I'm Lost! The REDCard Thread

[pellinore]

Cards with chips have been mandated by the government and they are expected to be in use by the end of October of this year. I'm guessing that by the end of this year all will be done.
for banks to send out the new "chipped" cards it costs them about $4.00 per card...and they are NOT allowed to charge people a free for the cards. So, banks, kind of aren't very happy about it.

 

[pellinore]

a "FEE" not a "free"....oops!!

 

[Cel]

To be accurate, there is no government mandate in the united states concerning EMV/smart chip. The major credit card issuers reached an agreement as far as liability shift, and set deadlines for that, but the government was not involved. Congress held a couple hearings and a couple lawmakers made noise about mandating a rollout, but that's all it was, noise.

Current timeline on liability shift- October 1st, 2015: Merchant liability shift deadline for Visa and Mastercard, the only merchants excluded from this deadline are pay at pump fuel dispensers. What this means is that any transaction which is disputed/fraudulent after this time period, liability for covering the cost of the fraud falls on the issuer of least technological advancement. If a merchant offers EMV capable readers, but your bank didn't issue you an EMV card, your bank is liable. If Dave's taco stand only takes magstripe cards, so your EMV chip is useless, and your transaction data gets compromised, Dave is liable. etc. For pay at pump dispensers, the deadline for liability shift is October 2017.

Also there's nothing mentioned in the guidelines requiring chip and pin. Chip and sign is still possible, which opens up a fair amount of potential fraud, especially with cards with a backup magstripe being cloned from a bank which doesn't require pins.

Target is apparently going with chip and pin for redcards, to be completed by early 2015, which is good. Merchants tend to prefer chip and pin, while issuers prefer chip and signature because while it's an easier avenue to fraud, it's more similar to what consumers are currently used to.

 

[Retail Girl]

Yep, what Cel said. And as such as of the beginning of next year, all REDcards with the Visa logo will be reissued as MasterCard REDcards.

I wonder who is responsible if the guest goes to some place like Target, who will have the pin and chip technology, but the guest decides to swipe the card instead of use the chip reader at the bottom (because most of them will not be able to figure this out).

 

[thetargetman]

I don't care what Target corp says about it but I will NOT have a person sign up for the RedCard unless they know it is a credit or debt card. When the person says they want to I always make sure I say " you know this is a credit (or debt) card right?" atleast I feel better that way. 🙂

 

[pfreshdude]

we got a call from our dtl the other day saying the goal is going from 2.5% to 3.5% and we needed to get 20 reds a day

Yep ours is rising to that as well. So fun!!!

 

[ZombieGurl]

now they said 5.0 is the goal.. wtf ever lol.. everyone on the salesfloor has to get one a shift.. uhm what about us on pog and pricing.. we dont backup normally and dont have enough interaction with guests.. are they going to start coaching i will love it

 

[neversaynever]

We didn't get our first RC until 5:50pm last night.... thankfully I got it on my way out the door! Happy first day back from vacation 😛

I only got 2-3 prompts in 4 hours, and 1 of those people did have a card - she showed it to me but wouldn't use it..... I'd also say close to 1/2 of my guests had cards yesterday.

Quite frankly, I think if Target were to make a big deal and do the Pin and Chip cards NOW, they could stand a chance of getting people not using their cards to start back up. Make it a marketing gimmick toss some coupons in with the new card and let them see they are secure. I just got my RC in the mail yesterday, no chip so they have to send me another one. This makes soooo much sense to me. Not.

 

[ZombiePanties31]

Geez Louise, they just raised our required percentage too, and we weren't meeting our old goal! This Red Card thing is out of control.

 

[bullseye baby]

yea my store is in a small town and most all of our guests already have a red card. and because of this in the last year our red card sales have gone down. so upper management is getting yelled at about not selling enough red cards. i counted one day out of 50 of my guests about 30 of them already had red cards and 5 of them are people that i had asked in the past that had said no thank you. our problem is that most all of out guests are regulars we get few new shoppers. sure we may have one of the lowest red card sales out of the targets in our district but we are one of the number one targets for red card use.

 

[bullseye baby]

when i first started 3 years ago it wasn't as big of a deal. but now its just gotten out of hand. in my mind there is a difference between informing and asking the guest about the red card and harassing them about it. and a lot of the newer cashiers are being taught to be supper pushy about it. i don't mind telling people about it but if they say no thank you then i stop, some cashiers will just keep insisting and i can see some guests getting mad. one guest actually started to complain about how every time she came in the store she was asked multiple times. my store has a lot of regulars and i try to remember if i have asked them before and if i know i have asked them in the past and they have said no i will not ask them again

 

[bullseye baby]

we had a cashier that started at 8 am ... have 9 reds before 12:30 when I left.. its amazing how some people can just sell em

we had a cashier like that her record was 7 in a day. i think they most i have ever sold was 3 in a day but i sold all of those in 3o minutes on an express lane

 

[BullseyeBabe]

Ask your GSTM how many complaints they are getting about it. We have guests complain every day. They are tired of being harassed about it.

