I know a lot of people who refuse to shop at Books-A-Million. As many other stores do, Books-A-Million pushes customers to buy discount cards. The reason my friends refuse to shop there is because allegedly, an employee will be fired if they do not sell if enough discount cards,** even if every customer they serve already has one.** Is this actually true, or is it just a rumor?
I know nothing about Books-A-Million policy but have worked a lot of retail, managed a lot of retail, and dealt with a lot of corporate pushed customer “add-ons”.
I’ve never seen a policy where an employee is fired or reprimanded because the attachment rate is too low.
What I have seen is employees fired or reprimanded because they failed to “ask” the customer if they are interested. You can’t hold an employee responsible if a customer says “no” but you can hold them responsible if they never ask the question in the first place.
I’ve worked a lot of retail. Never seen anyone fired, but I’ve definitely seen “attachment” rate as a metric for things like raises, better scheduling, etc. It’s hard to measure how often someone asks, but corporate overlords just assume “Hey, this guy only opens half as many credit cards as this other guy, he must not being doing his job right.”
I did get reprimanded once for not asking if someone had a discount card, when I could see it in their hand.
You most certainly can. If the boss wants you to push certain products and/or services and you are lagging behind others when it comes to sealing the deal, she/he can fire you.
When I worked at Officemax and they offered a store CC, they said that research shows most people would say Yes after being asked three times and we were given an official directive to ask three times. Only one cashier consistently did that and got more signups than anyone else. He also go more complaints for his pushiness! 
The twist to the story is that about a year later, the CC company dropped Officemax and the cardholders had to pay off their balance immediately.
Another thing that we were supposed to push was the extended warranties. Once when I was working the register the manager told me (we wore headsets) to push the extended warranty on a Microsoft mouse. I didn’t because as I later told her, Microsoft mice (at the time) have a lifetime warranty. She said it didn’t matter and I should have asked anyway! :smack:
It’s been a good almost 10 years since I worked there (omg that is so long ago…) so I can’t comment on their policy now, but I have seen cashiers at Target get fired for not pushing enough Red Cards.
According to its Wikipedia page, the Company was listed in 2014 as one of the worst places to work in the US.
The company was purchased by the chairman of the board for $21 million in 2015. It currently has 260 stores in 32 states. It is the second largest brick and mortar bookstore chain in the US behind B&N.
It’s a dying model with negative growth and probably being run for cash by its owners.
I swear when I clicked on this thread that the post was going to be something like:
“I heard a rumor that Books-A-Million was coming back! I used to love shopping in that store twelve years ago, before they all went bankrupt.”
Followed by a bunch of Doper reminiscing about other book stores that had also closed down years ago.
I never heard of Books-A-Million but years ago I went into one of the consumer electronics chains to buy a digital camera and before I could even get to the checkout line I was accosted by an employee, and eventually by his manager, pushing a protection plan that I wasn’t interested in.
They would not let up. They were almost ridiculous in their relentlessness. They only gave up when I threatened to walk out and buy a camera elsewhere.
They seemed almost desperate, so it may be that one or both of them had their jobs on the line.
This was at least 10 years ago and, other than being somewhat outdated in it’s capabilities, the camera still works fine.
Maybe in a purely sales driven position like a car salesman but in the big corporation retail line level employee situation it would never make it past HR.
HR will want to know what behaviors the employee did not follow and “they have a poor attachment rate” is not a behavior.
Once when checking out at a big box electronics retailer I told the clerk right away that if they asked if I wanted the extended warranty I would walk out of there without buying it.
They did.
I did.
Haven’t bought from the place since.
Ticking off customers with such tactics is just not something the bosses think about.
There’s a BAM in my town; I seldom go there because it’s in a part of town where I don’t often venture, but I have a friend who regularly patronizes their coffee shop because of the free wi-fi.
In recent months, they’ve started a buyback program for items they sell, so I’m wondering if they’re trying to compete with Amazon, etc. in the used business.
I hate upselling. More than once, I’ve told the person at the drive-through, “Did I order any?” :rolleyes: I don’t mind when people ask once - hey, I might actually want that! - but over and over? Just ring me up and move on to the next customer.
I’ve heard the protection plans are a big chunk of their profits.
my brother quit going to the one near him becase they refused to carry books for his RPGs on religious grounds…and that was a decade or so ago…
Yes. Which is why they want employees to push them.
I remember an even longer time ago when I was in a Radio Shack (remember those?) buying a set of headphones and they wanted me to buy a $5 protection plan for a $10 pair of headphones.
Protection plans and extended warranty type things for many retailers are a bonus in multiple ways.
from an accounting standpoint, a warranty is a liability until it expires, thus its not income for tax purposes, but its still cash in hand that can be invested in ways that generate revenue.
If they have to repair or replace something under warranty that money comes from that pool and never becomes taxable income.
When a warranty expires, now its income.
As a rule of thumb I generally end asking for a manager or just walking away if I have to say no a 3rd time. One time at Borders I had a cashier trying to push the discount tell me that I didn’t have to be “rude about it” when I responded to her 3rd attempt with “I already said no twice”. I ended up loading on the store manager and walking out. BAM took over the site when our Borders closed; I remember saying something along the lines of “this is why I stopped shopping at Borders” shut the hard sell down cold.
Are you sure it was BAM? I wasn’t aware that they ever had any issues with this kind of thing.
Some stores give commissions or rewards for pushing memberships, store charge charges and extended warranties. At OfficeMax, when the CC first came out, you would get $5 per signup. This later changed to spin the wheel with a $5 prize as the top and later to a candy bar!
When I buy electronics, if the salesperson is really knowledgeable and helpful, I’ll ask if they get a commission if I get the extended warranty. If they say Yes, I’ll signup if it’s less than $20 or so.
Also, most store managers (all the way up the chain), have quotas to meet, which is why the often push their employees for signups and they can definitely be demoted or fired for not meeting those quotas.
A prime example is GameStop. Google former GameStop employee and one of the things you’ll always see is that they were required to push their membership, pre-orders and used games.
On a similar note, I remember restaurant managers yelling at the severs for not getting enough revenue from alcohol sales on Sundays! Sunday afternoon was almost all the after church crowd and the managers knew damn well that’s a horrible demographic to try to get booze sales from. Most of the rest of the clientele was families that came into the city that day and also most likely weren’t big drinkers as well.
Drove me nuts. Yes, I know alcohol is a huge revenue but you can’t force it down people’s throats. Heck, even for a beer lover like me, there’s a few family members I’d never drink around or else limit it to one beer, when I’d normally have 3.