Terrible Action by Target

[MRG]

WOW, this is kind of amazing, isn't it? It even feels fraudulent, but I guess not?

Sounds like something the healthcare industry will adopt soon. Oh I forgot they don't have prices.

 

[COcheesehead]

Since we are Costco members, we haven’t set foot in a Target. Don’t miss it at all.

 

[gwraigty]

Another thing about dynamic pricing: I was shopping for an item at Amazon earlier this week. I spent quite a bit of time comparing models. The one I decided to buy had a $10 coupon attached, but when I actually went to put it in my shopping cart, the $10 coupon wasn't showing anymore. Signing in and out, refreshing the page, using a different browser, deleting cookies, nothing would bring it back.

The good news is that an offer of $50 off (upon acceptance) if I applied for the Amazon Chase VISA popped up. I'd been considering it anyway recently, so I clicked through and another window opened up, referencing the $50 off. I left that window open and for some reason, I went back to the shopping cart page and refreshed it. The offer on that page changed to $40 off! I applied through the second window and got the $50 off.

 

[Spock]

I clicked "add to cart" on Amazon this week... then realized I wasn't logged in. So I logged in, but the process cleared the item in the shopping cart. When I went to add it back, the price was $10 higher than it was 45 seconds ago...

 

[Music Lover]

DD loves Target but they did something to her that she swears she's going elsewhere.

In December she was doing her Christmas shopping and had a shopping cart full of goods... she had one item that she forgot that was across the store so she left her basket there and went across the store to fetch the last item. By the time she got back, some Target employees had concluded that her shopping cart was abandoned and had returned everything to the shelves.... she swears that she was only gone 10 minutes... she had a cow.

From another perspective...people abandon carts all the time and the employee was only doing their job. It would have required almost no effort on your daughter's part to take the cart with her.

 

[pb4uski]

From another perspective...people abandon carts all the time and the employee was only doing their job. It would have required almost no effort on your daughter's part to take the cart with her.

Totally disagree.... you couldn't be more wrong. To begin with, the customer is always right.

For one thing, an educated guess is that very few carts that are full of stuff are routinely abandoned and that most abandoned carts have only a few items in them.

It would have taken less effort for employees to either leave it where it was or move it off to the side for a while to see if a customer comes along looking for it and after an hour or so consider it abandoned and put the merchandise back where it belongs.

In this case and many others the customer returns and claims the cart and the employees avoid spending time putting merchandise away unnecessarily.

In the case of DD, not only did she have a cow, she insisted that the employees help her retrieve the merchandise that had been put away and they did, so their stupid practice wasted their time twice.

 

[samclem]

Maybe Target has gotten more aggressive about restocking the stuff in abandoned carts since they started carrying perishable foods. I wouldn't want to buy ice cream that had been restocked after sitting in someone's abandoned cart for an hour.

When I leave a cart unattended (e.g to go back to the car for coupons I left there), I know there's a risk the stuff might get restocked. I would not throw a fit if that happened.

 

[MichaelB]

I side with Music Lover and Samclem on this. Many Target stores sell groceries, and if I were store manager, I’d want food items and perishables back on the shelves as quickly as possible.

 

[razztazz]

Ummmmm..... because it's on the internet and everything on the internet is true? Someone told me that once.

Seriously, I was once looking up pricing for a flight and was going back and forth several times. Within a few minutes the price had gone up 30%; seems that my repeated inquiries had made this a suddenly desirable flight.
I logged out, gave it a day and the price had gone back down.

Another thing that works is dumping all your cookies then searching for it again. New, low price

 

[sengsational]

I have a similar concern regarding air fares

Not a perfect solution, but opening browser "incognito" tab is sometimes useful. If I think I'm getting jerked around, I'll do an incognito tab on my phone over cell (different IP). Never found a smoking gun on IP, but certainly with cookies, they know how "interested" you seem to be.

Sounds like something the healthcare industry will adopt soon. Oh I forgot they don't have prices.

Lol!

As to Target's tactics, I think the differential between store and online price is perfectly legit. And on their own app, they can show any price they want. They fall-down, though, on not labeling the pricing or giving the person who researched price outside of the store an easy way to get the online price.


They continue this practice even on their web site. In the later part of that video report, they show using a search engine, and going to the Target web site, then the price going higher.


Of course both of these schemes are simple to defeat. Don't allow your browser to have location information, and turn off the Target app's ability to get to access your phone's location information.

 

[redduck]

...To begin with, the customer is always right.

You just now woke up from a 30-year nap, right?

 

[pb4uski]

I side with Music Lover and Samclem on this. Many Target stores sell groceries, and if I were store manager, I’d want food items and perishables back on the shelves as quickly as possible.

Sorry, but there were not any food items in her cart.... a cursory review by an employee would have confirmed that.

 

[imoldernu]

Sometimes, I'm glad I'm old.

 

[COcheesehead]

Arguing over a cart. Let that sink in.

 

[rk911]

Target store prices and web prices can differ. I had them price match themselves.

Also I have seen larger package sizes actually be more expensive per unit than the smaller package size. Very counter intuitive.

yup...i’ve done the same. the online price is usually less than the shelf price. Office Depot does the same thingv.

