Archived I think the end is near for Target.

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We used to be a 10pm store about a year and a half ago. Then we went to 11. I know our STL fought the change and has been really trying to get it changed back. We're basically dead after about 8:30 at night. We're a SuperTarget if that changes anything.
 
This whole breach thing is now extending to a couple tens of other companies and in a few weeks it won't be the target breach it'll be Americas breach. America's security isn't as highly progressed as other countries because credit card companies don't want to pay more money for the technology. Many companies have lived to tell the tale of credit breaches. It could've been any other company and people are idiots for thinking anything else. FYI I'm a ULV store that has been exceeding our sales since the breach and are up higher than last year. I've been with target for 6 years. This is a typical January.
 
As mentioned previously, this is something that could be remedied by the banks but they're too cheap to update their technology unless they can pass the cost onto someone else.
Changing cards to chip-embedded technology would require a revamp of every ATM & retail POS system. Retailers would follow suit if the banks would lead the way but they won't.
Only when it costs them dearly.
 
Normally I work Pharmacy but I picked up a couple of cashier shifts and found out we aren't supposed to be asking if people want to open a red card. Plus there aren't any prompts on the registers. Still it seems as busy as January usually does. I have noticed a lot more people using cash than ever before. I've been with Target for over 11 years and I can see that Ol' Bullseye has a black eye now, but he's a tough dog and will bounce back. (haha little pun there.) I think the fact that Target has been upfront about the breach has gone a long way to smoothing things out. Sure there will be some people who won't come back, but Spot will live on.
 
People are like goldfish; they have a memory span of approximately 3 seconds. Once target is out of the news for a little while, they will forget all about this and it will be business as usual for spot. Weather the storm.
 
People are like goldfish; they have a memory span of approximately 3 seconds. Once target is out of the news for a little while, they will forget all about this and it will be business as usual for spot. Weather the storm.
This. It goes from "OMG! Target EXPOSED my PERSONAL INFO!! How could they DO this?! I'm NEVER shopping there AGAIN!! Oooooooooh! NEW RELEASE! NEW SMART PHONE! PRETTY SHINY THINGS! Only at Target? 'Kay."
 
Retailers would follow suit if the banks would lead the way but they won't.
Only when it costs them dearly.

That's the funny part, it'll never cost them a single penny. Well, maybe a postage stamp, and the cost of some mass produced plastic.

If someone dare takes money from your bank account, a government subsidized program called the FDIC, reimburses the bank for the loss, so they can reimburse you.

If someone makes a fraudulent charge to your Credit Card. The issuing bank, just issues a charge back to the merchants account PLUS, a chargeback "fee" of $30-$40, for there "inconvenience". Yes, that's right, they actually make money in the process. They really do love it when cards get compromised, because they get to collect interest, and fees from the merchants affected.

Let's play pretend. If you owned a big bank, let's say "Bank of America", and you knew, if you converted every debit & credit card account to new smartcards (which would cost more by themselves) and as a result, you'd lose money because Hackers wouldn't be able to use the new cards as much, making you forfeit millions of dollars of collected fees from duped merchants, would you wanna do it? Heck No. That's Free Easy Money. Plain & Simple. And in a Executives Eyes, that's a lost bonus...

I've done research into the subject during fraud training. It's quite interesting hearing banks perspectives on the subject. There telling us the Consumers that they'll protect us from Fraud, and crack down, but at the same time, there lining up profits from the game..
 
I wish this would make people use cash more so that they stop making the banks rich.

If we all paid with cash then fewer people would be in debt and we wouldn't see so many people filing for protection and have to go bankrupt.
 
People prefer plastic because it's easier. America is heading toward Wall-E. I won't be surprised if we are all fat people sitting in hover chairs drinking soda and watching tv. People don't want to go to an ATM and get cash out because it's too much work and takes too much time.
 
I wish this would make people use cash more so that they stop making the banks rich.

That... wouldn't work out in the end. Majority of the world's money doesn't physically exist. (source) It only exists in computers. I hate cash, though. If someone steals my wallet/purse, they'll have nothing because I'm calling my bank and cc company asaptually. If they steal my wallet fulla cash, I'm sol. There are other reasons I don't care to use cash, but eh, no one cares.

