Archived Holiday ad merchandise always out of stock

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squirrel88

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Ok you all know the drill in Electronics...Target advertises an item thats a really good deal, we sell out on Sunday, guests come in monday
and are mad because we are out. They say "How can you be out, it was just advertised yesterday" and then say "That's false advertising!" then they leave angry because the ad usually says "no rain checks"
Then around thursday we get a few more of the item but its too late for the guests thet left mad Sunday they have already given up on finding the item and never came back.. This has happened for years and I always apologize to the guest and say "Im sorry we don't have the item you wanted, the demand for the item was higher than Target anticipated". I didnt think that Target actually did this on purpose.
However this past Christmas season Target has sunk to a new low. They would advertise a $229 laptop or cheap 32 inch tv knowing that we could sell dozens and dozens of them , then we would get like 6 of them Sunday morning which of course sold out in 2 hours or less. Then all week the phone would ring every few minutes with guests asking if we got any more of the items and be upset when I said no.
I can't even begin to count how many people came in between Thanksgiving and Christmas and cussed me out because I didn't have an advertised item in stock...it makes you want to not even come in to work. I have no problem helping crowds of people, I like being busy, but its really depressing trying to help crowds of ANGRY people.
Granted, black friday is a different situation...guests understand that "they early bird gets the worm" but as far as the rest of the Christmas season goes if Target advertises something they should back it up with at least some quantities. Guests said we advertised things just to get bodies into the store while Target knew we would not have the merchandise, and by the time Christmas got here I was starting to agree with them. I have worked here for years and this was BY FAR the worst holiday season EVER as far as being out of stock on advertised items.
It happened so much that I could look at the ad the day before it started and tell you EXACTLY which items would be sold out in a few hours. So if I am able to do this why can't the buyers do it and order enough merchandise to cover the ad? This happens mostly in electronics but I have seen it all over the store at different times.
 
They do it because spot hopes that once they're in the store, they'll look around & buy other items. That might've worked before the economy tanked but guests simply walk out now.
 
They do it because spot hopes that once they're in the store, they'll look around & buy other items. That might've worked before the economy tanked but guests simply walk out now.

i love that kind of deluded thinking! Like when my STL insists, and I mean INSISTS, that I raincheck every item in the ad, even if it's only on sale for ten cents cheaper. So if something was originally 1.49 and it's on sale for 1.39, we need the guest to leave with a raincheck slip for that item, because when they come back to buy it (which lots of people make special trips to save 10 cents), they are just going to buy that one item, they are probably going to get like 10 or 20 items.

Lol yeah right your wasting payroll, your breath, and company supplies for these rainchecks and subsitutions.
 
a co-worker and I were talking the other day about how many large roasters, folding banquet tables, and assorted toy items we could have sold over the years if we had a few hundred of them in stock during the ad. I understand some of the items are holiday only, but I also get tired of apologizing to guests and explaining that there was a higher than anticipated demand. I don't believe it, but that's the standard answer.
 
a co-worker and I were talking the other day about how many large roasters, folding banquet tables, and assorted toy items we could have sold over the years if we had a few hundred of them in stock during the ad. I understand some of the items are holiday only, but I also get tired of apologizing to guests and explaining that there was a higher than anticipated demand. I don't believe it, but that's the standard answer.

It would be interesting to know how many angry phone calls/emails the headquarters got this year regarding this! I bet it was a lot.
Another interesting thig I have noticed lately..... lots of rain checks now say "limited quantity...may not be replenished"...its almost like Target is putting
on sale mostly discontinued stuff so they can get rid of it before it goes on clearance :)
 
It would be interesting to know how many angry phone calls/emails the headquarters got this year regarding this! I bet it was a lot.
Another interesting thig I have noticed lately..... lots of rain checks now say "limited quantity...may not be replenished"...its almost like Target is putting
on sale mostly discontinued stuff so they can get rid of it before it goes on clearance :)

true! good point!
 
it's also embarrassing (and a pain in the butt from an instocks/rainchecking point of view) when the entire backwall of target brand bed sheets goes on sale, and we have like one or two of each to last the whole week. The ad is set on sunday and by tuesday there are about thirty to forty bedsheets that sold out and need rainchecks. We don't get anymore in for that ad set, and it takes about 3 or 4 weeks after that to replenish. Is that really cost effective to have these sets transition, have plano reset them, and then have them be sold out a majority of the time?
 
it's also embarrassing (and a pain in the butt from an instocks/rainchecking point of view) when the entire backwall of target brand bed sheets goes on sale, and we have like one or two of each to last the whole week. The ad is set on sunday and by tuesday there are about thirty to forty bedsheets that sold out and need rainchecks. We don't get anymore in for that ad set, and it takes about 3 or 4 weeks after that to replenish. Is that really cost effective to have these sets transition, have plano reset them, and then have them be sold out a majority of the time?
Hard to say, it has been a blessing for Target though because they aren't sitting on a massive pile of the crap in their distribution centers. It's been one of the saving graces for them since the economy tanked.
 
I remember hearing something last yr about how stock amts were being curtailed to avoid "massive amts of clearance".
Even on clearance, some depts still have an exceedingly high enough markup that we'll still make a profit even at half off.
 
Hard to say, it has been a blessing for Target though because they aren't sitting on a massive pile of the crap in their distribution centers. It's been one of the saving graces for them since the economy tanked.

Couldn't the distribution centers just distribute, and then like, i dunno, store those massive piles of crap in the stores backroom? Lol i guess I don't know much about how their distribution process really works.
 
Saw an endcap of those triple crockpots on markdown. If only we'd had 'em during the holidays....
 
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