Damn it Target! Your money grubbing bigwigs commited the the holy grail of customer dissatisfaction. Attempting to dip into your customers pockets while simultaneously pissing them off and making your front-line employees take the heat. Take note: If we want a Target-Visa we probably already have one, If we don’t then we probably never will be getting one anytime soon, and asking us every time will not increase your odds.
I know at some big corporate meeting somewhere they put the numbers into a Powerpoint presentation and showed how if you can get every single cashier company wide to ask every single customer every single time “Would you like to apply for a Target-Visa today?” how much money you’ll make off your credit card business. And I know how all those $$$$ signs fog up your brains so you never think thinks out completely and if any fallout occurs well, that’s for those store folks to handle.
So every week it’s the same game me and anonymous cashier play. She: “Would you like to apply for a Target-Visa today?”, Me: “No thank you.” as she smiles and nods thanking me for playing along with the corporate bullshit without any smarmy attitude like she’ll get from 90% of her customers that day.
So, what happens if a cashier actually gets someone to say “Why, yes I would like to apply today! Never wanted one the last 200 times I was here. But, hey, it’s a Friday, I’m gonna live a little.”
I’ll tell you what they do. The entire line of customers waiting to checkout now has to wait while this person fills out an entire credit-card application right there at the register. I actually saw a cashier’s face go from fast paced ring people through quickly mode to “aww fuck” mode when she realized she was about to have an entire line of pissed off customers. Not her fault mind you, the fault of those corporate guys who came up with this brilliant idea to grab an extra buck at the expense of pissing off customers and making your front-line minimum wage people take the fall. All because you never thought this thing through.
Seriously, these companies spend billions every year to do research to find out what customers really want. The #1 concensus item: Fast, efficient checkout.
(#2 was knowledgable employees by the way).
So why do all this research when your going to blow it off anyway when someone wags a dollar in your face? Your wandering into BestBuy territory with your pandering for chump change at the checkouts. What’s next? Extended warranties? Magazine subscriptions?
Wow, you actually saw someone sign up for one of those? What planet was he from?
Why on earth doesn’t Corporate’s S.O.P. for “cashier bags a sucker” read, “Send sucker over to Customer Service to fill out his form”? Perhaps they envisioned droves of customers all demanding Target Visas, and the Customer Service counter is only so long…Or perhaps, more realistically, they envisioned the sucker having a short attention span, and rethinking his credit options on the 50-yard walk to Customer Service, “yanno, maybe I don’t really need another credit card…”
That’s exactly what happened to me at Kohl’s. They enticed me with an additional 15% off (which was a deliberate misrepresentation on the clerk’s part since I had to do a scratch-off to see how much my discount was … *up to * 15%, as it turns out). And it did piss off all the other people in line. They should send me to another desk to do that. WTF.
Or, it’s the first time the person has been asked, and he says yes. You then stand in line for fifteen minutes while they figure out (in Spanglish sign language) that he’s an immigrant with no ID, and they can’t give him the card.
You, of course, have already unloaded your week’s shopping onto the conveyor belt, and don’t have the energy to put it all back in the cart and go to another line.
you know, if they’re going to stop every single customer, you might think they would think of something that would have a higher success rate. at the Jewel grocery stores in Chicago they sometimes offer the ‘item of the week’ (its an Albertson’s store, i assume they do this elsewhere too). It takes just as much time as the credit card offer but i find it much less annoying. probably because i need a box of individually packaged corn chips much more than i need another credit card. i guess credit cards make more money than corn chips, though.
I love Target, usually, but I’m pretty pissed off at them right now.
My husband bought me a pair of gloves for Christmas. About a week after I started wearing them, the gloves split right along the thumb and first finger. Call me crazy, but I expect leather gloves to last a bit longer than a week. He can’t find the receipt, but he paid for them with his credit card. So at the line for customer service, Target has a sign: “Can’t Find Your Receipt? We Can Look It Up Using Your Credit Card!”.
Great. So we can look it up and I’ll just get a different pair of gloves instead of this kind, even if we have to pay the difference. We go to the customer service desk, they look it up, and tell me “You can exchange them, but you have to get the exact same gloves.”
Ummm…why the hell would I want the exact same gloves when this pair split within a week? If they can look up the receipt, see what we paid for them, and see that the ones we bought are crap, what is the problem with letting us exchange them for a different pair if we pay the difference?
I love Target, but their new return/exchange policies seriously suck.
I don’t understand why they wouldn’t just suspend the transaction of the customer that was at the register and continue ringing the rest of the line while they fill out the application.
You’d think that would make sense but they have it now so that they apply for the card electronically using the little touchscreen where you sign for your purchases to input all your info.
To the cashier’s credit she kept apologizing to the people in line and even rang some people through using the register adjacent to hers while keeping a lookout for managers. I think it’s a no-no to be ringing on two registers at once.
Even if you suspend the transaction, all of the merchandise is still most likely still on the belt and has to be dealt with before servicing the next customer. Unless, of course, they ask about signing up for the card before placing anything on the register.
More and more places have these “extra special offers” at the registers, and it’s getting on my damn nerves. I bought some computer books and Barnes and Noble, and the guy kept pestering me to sign up for the member card or whatever the fuck it was. “But you can save $11 right now!” “I said I’m not interested. I’ll just take these, thanks.” If he had asked me one more time, I might very well have just walked out and found my books somewhere else.
That’s weird. When I went to my Target and got one of those (Had just turned 18 and therefore old enough to get a CC) they had me step over to an empty cash register with a manager and fill out the application there.
Yes, it is annoying to be asked every time you go through the line.
But no less annoying then every time I call some business and get the perky little voicemail woman saying, "Did you know you can go to our website, suckybusiness dot com and not find the answer to your question there either? Our helpful customer service agent will be with you in about an hour, and be sure to ask them about signing up for our scam du jour. It’s fun and it’s easy to do!’
It seems every business now feels they have to grab you whenever and wherever they can, and then beat you over the head with offers you don’t want.
Most times, they just ask me once about whatever it is. This guy kept at it 3 or 4 times, and actually seemed irritated at me that I wasn’t signing up. Maybe it was because his boss was within earshot. Whatever the case, I don’t really give a shit, and I don’t appreciate being delayed at the register. Anyway, I already have too many membership cards in my wallet from when I thought they might actually be useful. I’ll have to sort through and dump some of the ones I never use.