Sears? Yes, Sears.

I just bought some kitchen appliances… at Sears!

Maybe that doesn’t surprise you, but it surprises me. Seems like these days I end up purchasing everything over the Internet. It got me thinking… why do I buy, where I buy?
– price (very important since I’m fundamentally frugal)
– confidence (am I going to be glad I bought what I did, where I did, for the price I paid)
– simplicity and choice (I am willing to sacrifice these for price and confidence)

But back to Sears…

This project to replace our kitchen appliances started on the Internet, then it was off to Sears (they had a slightly better price and a deeper set of choices than Best Buy) to see the finalists in person.

There we met Joe Andel, who reminded me of how I’m supposed to act with my customers:
– He listened and made sure he understood
– He was knowledgeable without being obnoxious
– He made suggestions (have you considered…) without being condescending
– He actually seemed pleased that we were there
– When we had made preliminary choices he volunteered to document them for us including pricing, discounts, options
– Having seem my printouts from the Internet, he told us to come on back and look again once we’d done more research

Yesterday Joe confirmed what he had given us preliminarily, helped us through some options and details, and made a nice sale. And a friend.