bj1k

" STAY AWAY FROM DieHard BATTERIES" I thought I would never say that because I was one of their biggest fans, even telling people on this forum when the subject came up about batteries and the great experiences that I had with their batteries. Now the problem is not necessarily with their batteries because you can get a bad battery but what is going on with their company which you would immediately think is Sears , but you would be wrong . This might get lengthy but if you are still with me read on. I bought a new DieHard Gold battery for my newly restored 72 Corvette in Sept. 2014 and it has a full replacement warranty for three years at a cost of $149.49 Shortly after I started having problems with the battery going dead so I took it to the local Sears to have it tested and they said that it checked out good . OK so I put it back in the car and charge it only to have it go dead again after a couple weeks. Alright now I think that I have a parasitic short and thoroughly trace down the whole system and find nothing which was not a surprise since everything is new including all of the wiring. I continued to have the same problem and since my recent Sears store went out of business I had to travel 30 miles to another Sears store to have them check the battery again and they came back saying again saying that it checked out good and that I should bring the car in to have it checked . I told them no need for that I was in the auto repair business for 25 years and the battery definitely had an intermittent short of some kind but they said that they couldn't do anything until it showed bad. So I decide to take the battery home and switch batteries with my mint condition Chevy truck which takes the same battery and take my truck battery and put into the Corvette . Anyone want to guess what happened after two weeks with the batteries switched ? Yesterday I was using my truck doing yard work and had to restart a few times and around the third time I tried to start the truck it was almost stone dead. So I walked out to the garage to check out the Corvette with my truck battery in it for two weeks and it started immediately with my five year old DieHard. So now comes the good part if you are still awake and want to know why you should not buy a DieHard battery . I took the battery back to the 30 mile store and after the long trip I was not in a good mood to hear that they would have to test the battery again. I told them about me switching the batteries and the result and they flatly refused to replace the battery. Now you think the story is over but be patient , it is just beginning . I told the grumpy sales manager that I wasn't leaving until they replaced this obviously bad battery and he said he wouldn't replace it unless it tested bad so my wife which was with me and just retired from Sears as one of their upper management got involved and she wanted to talk to the store manager. The manager of the auto department said that the auto departments are no longer owned by Sears so their was no point in talking to him . My wife took off to find the store manager and in the mean time I went over the situation with the grumpy manager and after about ten minutes he started leaving and said that he was going for security to have me removed from the store. ( This is what a customer gets now at Sears when you go back with a legitimate complaint ) So I decide to find my wife and the store manager and he is telling her that everything is changing and Sears and Sears auto don't work together and that he didn't think there was anything that he could do but eventually after talking to my wife and seeing that she knew the business and the fact that he could do something and her telling him just how to do it , he said wait here and about five minutes later he came walking out with our new battery. My point to all of this is Sears is going down like a sinking Titanic so don't think that your warranties are going to be good . If it wasn't for my wife and her knowledge of how this company works , I would have got nothing and would be out $150.

croaker

Sears has been a sinking ship. Look at their tool line most get out performed by Harbor Freight brands. My opinion.

bj1k

I buy Harbor Freight tools now when I need a tool instead of Sears and I can get it local with a good lifetime warranty. Sears will sometimes try to replace the Craftsman tool with an import if they are out of stock of the Craftsman brand and then your warranty is gone.

Izzy Dizzy

I feel for you having to deal with that mess. Sometimes I wonder if it's just the store managers on a power trip? Seriously, if they warranty a battery for a customer, it goes in a pile of returns and no one is going to bother to check it on the other end. I've been buying my batteries at Wallyworld for the past several years and have had no problems thankfully. I recently went through something similar with an Frigidaire air conditioner from Lowe's. The unit is under 2 years old and still under factory warranty. It started to get real noisy like the bearings were going out. I called the service number on the unit and was connected to Lowe's who then told me to call Frigidaire. I told the both I didn't have the receipt since it was a gift from my kids.
Frigidaire called back, said take it to Lowe's and they will exchange it. No receipt needed they say, the serial number tells all. So I call the nearest Lowe's and the customer service guy says "no problem, bring it in, we have several in stock and will exchange it"
1/2 hour later I'm at the service desk with some uninterested young woman clerk, who asks me for my receipt. I tell her the story, she says no receipt/no exchange. I say please get the manager. This guy comes over who is the assistant manager and hears me out, tells me no receipt/no exchange. I give him the name and number of the Frigidaire reps who told me to take it to Lowe's. He refuses to call her, says "not my job to call them and they just tell customers that so they don't have to deal with them!" So I left with my damaged a/c and went back home. Called Frigidaire again and told them what happened. Then I wrote to Lowe's corporate about how I was treated.
Next day Frigidaire rep calls me and tells me to take a/c to different store and gives me name and number of store rep who will assist me.
I go to Lowe's #2 as instructed and inside of 15 minutes I get a brand new a/c without the slightest hastle. Following day I get a call from Lowe's #1 store manager. (not the assistant who stonewalled me) and He addressed my complaint to corporate. Manager was compassionate and very understanding and I told him how I was able to get a replacement at store #2. He apologized and said he would personally speak to both the assistant manager and the female clerk about how they handled the situation with me. So back to your battery story, I feel you! Sadly, some of these "manager types" get on power trips and think they can just f*ck with customers. Meanwhile, places like Sears are sinking and they're too stupid to stop the bleeding. BTW I've had my share of BS from local Sears stores when trying to return things. Not so much as resistance to doing the return, but not knowing how to process it because I bought the item on Sears.com and according to the store folks, the computers from store to the dotcom sears don't communicate with one another. Go figure!

