Elliott Lott said he heard the sound of water dripping from outside of his Del Mar home in early September. He went outside to check where the sound came from.
He found a small trickle of water flowing from the top of the Kenmore hot water heater. He found a service number on it for Sears. He says he went inside and called Sears for help. They said a technician would be out the following day to look at the unit.
“The guy came out and he looked at the water heater and said, ‘Well, you need a new water heater. This one shot but the good news is it's under warranty,” Lott told NBC 7 Responds.
Good news, he said.
Lott said the technician told him that before he could install the new unit, however, that Lott would have to place a concrete pad down for the hot water heater to rest on. He also needed to build a shed to house the unit.
Lott hired a company to install the pad and the shed and then waited for the technician to arrive with the new hot water heater.
But he said the technician never came.
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He called Sears again.
“I called and they said it was pending approval. I asked them what they meant by pending approval and if they realized the hot water heater was laying out in the courtyard, that their technician told us to remove it,” Lott said.
Lott said that the representative told them that the warranty was under a different last name.
Lott said he was aware, that he and his wife rented the house.
He said they needed a receipt in order to move forward.
They asked him to call back when he got a copy of the receipt and warranty
In the meantime, Lott and his wife Marci were left without hot water.
“No fun. It isn’t great,” said Lott. “You just don’t realize how important hot water is until you don’t have it.”
Lott called the homeowner in Hawaii. She said she had no idea where the warranty or the receipt would be, if she even had it at all.
Lott called Sears back. He said they told him that they could not honor the warranty without a proof of purchase.
“We had no reason to think that the what the technician was telling us then could be wrong, Lott said. “We relied on the word of the technician.. We had no reason to doubt his word and then because of that it just spiraled out of control.”
That’s when Lott and his wife Marci contacted NBC 7 Responds for help.
NBC 7 Responds contacted Sears. Within a day a representative from Sears called Marci and Elliott to let them know their new hot water heater was on its way.
In a statement, a spokesperson for Sears writes, "At Sears, the satisfaction of our members is our top priority. Our member services team resolved Ms. Ancil’s situation by replacing her water heater. We hope she remains a loyal Sears customer and Shop Your Way member.”
