Thread regarding Sears layoffs

OP I feel SYWR is trying to find a way not to pay up on their end. If you somehow can use in a physical store just go (even if its a drive since their isnt a lot of stores left) and spend it all. Sears has not much time left I think 2020 they are going to pull it through maybe half way (they sold Diehard) I think the only remaining asset with some value is Kenmore after that its all gone. Knowing the start of the year its always bad overall timings honestly.

Even with OP's carefully crafted post, it is obvious he is a reseller. SYW doesn't like resellers or accounts in general with too much activity. SYW isn't giving points away like they used to, the SYW business model of reselling is just about dead...

Everything is broken and it's only going to get worse from here. Best of luck.

It’s probably luck of the draw. I’ve been a SYW member since the very first day. I’ve got like 5 addresses in the system because I have both my grandparents, my wife’s old address, my address and my parents address in there. I don’t resell the stuff, it’s just for my personal use but I’ve racked up thousands in freebies. It’s never really been questioned. It’s their own fault, I got some promo where you got 5% more back on the credit card and ended up with a huge after holiday points bonus. I wouldn’t be surprised if I got $5000 worth of free stuff in the last month and a half. I don’t even count.

I don’t see why big spending should be a red flag. I’ve bought literally everything I own from Sears since I could drive.

I suspect multiple purchases of the same exact item probably raises a red flag somewhere, however the local car dealers are really close to our store and buy tools there constantly, and they have SYW accounts I’ve never heard them complaining. They’ll go in and buy like a dozen of one specific size socket or wrench which would be fishy if you thought they were resellers.

I had seven SYW accounts but they were not my fault. If I forgot a password or forgot a PIN number of my account the cashier would sign me up for another account. I guess to pad some metric. It would be the same Email, phone number and name. I did not do that to play the system but was told by the store to just sign up for another account.

I am sure that many of the SYW accounts are either fraudulent or duplicates since the stores hassle you to sign up every time you check out. Between that and the credit card hassle I can see why people dont want to shop there.

Actually OP and I have the same model, but OP wrote his thread before SYW limited points per member account. "back in the day", one account could work the system, as there were no limits. OP made his errors "honestly", as I also did in the early years of SYW.. Today, if you see a reseller on eBay selling Sears product, and the little red print under the price says "1435 sold", they are doing it "my way" in one sense or another.

One thing that many others do that I do not is use Sears online as a "drop ship portal". How Sears/SYW allows one account holder to have 3000 different ship addresses is beyond me.. So yes, I don't have the system figured out entirely (yet) ...

Bulk purchases is a Urban Legend..

@5Bkmq The terms specifically state that using SYW offers/points to buy products for a reselling business is prohibited, as well as stating that having multiple accounts to get around per-account limits is prohibited. Unlike the OP a year ago, you are absolutely abusing the program and deserve to be banned. If you wanted to set up a legitimate reseller purchase situation, you should have stuck to only one account, and spoken to your local store manager about how to arrange bulk purchases. But obviously you don't care about that.

I know this is a year old post, but I can't help myself. Reading OP's situation is point blank the same situation I faced not long ago. With one exception, I had 17 accounts all in my name, with all the same contact and payment info. Only thing different was the phone # an email addy, which were all legitimate.. I wasn't hiding anything. After a few weeks of research and asking a lot of questions, it was obvious I was banned forever... I also learned how they found me, what the bots look for and the ways around it. It is hard work, but it is how I make a living, as I spent $370,000.00 with those 17 accounts in 14 months, with $62,000.00 worth of points back to me... FYI, every dollar I spent came out of my pocket, every point a received I paid for. No Fraud, no gift card scams. I am running a business reselling Sears product..

Fast forward to today, those 17 accounts are history, but business has never been better.

Sears, if you are reading this and you need a SYW consultant, give me a call. If you can pay me more then I make points, I can close all the loopholes for you. If not, thanks for being so stupid...

If I call SYWR can they transfer my points/history to a new SYWR account?

Its a real problem because if I just open a new account then I am guilty of what the implications is (because I will then have multiple SYWR accounts)

I work in a Sears store. We had a member last week who could not use his points. We checked his account through the member services portal and found that it was suspended. No reason given. He did spend $20,000 on new appliances three weeks ago and was supposed to have $1,000 in points from that... he got them and they were reversed -- debited out of his account prior to suspension. This must be AP's idea of saving the company money. Member now wants to return all of his appliances. If our store manager can't reach some compromise, the company loses the margin and then some on these appliances because some nitwit at corporate decided they needed relevance to save the company money. :smh

Account bans can be put into effect by various departments, including AP.

About two years ago, they did a sweep of what could have been seen by anyone as reseller accounts.

These were people offering Sears items on ebay and other sites for the same price or less than Sears was selling them.

What the resellers did was ingenious. They used multiple coupons on every order and shipped items as "gifts" so that their customer would never see the price Sears had charged and any discounts. Additionally, they used the SYW Max free trial to ship those Sears items for free, and in many cases, the reseller charged their customer for shipping.

The difference between what they paid Sears and what the eBay buyer paid them was good margin for "dropshipping", even though Sears has no official policy on third parties dropshipping items intended for retail.

The SYW member system was intentionally set up to not allow one department to override another department's ban or deactivation of accounts. So it is very difficult to get a ban reversed. It has even affected associates. Yes, we have associates who can't order anything because they spent a lot with the company.

I have looked at banned accounts with legitimate purchases such as yours and could find no red flags that anything sketchy was going on. Still, the bans were put into effect by AP and lots of points were lost. The terms and conditions of being a member do state that the company can close an account at any time for any reason and/or confiscate points.

Unfortunately, the same account bans that were intended to stop the resellers (who were costing the company a lot to fulfill orders, ending up in negative margins) have tied up a lot of innocent members who have shopped our stores and websites.

The attitude of certain departments is that "no one buys that much" and therefore anyone who does must be a scammer. It has actually come down to that. And these people cannot understand that there are big spenders all across retail. Perhaps it is because they do buy anything themselves from Sears Holdings businesses. Or they are idiots. Or a little of both.

Agree with the computer glitch theory. I work in the stores but I think IT staff has been laid off at corporate leading to all sorts of problems.

My best advice is go to the store when you think the best hardworking manager is there. Explain your situation and say that you want a HELP TICKET put in for this. They might try to call the so called special platinum # on your behalf but do not leave the store until you are able to place an online order. The computers in the store office have internet ...

If nothing works, spend your points in store but such a hassle if the store near you is closing.

If you try to reach the upper level management at the Corp office ask for someone other than Eddie. Ask to speak to their secretary. I assume those guys still have secretaries and explain.

Honestly it's probably just some weird glitch no one's smart enough to figure out how to fix. If they were really trying to take your points away, you wouldn't be able to use them in the stores, either.

They are not happy that you are smart enough to work the system in your favor. Wait til the store is 60-70 %off for best prices and use your points in store.