Sears

This Sears is smaller than other surrounding Sears (Emerald Square, Silver City, and Warwick). The Swansea store carries many but not all brands which are offered at some of the other locations listed (for example, Land Ends is no longer sold here). Despite the limited assortment the store has a few positive factors. The biggest plus unlike many Sears which have self serve shoe departments this store still provides clerks who find your shoe size in the backroom for you and ring your purchase. In addition, the store is neat and clean, and never too crowded. Parking nearby the entrance is easy too.
Unfortunately, the staff can be either really helpful or not so at times. I had my own encounter with a negative Nancy (maybe the same woman the other reviewer encountered). By using the price scanner on the floor I discovered an item that was not matching the stated sale price. Sear has a policy to discount the item which does not ring correctly so I decided to make the purchase. Having been in retail myself I informed the young clerk before she rang the item to save her the trouble of a complicated voided transaction. She asked an older woman clerk for help to process the transaction. The older woman wanted to deny me the discount because the discrepancy was «discovered before» the register rung the wrong price. Of course I was the one who discovered the price discrepancy, lol. After I argued that point I did get the discount. Still that rudness was the exception and not the norm for the staff.

This review is about Sears Optical. I purchased a pair of eyeglasses there in 2011 and I paid extra for the anti-​reflective coating. Well after just a month or two the coating began to peel off damaging my lenses and making it very tough to see so I brought them back and they said it was a defect and they exchanged them. So far so good. Well the new pair after a month or so starting doing the same thing. I brought them back and this time I was told by the very same person it was not a defect and I wasn’t cleaning them right and that was the problem. I’ve been wearing glasses for over 30 years I know how to clean them. A friend of mine also began experiencing the same problem with a pair of glasses she purchased from there, they told her it was because of her hairspray, can you believe that, this woman doesn’t even use hairspray. Well I went to see a new eye doctor this past weekend and an optician in the new office used to work for Sears Optical and told me the whole story. The anti-​reflective coating Sears used was very cheap and about 90% of the glasses which had the glare applied had problems. At first they were replacing them but they soon realized almost all the glasses had problems and instructed their staff to blame it on people not properly cleaning their glasses.
What Scammers

When you have a good experience you might tell one friend, but when you have a bad one, you tell all of Unilocal.
I am dragged to Sears quite frequently because my mother likes shopping there (God knows why). Today while wandering aimlessly I actually found a shirt that was amusing, and since it was only 8 bucks I figured I’d buy it. So I took it to the register, and who do I encounter? Why, none other than Negative Nancy, of course! Well Nancy seems to be put off that my mother and I are at her register since it is close to closing time. Mind you, we still had about 20 minutes to be in the store and we did check to see if she herself was closed, and she indicated that she was not. So we approach the register and my mother is first with her purchase and I wait where the sign says: Customer line begins here. Nancy scans all of my mothers things and asks for her rewards card. I have no idea what this is, but my mom is down w/​Sears Rewards so she hands Nancy her card. The scanner doesn’t read it correctly, so Nancy keeps retrying it and huffing and puffing all through this. This is when I start to get annoyed, because I also work in Retail and Customer Service and I would never do that in front of a customer no matter how annoyed I may be. As if that weren’t bad enough she turns to me and says «There are registers open in Women’s» as if she couldn’t tell that my mother and I were together and I was somehow the cause of the scanner thingy messing up. Finally it was my turn to pay for my shirt. Before anything happened I asked Nancy if it would mess up her drawer if I gave her cash. Why did I ask this? Because I work in the same industry and wanted to be courteous. If she had already counted her drawer, I could just as easily have used my debit card. Her response was, «no I haven’t counted it yet» and I thought that was the end of it but she then adds, «I’ve TRIED to». No eye contact was had during the whole transaction, she mumbled things, and half-​assedly asked me for my rewards card and whether I wanted to open a Sears card, and huffed and puffed her way through the transaction. If she had just given me the service that she should have, the whole transaction would have taken 5 seconds. I wanted to strangle her with her little Sears lanyard. THEN a fellow employee came to make a purchase after I was finished and she was Mary Sunshine! My dear Negative Nancy, I have some news for you: You work in CUSTOMER SERVICE and I am YOUR CUSTOMER. I don’t care if it’s 5:55pm, I have every right to be there and you should serve me and every one of your CUSTOMERS the way you treated that fellow employee. I know how bad you want to go home, but when one works in CUSTOMER SERVICE one should not show this attitude to one’s CUSTOMER.
I hope someone from Sears reads this, like a manager or someone who trains the employees in how to deal with customers. That’s probably a long shot. But I know that, personally, I will never shop at this Sears or any Sears if I can help it. There is no excuse for rudeness in a job that requires you to deal with customers on a daily basis. And if you don’t want to deal with customers, go find a job in Antarctica or something.