Ultimate Lifestylist

Just when I thought I had heard it all.

We've been trying to get into the holiday spirit and since many of our friends and family are out of state I've been embracing buying online. We are busy compiling the Lifestylist® List which is full of our favorite gift ideas for this year and we've been spending a lot of time trying to find the perfect products.

I've had some wonderful experiences - Amazon.com can't be beat, especially with their new Amazon Smile program where you can shop and a percentage will go to the nonprofit of your choice.

In the spirit of giving, Shared Housing which is one of our favorite nonprofits were in need of some televisions so we gave them all of ours and got online to buy a few more. We had some Sears gift cards to use up so we went to their site and found one that would suit our needs.

Here's where things went really off track. First of all, with all of the talk this year about people stealing your information, fake sites and viruses, I was concerned when I went to the Sears.com and saw how many things were misspelled -often a sign of a fraudulent site. I did some checking and it seemed to be authentic even though I was having trouble with it and made my purchase, and a few minutes later I got a call from someone who said they were in fraud prevention and needed to ask me some questions to verify I made the purchase. Really, really strange questions so I got cold feet and said cancel my order.

A few days later I decided to call Sears and try to order the same item. They said they were honoring their "Cyber Week" pricing all week and when I talked to Mr. Jhon he said he could honor that pricing - he would just need to credit the difference back to my credit card at the end of the transaction.

Then I get another crazy call wanted to confirm personal information including my ex-husbands birthday and date of birth! At this point I just wanted to get what I ordered and be done with it so I complied. Go figure - after checking my credit card balance the credit was never given so here we go again.

After wasting over an hour with people this morning trying to resolve this, they put me through to a man who said their name was Master and that's how I should address him. And that no matter what I was told and promised I wouldn't be getting the credit on my credit card as I was promised, but they would be sending me another gift card.

I had stopped buying from Sears years ago because they never honored a very expensive warranty they sold me on a range - today I'm remembering why I swore that would be my last purchase.

Remember the Sears and Roebuck catalog when your word meant something and it was an American company based on integrity. Days like today really make me miss the qualities that company and so many others were built upon. And Master - best of luck with your career, you might want to find a new profession.