Sears / State Water Heater Nightmare

[Cass]

I dislike Sears and State. I dislike them more now.

3 years ago I purchased a Sears 40 Gal. Tall W/H. They took all the info from me and inputed it into the puter and said that all that was needed for warranty purposes. Phone, address, and name and heater Mod.#. Reason for the purchase was that it was the only size diameter (17.5") that would fit in the hole.

Fast forward 3 years. Customer calls me and tells me the heater is leaking. I check and the tank is leaking, onto kitchen floor. No pan due to no room for one. I call Sears. Spent almost 2 hrs. on phone, on hold for most of it. First was told that Sears had to come out to verify the leak and they would be out Nov.2. Told them that can't happen floor will be ruined. After expressing my unhappiness they transfer me to the person at State W/H that handles the Sears line. State told me that the W/H couldn't be warren teed unless I could FAX them the receipt from when it was purchased. I don't have it / can't find it. I called Sears and found that they have all the warranty info but there is no way for them to copy it and get it to me so I can FAX it to State. Sears and State also have no way to trade warranty info. Call ended Sat night.

I called Sears back this AM and gave them the direct # of the Sears / State water heater person so info. can be traded. I am waiting for a call back.

This is a nightmare. I will never again buy a Sears / State water heater.


To be continued.........

 

[Jimbo]

I am surprised at the slow response by Sears service. Usually I think they are faster than that/

Of course, you realize that most likely your warranty only covers parts ( the whole tank in this case ) but not the labor to install a new one.

 

[Sponsor]

 

[Dunbar Plumbing]

3 years ago I purchased a Sears 40 Gal. Tall W/H.
Fast forward 3 years. Customer calls me and tells me the heater is leaking. I check and the tank is leaking, onto kitchen floor. No pan due to no room for one....

When you have a situation like this where no pan will go under the heater, buy the smallest pan that will fit in the opening and put bricks inside the pan so that when the heater does leak it will direct flow to either outside or to the floor drain. If this heater was installed on a wood floor then it would of been required to have a pan unless the flooring was "rolled goods" (ei linoleum) to the floor drain in the event something went wrong.

Codes start getting relaxed between Cincinnati and Dayton so depending on what county you are in will dictate what is enforced. Even if it wasn't enforced you see the situation needed one.

You may have to replace this water heater with another and take the hit. In my area all you need is the tag and take it to Sears and you get a new one. Dealing with your situation on the weekend will be fruitless since I'm sure those on the other end of the phone don't want to be working the weekend anyway. Call first thing monday morning with a vengeance and you'll get farther I'm sure.

What was the water pressure when you installed it? Enforced or not if it was over 80 you know the cause and effect.

I've only purchased two water heaters for my customers in 4 years. Unfortunately I have to buy another one next week for a customer. Always I make sure that the customer buys the tank; I just pick it up and install it.

This takes me "off the hook" when it comes to product liability. That way the customer's hand is forced to take matters onto themselves and leave me out of the mix. You'll never get that time back you are now investing into this matter and depending on the outcome....you possibly will lose the customer as well.

Perfect example:

I promote Sears (Kenmore) water heaters alot because of their product specs outweigh the competition and everyone knows Sears. A.O. Smith builds the tanks for Kenmore now so State is out of the equation now.

I put in a tank (50 gal PowerVent) from Sears for a customer and 2 years later the symptom is indicative of a faulty thermocouple. The guy mentions that he'd rather pay me than Sears (After the first year if you do not obtain the extended warranty, you are responsible for labor, not parts through the remainder of the warranty) since they wanted $59.95 for the call and not including labor.

I get there, pull that sealed combustion plate off and the entire burner assembly and the thermocouple is different from the regular ones were all accustomed to. ALSO, you have to buy that complete assembly because it is all made together. WTF?

Now I'm feeling bad because this guy has a water heater I promoted and since he turned down the extended warranty (by my suggestion) he's crying poor because he's spending money on this water heater. He had no options because he's replacing a PV for a PV. Electric conversion wasn't even considered.