Viss1

Had the worst customer experience of my life a couple of years ago with a non-car-related item from Sears. After getting nowhere with numerous customer service reps and management, I finally created a Twitter account and laid out the facts on their customer service feed. Only then did anyone lift a finger. Apparently public shaming is one of the few ways to get this company to do anything.

The13Bats

Years ago when I saw craftsman tools at K mart I knew something was brewing,
Many years before that I would only buy craftsman tools because of the swap out return, but as time passed that got harder and harder with the clerks being more and more hard *** if the swap out would be covered and replacement was always a cheaper version, I guess I am more surprised sears is still open.
so now I do buy tools from import tool fright and actually never broken one of their tools yet so do not know if they will hassle me on return.

But this isn't isolated to sears, when i needed to get a swap out on one of those optima batteries at discount auto parts it took a call to the corporate office for that power tripping manager to make good on it, power junkies, this is one of many reason I do not like 99% of the repair shops out there, ones that specialize in corvettes are the worse for these power trippers.

I saw a post the other day an online friend Priya gets a new license plate from Zip the thing never should have even been sent out, period.

Sam Ash, I have returned defective items only to see the box with the returned item back on the shelf for some other poor sucker to get stuck with.

Etc etc ad nauseam, too many businesses simply do not care at all about the individual or customer service...

In this case it wasn't the diehard batteries fault but rather a chain of command that the manager thought acting like a total d bag was okay.

Jeff_Keryk

I buy my batteries at Costco. Their return police is legendary. Sears used to be a great place. I dunno if it is the bean counters or what but I do not shop there any longer.

joewill

Hard to figure out how they are testing it? do you charge it and then take it to them? take it to them when it's dead.. find out their tester specs. test the electrolyte specific gravity in each cell.. if one cell if significantly different than the others = bad battery. test the voltage drop down under a heavy amp load.. if the voltage drops down to much = bad battery.

fully charge it test it, then let it sit for a week out of the car, on a clean surface, test it again.

take all this info to your battery dealer and then I bet they can't refute your argument.

Izzy Dizzy

Be sure to bring a copy of "Battery testing for Dummies"

bj1k

How can they refute what I did by swapping batteries between my corvette and my truck and had the same result only with opposite vehicles , but they wouldn't accept that . How do I know they even know how to use their test equipment or if it works ? My test was positive that the battery was bad. By the way they have signs at the store looking for people in auto . That tells me that something is wrong somewhere. Maybe new untrained employees ? ? ? Bottom line , who needs the hassle with Sears ?

Izzy Dizzy

Trained??? At Sears Auto??? Hard enough to find a qualified mechanic at your Chevy dealer! The worst thing about having a new Corvette is taking it to a Chevy dealer for warranty service. You know, the same place that people bring their new Sonic, Spark and Malibu for service.

bj1k

Funny thing is the same day just two days ago since I had to drive thirty miles to take the battery back , I took back a Craftsman anvil lopper that had a rivet break and it fell apart . They exchanged it and today after very little use in the last two days I noticed that it wasn't cutting as good as when I first started using it and noticed that there was a large impression in the sharp part of the blade and this was just after cutting out some hedges. The blade is obviously not tempered. The original Craftsman loppers that I just turned in were over 30 years old and still sharp after many tree trimmings. Seems like they are going cheap since they don't care anymore. They won't even stamp the craftsman name on anymore . They just put a craftsman sticker on hoping that it wears off . These look and perform like Chinese tools.

vettebuyer6369

As this thread is now mostly just third party commentary, it will be closed per TF rules. If the OP has a development relevant to the transaction to report or the vendor would like to respond here, please PM me and Ill add it to the thread.