You can have a checking account without making banks rich, though. CUs are usually pretty damn good and they're not-for-profit.
 
I don't think this is the end for Target, though. A comedy blogger I follow wrote a post about how she still loves Target despite the breach and there were many comments in agreement. Also, my store's not dead/slow at all. People seem to be over-shopping lol. Of course I still get asked "is it safe?" and there's been an influx in cash use, but it's not slow. It's slow if you compare it to Q4 pre-breach announcement, but it's not slow for January.
 
Month to date compared to last year the company is down almost 10%. So just keep saying all is well.
 
I think I specified that my store wasn't slow. Idk what's going on at other stores or the company as a whole (because I don't actually care lol). I think people will come around eventually after this breach thing blows over. I think people in my area just came around a little quicker than others. Of course it's not gonna be 100% back to normal a month after an announcement of a huge cc breach.

I definitely never ever said "all is well" because frankly, I don't have that information or care to look into it.

Edit: I didn't really say it before, but I just don't think Target's gonna fall that quickly over this one thing. I think it'll be years of not quite being as good as the previous year, and stores closing before it actually happens.
 
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I didn't say all is well either.
What I said is that this event is not the tipping point.
That the tipping point hasn't come yet and it will be a while before we see it.

There are indications that it is well on it's way.
As I said Target is to big for it to come crashing down over night, it will take time (a long time) before they go away.
Look how long it has taken for KMart to go down despite the problems it has.
 
GUEST: I don't want to swipe my card.

ME: OK. I'll manually enter the card number.

GUEST: No, I don't want you to do that either.

ME: OK. Would you care to pay cash or check?

GUEST: No. I don't have enough cash and I don't have a check.

ME: hmmmm

GUEST: Well, isn't there any other way to pay?

ME: sigh
 
GUEST: I don't want to swipe my card.

ME: OK. I'll manually enter the card number.

GUEST: No, I don't want you to do that either.

ME: OK. Would you care to pay cash or check?

GUEST: No. I don't have enough cash and I don't have a check.

ME: hmmmm

GUEST: Well, isn't there any other way to pay?

ME: sigh

Addendum!

Me: There is an ATM at guest services.

GUEST: But they charge so much to withdraw!

ME: JUST KILL ME.
 
I really think we could see the end of Target or at least a downward spiral. The security breach of people's credit card/debit card information has had an effect on the company in my opinion. I'm not an idiot or a rookie. I know that January is one of the slowest months of the year in retail and at Target but the store I work at just seems a lot slower and the red card counts seem a lot down. Yeah, the weekends are still busy but that's common sense. The majority of the shopping is done on the weekends. I just have this feeling that we haven't even seen all of the effects of the security breach. I think that this is just the tip of the iceberg. Personally, I would not care that much if Target went bankrupt and eventually out of business because I despise working for the company. If you like working for Target, that's fine. I won't judge you or hold that against you. If you like it, I give you props. It's just not my thing. Yeah, I think it's possible that the end of Target is near but it could just be that I work at a crappy store or one of the worst in my state. I just think that people are going to be cautious about shopping at Target. When the security breach happened, I didn't think it was that big of a deal because it the number affected was only about 30 to 40 million. However, that number changed into 70 million and then eventually wound up to be 110 million. 110 million is almost 4 times the population of Canada, LMAO. Sales are basically relied upon humans entering the store and buying crap. If fewer humans and fewer humans shop at Target, sales go down. If you work at Target, you know what that means. Bosses don't get their raises and they get mad and take it out on their pawns(regular team members).


I think it will be a while before Target falls. Sales are down yes, welcome to the new year where everyone's spent their money during the holidays. The security breach is also huge, we've got to earn our guests trust back which is why we're supposed to be driving (what guests we do have in our buildings) guest satisfaction so much more! Red cards are down because we're not supposed to be asking. If our guests ask for them obviously we want to help provide them but we are not asking them for the time being! Target is working on trying to make things right for the guest, I think we will be okay, just give it time!
 
GUEST: I don't want to swipe my card.

ME: OK. I'll manually enter the card number.

