to deliver where the retail rubber meets the consumer spending road: Competent Customer Service. If CEO Eddie Lampert wants to save SEARS and KMART, it's going to come down to out of the box thinking. And that's just what this review is all about.

Mr. Lampert, if you are interested in an out-of-the-box, college-educated Gen-X thinker, this Sears shopper is available to talk.

Today 7/11/2016, I made the mistake of visiting Sears Automotive Center, located at: 347 Westshore Plaza Mall Tampa, FL *******.

I bought all 4 of my tires at this location, and was told that I could get the pressure in my tires checked for Free at any time.

So, I attempted to do so because it was needed.

Usually, I get decent service and this has never been a problem in the past. Today, for some strange reason, it was.

I simply walked in, asked to have my tire pressure checked, and one of the two Service Managers at the front desk asked me to pull up to one of the ports, and assured me that someone would assist.

I pulled up, and saw the Service Manager seemingly asking one of the guys to help me. I ended up sitting in my Jeep, waiting for about 15-20 minutes, while he and their other so-called mechanics/technicians completely ignored me!

The one who was supposed to help, had the nerve to actually look at me, then began to throw his hands up in the air constantly, and mouth words. He was acting as if he was annoyed and almost seemed to be having a tantrum/fit! Pretty much, behaving like a child and being very unprofessional.

I got out of my vehicle, walked back in, and made the Service Advisor aware of how long I had been waiting for assistance. Also, I let him know that I originally bought my tires there, and wondered what the problem was.

From there, the Service Manager walked back outside and seemed to be reprimanding the idiot for refusing to do his job. Still, nothing was resolved, because he never attempted to help me. He just continued behaving like a 2 year old who was having a bad day!

Eventually, the Service Advisor had to find another mechanic to finally agree to check my tires. WOW!

Although the Service Advisor seemed to try and rectify the situation, and the other mechanic had a better attitude, there was no apology issued from anyone afterwards! Just a wave, letting me know my tires had been checked.

Maybe my experience would've been better, if I had been a young blonde or brunette, blue eyed caucasian female, instead of being a young, African American Lady.

Sears only wants money! After that, you get extremely poor service!

Now, I understand why so many people have written negative reviews about Sears Automotive Center. The location I visited is one of the absolute worst and I will never return there again!

For those of you who live in Tampa, FL or surrounding areas, PLEASE DO NOT TAKE YOUR VEHICLE TO SEARS AUTOMOTIVE CENTER AT WESTSHORE PLAZA!

Address: 347 Westshore Plz Mall
Tampa, FL *******

Phone# *******095

Store # 2765
Manager: Roger Hanson