I’ve said a million times that I prefer to do things online, rather than at a store. I’ve professed my undying love for Amazon countless times. Yes, I’ll do my own product research, thank you very much.
And now, I think for the first time since I started buying things online, it has come to bite me in the ass.
I have a lawnmower.
It is a Sears Craftsman 6.5 horsepower mulching mower, model #917.388650. It is by far the best lawnmower ever made, and I will never, ever, ever succumb to that self-propelled piece of trash that Stephanie has darkened my garage with. It’s light, easy to maneuver, cuts evenly, mulches well, yet has enough power to be a wood chipper on wheels when necessary.
Best. Lawnmower. Ever.
But you see, there is a problem. In a bout of carelessness, I managed to run over the rubber safety flap on the back, which prevents things like stones, dog poop, and mulched rodentia from flying out the back and hitting my ankles.
Mind you, I ran over the flap at least a year ago, so this isn’t new. I’ve just decided that I’m tired of getting hurt when I mow the lawn.
Last year, I hopped in the Jeep and set off for the Sears Parts and Service store, only to find that it was long gone. I was disappointed, but understood that it probably wasn’t economical to have a separate storefront for parts, so I headed to the nearest Sears store.
The man there had no idea what I was talking about. And for what it’s worth, I didn’t say “Hi, I need the plastic thingy for my lawnmower.” I walked him to a nearly identical model, pointed to the part I needed, and baffled the salesguy. He told me to come back with my model number (917.388650), but warned me that it would be a terrible waste of my time if I had access to a computer.
So today, I thought to myself “Hey, I should get that part replaced. And I’ve been meaning to get a new filter for my refrigerator. Maybe if I order both, I’ll save on shipping.” (As a side note, I had visited Sears a different time to buy a filter, only to be met with similarly baffled people.)
Naturally, I checked Amazon for the water filters (only sold by third-parties… so sad), and set course for sears.com.
First search: “puriclean ii”. Result: 76 refrigerators that use the Puriclean II filter, 0 filters.
Second search: “puriclean 2″. Result: 26 refrigerators, 0 filters.
Third search: “puriclean”. Result: 76 refrigerators, 1 filter (wrong kind).
By the third search, I realized that the filter I needed was buried somewhere in “Appliances > Refrigerators > Accessories”, and was sold as “Kenmore Water Filter”. No reference at all to being “PuriClean II” which is written on the fucking filter I took out of my fucking Kenmore refrigerator, and presumably on the filters of the other 75 refrigerators.
Incidentally, the filter is not listed as an “accessory” on any of those 76 refrigerators.
Next stop: Parts & Accessories.
The Parts & Accessories page lures you in by promising you diagrams and helpful information, all unlocked with nary more than a simple model number (917.388650).
This would certainly work. How could it not? Presumably, hundreds of people lost their jobs looking in paper manuals while trying to convert soccermom speak in to useful information. This must certainly be a model of efficiency.
If you want a part from Sears, you had damn well better know your fucking model number (917.388650). And I had my fucking model number: 917.388650. I knew this was my fucking model number (917.388650) because it was on a fucking white sticker, on the top of my fucking mower deck, which fucking read MODEL NUMBER – 917.388650. In fact, I’m going to go out on a limb and say that the 917 in 917.388650 can be read as Division 9 (hardware) – 17 (lawn & garden).
Quoth Airplane: “My momma din’ raise no dummy.”
So, as you can probably tell, sears.com claims that model #917.388650 is imaginary. A figment of my imagination. My poor, misguided, filthy imagination. The site cheerfully suggested I try searching for the specific part number, which I couldn’t do because my fucking lawnmower destroyed the fucking part I want to replace.
Anyway, I had a point here… oh yes…
Companies of the world (I know you all read this), please understand that I am okay with you paying your employees as little as you possibly can, such that they are compensated well enough not to bring firearms to work. And I understand that this is a deal you and I have made. If I want to buy something for not very much money, I have to expect not very much service.
But when you’ve taken every reasonable avenue away, you have to make sure the one remaining path is decent. I’m okay with sifting through a virtual parts bin to find what I need, if you’re going to charge me a fair price for it. But you have to get your shit together so people can find the parts bin.
What really made me indignant about this whole ordeal, is on the parts page, the left side says “Related Offerings” followed by parts categories. Click on a category, and sears.com kicks you over to the retail side, which in my case, was a page offering to sell me a new lawnmower.
Lame.
