It’s a two part agreement. One between you and the CC company and one between the store and the CC company. My question is, is that signiture clause something that is actually enforced? If you the customer complain to the CC comapany that a specific store is violating that clause will they actually do anything about it? I honestly don’t know. From the posts here it seems they don’t and won’t.
I agree. I hate asking for info on small purchases. I use my debit card a lot and that seems to avoid any hassle. I also don’t ask for much info when a customer uses their debit and pin number. One suggestion.** Use cash for smaller purchases** At my store if you hand me cash I don’t even need your name. I don’t know why we have gotten away from carrying cash in this country. If I give a cashier cash for a small purchase they don’t need any info. I can’t tell you how many times a day people use a charge card for a $5 purchase. Whats up with that?
Seriously, though, BB only recognizes women who are doing what women do, namely taking care of other people and buying things for other people. They recognize the lady who needs a “smart friend” (hey, I’m turning puke green over here). What about the lady who just wants to buy something for herself and doesn’t want to be talked down to or ignored while doing so?
I don’t carry cash. If I have it, I’ll spend it, and it’s a lot easier for me to use my debit card. It’s an accepted form of payment, I have every right to use it. Why am I penalized for the company’s violations of the regulations?
As far as Visa/MC and whether or not they’re doing anything about it, well, I honestly don’t know. It seems rather silly to me to have the regulations in place if they aren’t going to enforce them (and BB is a LARGE retailer, it shouldn’t be that difficult to enforce it on a company-wide basis). But obviously, a number of consumers are aware that BB is violating those regulations, so it’s getting back to the CC companies.
I agree 100% with the section I bolded. A couple of questions about the other.
If they compare signatures per the merchant agreement and still have doubts can they then ask for ID without incuring your wrath? Honest, it’s not always easy to tell amd “oh well close enough” is not very secure.
What response have you gotten from the CC company when complaining about a merchant? I’m genuinely curious. Is it a generic, “we’ll look into it”? That proably means they’ll do nothing.
BTW I strongly disagree with any company selling customer info for profit. It should be illegal or banned by customers simply refusing to do business with companies that do it.
Mailing lists should be by customer invitation only. as in “Yes I shop here frequently and would like to know about sales and other promos”
Of course it’s your right. I’m only saying that the same thing that makes credit cards and Debit cards convenient makes them susceptible to fraud. You have a right to use it. Merchants have some right to protect themselves.
That’s the point I keep making. If you want the merchants stuff they have a right to try and be sure they get paid. Speaking for the store I work in, we want your shopping with us to be pleasant, and hassle free, but we need to balance that with actually getting paid and making a profit. It’s a rise in bad checks and laws that make it harder to collect as well as bad CC debt that puts these policies in place. Nobody I can think of creates policies to hassle customers. If the merchant agreement is not being being followed and the CC companies are doing nothing to enforce it then there’s a reason.
They make big bucks from retailers and don’t really want to pull their right to process their card.
They are well aware that matching the signature is not enough security so they don’t press it.
You tell me, would it be less hassle if stores checked the signature and then asked for ID or is it easier to just hand them your credit card and have your ID ready?
So with all of this zipcode bullshit, especially the ones that won’t let you use a “fake” zipcode like 90210 or 12345, what are overseas customers supposed to do? Would the machines accept an Australian 4-digit postcode, or a UK one with the letters and all? If they reject them, is there a manual way to put the transaction through without requiring the postcodes?
You are sort of missing the point…they build stores for “Jill” and “Barry” They figure out the whole market and say "boy, there are a lot of ‘soccer moms’ around here - we should build a Jill store. Or they say “this is the spot for a Ray store.” Then they might put the Buzz store five miles away, where the demographics fit Buzz. Rays who live by Buzz might chose to drive the extra five miles to get to a Ray store (which might be heavier on appliances and mid range stuff) - Buzzes might drive the extra five miles to get to a store that has a lot of demo gaming stations. This isn’t about Buzz as an individual at all. This is about marketing to the demographics - and they can’t build a store for each of 300 Million people. My personal belief is that it was driven by a lot of women who don’t like shopping at Best Buy and Best Buy saying “why?” And discovering that the music was too loud, the store layout confusing for them, they could never find a salesperson, they didn’t feel it differentiated itself over the electronics department at Target. These “people” are nicknames for markets Best Buy doesn’t traditionally have.