GUEST: No, I don't want you to do that either.

ME: OK. Would you care to pay cash or check?

GUEST: No. I don't have enough cash and I don't have a check.

ME: hmmmm

GUEST: Well, isn't there any other way to pay?

ME: sigh

Addendum!

Me: There is an ATM at guest services.

GUEST: But they charge so much to withdraw!

ME: JUST KILL ME.

That or "I don't trust that machine, either."
 
I know they are closing a Target in Memphis and they mentioned some other cities I guess they weren't making any money but Target better watch out more could go out of business........
 
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I still think it's gonna take a long time for target to fall for real, buuut this was just tweeted by CNBC's verified twitter account

BREAKING: Target to lay off 475 at corporate HQ; $TGT also not to fill 700 open positions - report (via DJ)

Probably go into a hiring freeze (at leadership levels and above.. unless people in "essential" positions leave) orrr they fire some of the leadership who gets paid more and replace them with people they can pay less or some other way to save money.

There's a store coming to a town near me next year (announced last week), though. Idk why anyone thought that was a good idea now.
 
The data breach isn't going to put Target out of business on its own but the downward spiral is beginning for Target. If you look at all of the writing on the wall, things aren't going well.

First of all, look at their stock price. They were doing a good job of artificially inflating for quite a while through their stock buy back. They even got it as high as $75 at one point. Now it's in the high 50s and final fourth quarter earnings report is only going to further tank that price. The economy as a whole is turning around but Target is down in same store sales 2.5%. It shouldn't be that way.

Now we have 2 major announcements this week, the 475 layoffs and the healthcare. Obviously the big news of things not going well but there's also the future growth which isn't getting reported. They are planning on opening a mere 10 stores this year, and more importantly are closing a total of 12 stores.http://tcbmag.com/News/Recent-News/2014/January/Targets-Plans-Now-Call-For-10-New-Stores,-12-Clos A net loss of 2 stores. Realistically speaking that's basically no growth but that's a significant slowdown versus what we have seen I the last few years in terms of growth.

Target Canada, for all intents and purposes has been a massive failure. Originally the projections were it would reach profitability in 2015, which was already troubling. Now, with a net loss of $800 million, it might be even further off before Target Canada reaches profitability, if ever. http://m.theglobeandmail.com/report...ow-years-away/article16286817/?service=mobile The problem I can also see is that whereas other companies like Walmart and Sears set up their Canadian sectors as wholly owned subsidiaries, Target didn't do that. Why is that important? When starting a new business venture you want to set up a new company to limit your liability in case things go wrong. So what does a big corporation typically do? Set up a second company with all of the shares for the new company being owned by the parent corporation. Provided that the new company is sufficiently funded with assets and insurance then it's very unlikely the losses from the new company will be attributed to the parent corporation. It's a very good way to make sure a new business venture's losses don't extend beyond the initial startup capital. Why Target didn't do this is still a question I can't figure out. Nevertheless, as likely as a Target Canada failure seems to be at this point, it will have dire consequences for the corporation as a whole.

No one thing is going to put Target out of business, particularly this credit breach, but when you look at all the writing on the wall, the outlook is bleak. By the way, if you think I'm full of it, Kmart once had one and half times as many stores as Target does right now. They owned Builders Square, Borders Books, Waldenbooks, Office Max, and Sports Authority. They were massive and it all started falling apart within a very short period of time. They've been on life support ever since. This year they have no growth, within a year or two you'll see significant closures in Canada, then America. Unless something significant changes you can count on Target being headed out soon.
 
The data breach isn't going to put Target out of business on its own but the downward spiral is beginning for Target. If you look at all of the writing on the wall, things aren't going well.

First of all, look at their stock price. They were doing a good job of artificially inflating for quite a while through their stock buy back. They even got it as high as $75 at one point. Now it's in the high 50s and final fourth quarter earnings report is only going to further tank that price. The economy as a whole is turning around but Target is down in same store sales 2.5%. It shouldn't be that way.

A source told me that Gregg sold a huge chunk of his stock last autumn prior to the dip in price. Now that cannot be confirmed or not, but corporate executives know when to sell or buy before anyone else.
 
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