 

[Ready]

Best Buy was one of the first major retailers to offer different prices online versus in their stores. Their logic was that online shoppers were more price savvy, whereas B&M shoppers were more likely to buy something because it was in stock, and perhaps a Best Buy employee recommended the item. So it wasn’t as important to offer the lowest prices in the local stores. Eventually it hit the media that Best Buy was doing this and they had a lot of damage control to do.

I stopped shopping at Best Buy once they began doing this. I think it’s dishonest and the wrong way to treat customers. Costco would never do anything like this. They are far more customer centric and I’d much rather give them my business.

I avoid Target as much as possible because the stores are way too big and the prices are not all that great. And I don’t find the quality of their products to be anything beyond mediocre anyway.

 

[Keim]

I used to work grocery.

Not at all unusual for carts to be abandoned-at all stages of fill level. It was if not daily, then a weekly occurence.

Totally disagree.... you couldn't be more wrong. To begin with, the customer is always right.

For one thing, an educated guess is that very few carts that are full of stuff are routinely abandoned and that most abandoned carts have only a few items in them.

It would have taken less effort for employees to either leave it where it was or move it off to the side for a while to see if a customer comes along looking for it and after an hour or so consider it abandoned and put the merchandise back where it belongs.

In this case and many others the customer returns and claims the cart and the employees avoid spending time putting merchandise away unnecessarily.

In the case of DD, not only did she have a cow, she insisted that the employees help her retrieve the merchandise that had been put away and they did, so their stupid practice wasted their time twice.

 

[rk911]

Since we are Costco members, we haven’t set foot in a Target. Don’t miss it at all.

wife loves Costco but she doesn’t go often. i’ll get gas there if i’m close but otherwise avoid it like the plague. not a big fan of the strip search in the way out of the store.

 

[swabby01]

Dynamic pricing. Try buying baseball tickets online. A different price every day, and probably different if they know I have looked several times.

I am not justifying it, just explaining it.

Target seems to be unique by actually changing the price based on location. But others will follow.

When working, our highest profit margin customers were the regulars. They called, we fulfilled (with a minor discount). They were happy, we were happy.

It's not personal, just business.

True on baseball tickets, Airplane tickets and just about everything else on line. That said only a handful actually keep a "system" level accounting of interest (some do but only some) -- If you are shopping across multiple products for the best price DELETE YOUR HISTORY / COOKIES before going back multiple accesses and many will go back to the original price

 

[TappyGee]

DD loves Target but they did something to her that she swears she's going elsewhere.

In December she was doing her Christmas shopping and had a shopping cart full of goods... she had one item that she forgot that was across the store so she left her basket there and went across the store to fetch the last item. By the time she got back, some Target employees had concluded that her shopping cart was abandoned and had returned everything to the shelves.... she swears that she was only gone 10 minutes... she had a cow.

I had that done once at Walmart with my groceries. I was literally around the corner. I was so mad!

 

[swabby01]

wife loves Costco but she doesn’t go often. i’ll get gas there if i’m close but otherwise avoid it like the plague. not a big fan of the strip search in the way out of the store.

You ought to read about the "why" for receipt review at Costco and Sams. Actually is not about "you getting away with something" as the checker is focused on insuring you haven't been double charged for something. They look primarily to see if the same item shows up on two lines and then check to insure there are that many "extra" products corresponding to the charge in the basket. They believe it is better that they catch their errors rather than you when you get home or to your car setting up a potential " confrontation".

 

[Skoach]

Best Buy was one of the first major retailers to offer different prices online versus in their stores. Their logic was that online shoppers were more price savvy, whereas B&M shoppers were more likely to buy something because it was in stock, and perhaps a Best Buy employee recommended the item. So it wasn’t as important to offer the lowest prices in the local stores. Eventually it hit the media that Best Buy was doing this and they had a lot of damage control to do.

I stopped shopping at Best Buy once they began doing this. I think it’s dishonest and the wrong way to treat customers. Costco would never do anything like this. They are far more customer centric and I’d much rather give them my business.

I avoid Target as much as possible because the stores are way too big and the prices are not all that great. And I don’t find the quality of their products to be anything beyond mediocre anyway.

This goes back to way before the internet. I worked for a major retailer who also had a major mail catalogue presence. Not only did prices differ from store to catalogue, but catalogues were printed and distrtbuted with different prices as well. Usually these were regionally distributed, but sometimes different prices were distributed in specific locals. Information as to how many were sold at each price was used in future pricing decisions.
This was in the mid 80's, a full 10+ years before internet shopping.

 

[Murph]

Seems like a sneaky practice, desdigned to fool you into paying more than expected. Should not even be legal. Thanks for posting this, as we are all now smarter about Target.

 

[Ronnieboy]

wife loves Costco but she doesn’t go often. i’ll get gas there if i’m close but otherwise avoid it like the plague. not a big fan of the strip search in the way out of the store.

Lucky! They only look at my receipt
And I’m glad they do, just on Feb 13th I was charged for 3 dozen roses instead of 2 (for wife and mother valentines). I got my $19 back and my wife won’t question who the extra roses were for

 

[audreyh1]

Lucky! They only look at my receipt
And I’m glad they do, just on Feb 13th I was charged for 3 dozen roses instead of 2 (for wife and mother valentines). I got my $19 back and my wife won’t question who the extra roses were for

Good one!

Yeah - they look at our cart and our receipt. Rarely at us.