(However, the article I linked to doesn’t really explain that THIS is where its at, it talks about individuals as Jill, which is what it really isn’t)
When you go in, in an ideal world (but don’t expect ideal, retail doesn’t pay well enough to get ideal all the time), the clerk should be getting information from you and helping you out to meet YOUR needs. Sometimes a 40 year old soccer mom is looking for a new game controller - to fit HER hands.
Oh my fucking God. Best Buy might have to be the first retailer I boycott for the rest of my life.
That the only kind of woman they acknowledge is the kind with kids might explain my experience in invisibility last time I entered one. Which I don’t do bloody often.
In a GQ thread someone linked to a merchant agreement. IMHO if all cashiers followed the security advise and checked the several numbers on the card as well as the the signiture, CC purchases would a lot slower and less convienient. I don’t think asking for an ID is slowing things down. If the comapny said to it’s employees, "we have too much bad debt and we have to strictly follow all the security requirements on the merchant on the agreement your CC purchase would take twide as long as just handing them your ID.
Hey, if someone saying “You don’t need that” hurts your feelings, perhaps you should find a job that puts you at less emotional risk.
I was a cashier once. I worked at Target for a couple years. Met my wife there, in fact (she was working the express lane, and I was on lane 4). And I have to say, I wasn’t looking to make friends of the people coming through my lane. If they weren’t happy, they were going to be out of my life in a few minutes anyways. I’m not suggesting that anyone spontaneously go off on the cashier. But if I’m curt in my response to a question that is so odious that you don’t want to have to ask it, tough it out or clock out and go home.
Re: Best Buy checking the receipt at the door: I’ve read some things recently about how you don’t have to submit to such a search. Essentially, as far as I understand it, unless they want to detain you for shoplifting, they cannot stop you to search your bags. I think I’ll try declining their demand to search me next time. If they want to have to spend time reimbursing me for returning my purchases because they wanted to fuck around with me at the door, so be it.
It’s not so much that as customers that give you a hard time slow you down, get the people behind you pissed, and that everyone dumping on you is fucking annoying. A lot of people use cashiers as their personal emotional punching bags and you get sick of it after a while.
If I have to ask for a zip code or whatever, and you say, “You don’t need that,” that means I have to go get the manager. If I just do as YOU say, managment bitches me out. I got chewed out because I refused initially to solicit charitable donations for the March of Dimes. It’s ridiculous. And one customer doesn’t “hurt your feelings” so much as ten customers wear on your nerves and make you grateful you’re NOT working in sporting goods where they keep the guns.
So, my husband is a Jill. He has a kid. I guess he’s the “CEO of the household.” He would probably be buying something for the family or the kidlet rather than something for himself. He’s not a regular shopper at Best Buy, and would not know the store layout. And he doesn’t know (or care) much about electronics. He could really use some competent sales help at an electronics store.
But he’s not going to get approached by a pastel-wearing “smart friend,” because the Jill squad is on the lookout for a pair of tits in a crisp white shirt, rather than 6’2" and 220 lbs. of muscle with a shiney shaved head and a beard.
Look–coming up with hypothetical customers and figuring out how to serve them is an excellent way for store management to improve customer service. “Let’s take a soccer-mom type, call her Jill. She buys her electronics at Target. Why? She doesn’t like to shop at Best Buy. Why? How can we make Best Buy a more appealing place for her to shop?” Ideally, the improvements you make to woo this hypothetical Jill will benefit the actual people who walk through the door. If it’s determined that the hypothetical Jill could really use a “smart friend,” then maybe you should train some people up to be that “smart friend.” But don’t just offer that service to the ladies who look like soccer moms, and definitely don’t push it on women just because they look like soccer moms.