I called my local plumbing supply house and they told me that I cannot use A.O. Smith replacement parts for a A.O. Smith Kenmore water heater. They told me that the two don't associate with each other and they have a whole another set of part numbers and product specs for Kenmore.

Now I'm telling the customer that I have to put the assembly back together and you now have to call Sears to get them out to fix the problem. (By the way....his turn around was less 24 hours for getting someone out.)

Another issue I'm having with Sears is those that did buy this extended warranty where a tech comes out and does the normal drain-down of the water heater and check all wearable parts? They recently changed the policy of doing any type of draining of the tank and they are using the bullshit excuse that the RotoSwirl dip tube takes care of that.

Unbelievable.

But they've been doing this all those years beforehand with that same exact dip tube? FFS! I see their motive....now they can have a tech do 12 warranty calls a day instead of 6 because they don't have to drain down the tanks LIKE THEY ARE SUPPOSED TO DO YEARLY.

I have a customer that I talk to quite often that indirectly let me know that the extended warranty he purchased on his water heater is now....less.

Sears is doing this purely for money/cost saving reasons and the ones taking the beating is the customer. Can the customer doing it themselves resolve the problem? Sure, but you already paid ($79 for 5 years) for what is implied in the actual terms of contract.

Might be trying to make a silk purse out of a sow's ear but we are in an industry with a lot of products that are skimming on thier responsibilities after the sale.....and the installers of the products are taking the whiplash as a result.

If there is anything you get out of this...stop buying those tanks to install. Get the reciept set up in the customer's name and address whenever possible when you do have to buy one.

I'm not too pleased with Sears(Kenmore) products myself as of late due to recent happenings involving repairs and shirking of work duties on extended warranty issues.

The good thing is this response will get the attention of many search engines since I made sure I used the product name numerous times.

 

[Cass]

continued........
Waited over an hour to hear from State. No call. I called State back and asked if Sears had called and they said no.

I called Sears back and got another person, explained the problem again and lo and behold she put me on hold made the call to State came back to me in less than 1 min. and said it was all done and State had the info.

State called me back 5 min. later and said everything was all set to pick up the replacement heater.

This whole debacle wasted 4 hours of my time....never again.

 

[Master Plumber Mark]

that is a MIRACLE!!!

Cass....you got lucky

its bad enough that they wont take your word for it
and you are a plumber that sells their products for them....

isnt that an insult and a jab in the butt?

the only reason you got a water heater out of them is
because you are a contractor and basically know the ropes better than the average customer would.....


These fellows at SEARS simply KNOW that any normal person would just give up and go away.....

all they got to do is put you on hold for a day or two....

and then once they give you the excuse that the heater has to be inspected by a sears man two weeks from now for a $75 service call
.....that is the coup-de-gras...

delaying service like this is how SEARS and STATE do business with all the regular consumers....

its how they worm out of 75% of their warranty problems .....


I NEVER get that kind of trouble from
Rheem or Bradford white...

my word is good enough and the
rateing tag and info is all they want to see...

we chuck the old heater in the back alley

 

[hj]

sears

You must have a very liberal Sears if all you have to do is take back the tag. Here, the heater is not guaranteed unless it was registered, Sears verifies the leak, and the homeowner is the person who purchased it originally. Which means that for most customers the warranty is worthless unless they can wait until Sears gets around to servicing them. I had a customer who bought a house, partly because it had a Kenmore "lifetime" water heater. When it started to leak a few months later, a call to Sears gave him the news that the heater's "lifetime" expired when the original purchaser sold the house. It is a Sears thing, not State, but State is no longer sold in our area, and I would never buy a Kenmore heater.

 

[Master Plumber Mark]

state water heaters

state water heaters have been rode out of
our town on a rail.... a city of 1.5 million Indianapolis

no one in town wants to carry them anymore.....

they are trouble

so is sears