 

[thetargetman]

Ask your GSTM how many complaints they are getting about it. We have guests complain every day. They are tired of being harassed about it.

I have heard the complaints but they are few and far between. I think it depends on how the team is asking. I know some TMs who really badger the guests but others including myself don't do that.

 

[APredux]

To play devil's advocate, the stats don't lie. People with REDcards shop more often at Target, and spend more per trip than people without a REDcard. More sales means more payroll, which means more hours, more TM's in the store, and more money for raises or higher starting wages. Target needs to drive brand loyalty, and it's using REDcards to do that. You don't have to "care" if Target makes money, but realize that it's a business, and a business that isn't doing well isn't going to find time or have the money to increase hours or pay.

Of course, maybe it's easier to say that when I don't have to push REDcards all the time 😉

 

[pfreshdude]

To play devil's advocate, the stats don't lie. People with REDcards shop more often at Target, and spend more per trip than people without a REDcard. More sales means more payroll, which means more hours, more TM's in the store, and more money for raises or higher starting wages. Target needs to drive brand loyalty, and it's using REDcards to do that. You don't have to "care" if Target makes money, but realize that it's a business, and a business that isn't doing well isn't going to find time or have the money to increase hours or pay.

Of course, maybe it's easier to say that when I don't have to push REDcards all the time 😉

more hours and payroll? ya right

 

[Fasterpussycat]

LMAO, the days of more sales = more payroll are loooonnnnggg gone under the current regime. If we don't get a CEO that knows what the fuck they are doing soon.......... That AE15 is going to cut staffing in half again I guarantee.

 

[The Dude Abides]

To play devil's advocate, the stats don't lie. People with REDcards shop more often at Target, and spend more per trip than people without a REDcard. More sales means more payroll, which means more hours, more TM's in the store, and more money for raises or higher starting wages. Target needs to drive brand loyalty, and it's using REDcards to do that. You don't have to "care" if Target makes money, but realize that it's a business, and a business that isn't doing well isn't going to find time or have the money to increase hours or pay.

Of course, maybe it's easier to say that when I don't have to push REDcards all the time 😉

Target fails to understand that correlation does not necessarily equal causation. Do the guests shop more at Target because they have a red card or did they get a red card because they were shopping a lot at Target? I find it to be more of the latter scenario in that people who already were shopping frequently at Target are the easiest to sign up and are the most likely to have a red card. I have never run into a situation where a guest got a red card and then started shopping more often at my store.

 

[Cel]

LMAO, the days of more sales = more payroll are loooonnnnggg gone under the current regime. If we don't get a CEO that knows what the fuck they are doing soon.......... That AE15 is going to cut staffing in half again I guarantee.

Maybe if the difference is enough to bump you up into the next volume bracket, but other than that yeah. I've seen us exceed sales goals for a months straight, followed by getting payroll slashed the following month, just this year. You'd need a whole lot of redcards to make that much of a difference...

 

[pfreshdude]

Target fails to understand that correlation does not necessarily equal causation. Do the guests shop more at Target because they have a red card or did they get a red card because they were shopping a lot at Target? I find it to be more of the latter scenario in that people who already were shopping frequently at Target are the easiest to sign up and are the most likely to have a red card. I have never run into a situation where a guest got a red card and then started shopping more often at my store.

This is true...if there is a place I go to alot and they have something similar as an offer I will usually get it. If its a place I go to here and there I wont

 

[BobLoblaw]

Target fails to understand that correlation does not necessarily equal causation.

Individual attainable store goals based on history would go a long way. Our goal was just increased to align with the district even though the new goal has been achieved less than 3 weeks total in the last 12 months. More hazardous to morale than motivating in my opinion.

As humbly as possible, I know my strength lies in guest interactions. I connect with guests on a personal level, tactfully offer our Target products and FIX their problems with empathy. Guests come in for so many more reasons than to save a few bucks. I despise that as a business this is completely overlooked because we miss an arbitrary goal based on prompts and guest decisions we can't actually control.

Rant over. I don't know the solution but I'm afraid chasing the black and white numbers is alienating team members and guests alike.

 

[Raymond Flores]

Yesterday was my first day as a cashier and my ETL was training me after I had already been on my own lane for 3 hours. He told me he set the record at 17 in one day and it was the store record for 2 years until another girl he trained got 18. How can someone do that?!

 

[paidtosmile]

May as well get "Are you saving 5%" and every other benefit tattooed across our foreheads

 

[oath2order]

I have found my "upbeat" way works best I try to also work with what the guest is buying and I use it as a segway. If the guest is buying lightbulbs I say " this is a bright idea! want to know what else is a bright idea?... you saving 5% every time you shop at this beautiful establishment.

You sound like someonenfrom corporate 😛

 

[thetargetman]

I have found my "upbeat" way works best I try to also work with what the guest is buying and I use it as a segway. If the guest is buying lightbulbs I say " this is a bright idea! want to know what else is a bright idea?... you saving 5% every time you shop at this beautiful establishment.

You sound like someonenfrom corporate 😛

is that bad? LOL