The woman in the crisp white shirt could be catsix, who neither needs nor wants some salesdrone following her around pretending to be her friend. Meanwhile, Bob and Hakim and Mildred and Big Bertha could be wandering around clueless because the Jill squad hasn’t bothered to see if they need a smart friend because they don’t fit the Jill profile.
In other words, it may be good to talk about Jill and Barry and Ray and Buzz at corporate planning sessions, but building stores for them is just going to backfire.
[quote=Green Bean]
So, my husband is a Jill. He has a kid. I guess he’s the “CEO of the household.” He would probably be buying something for the family or the kidlet rather than something for himself. He’s not a regular shopper at Best Buy, and would not know the store layout. And he doesn’t know (or care) much about electronics. He could really use some competent sales help at an electronics store.**
But it’s impossible to tell whether or not I have kids when I walk into a BB attempting to quickly get what I need and get out of there. Which means I have to deal with the Jill-helpers. When I ask ‘Where are the video cards?’ that means point in the direction where the video cards are. I already know what kind I want, and most likely what it will cost, and I want to be out of the store in 10 minutes. Don’t say something like ‘You know what a video card is?’ That exact question caused me to leave CompUSA instead of buying a 350$ card.
Which means my forays into BB are now limited to spending the gift cards my sister gives me for my birthday.
Actually, your losses as a retailer who has entered into a merchant agreement with a CC company are not my problem. I comply with the terms of my agreement. If you can’t comply with yours, then you have the problem. If you don’t like the terms the CC company puts to you, then don’t accept their cards.
Suggesting that your customers jump through a bunch of ridiculous hoops because you, the merchant, don’t like the agreement you, the merchant, entered into is nothing but intrusive bullshit.
There’s turnabout too in one case. In the UK, they have a “Chip and PIN” system where you have to insert your credit card into a machine which reads a chip, and then you type in a PIN to approve your purchase. I have two UK credit cards (Master Cards) and they work this way. However, my US cards do not work this way, and even though clerks in the UK are supposed to know that non-UK cards will not have chip nor PIN, there is sometimes a lot of unnecessary fuss as the clerk argues with you that “yes, you do have a PIN, just type it in…hmm, that’s odd, it won’t read your chip…”
It never fails to amaze me when people complain that there aren’t enough people on the floor, yet they want to be left the hell alone whenever they’re asked if they need help finding something. Look, just because you have one or two bad experiences in the store doesn’t mean that it’s going to be like that every time. If you don’t want help, then just say so. If someone gets too pushy, or acts condescending, then get management. It’s that simple. Maybe I’m just being naive, but where I work, those kinds of things just don’t happen. We have excellent management, and an all-star team. I’m sure that I sound like the poster boy for BB, but hell, I love my job (where I’m working now, anyway…being a cashier not so much).
I used to work at Foley’s and AE, and this is by far the best job I’ve ever had (I’m not even going to go into the job I had in food service). I really like appliances, and as such, I want to make sure that I know the most that I can about every product we have available. That means that I can really be someone’s “smart friend” because of the products that I’m knowledgable about. However, the majority of the people that I end up helping are, invariably, Jills.
No it isn’t. You don’t seem to give a rats ass about other customers or the merchant, but soley your own convienience. Fair enough. Let’s talk bottem line. If I as a merchant can’t make a decent profit then I don’t give a crap about your convience or if you’re happy about your purchase. The point is to try and find a balance that makes it as easy as possible for customers to make a purchase while protecting the merchants interests as well. I wish there weren’t crooks out there making it less convient for customers and merchants but thats reality.
Checking ID isn’t jumping through ridiculous hoops. If you think so you’re in the minority among consumers. As I said before. Most thank me for asking.
As far as the merchant agreement is concerned if you check the thread I started in GQ you’ll see that it’s common practice to not follow it. The recommended practice is to ask for ID and for consumers to write Check ID on the back of the card. Comparing signitures is only one item on a list of things on the actual agreement and if all merchants followed the agreement to the letter as you suggest the transaction would take longer and be more of a hassle than what I do every day.
I’m curious though. Since you like online shopping what intrusive information do those bastards require when you make a purchase. Quite a bit? None?
