Archived Online Only clearance

[daninnj]

In my area there is one or two stores which seems to have much online only clearance on a regular basis. Some of the shipping labels are from people who live 50 miles away. Are these stores somehow sent the stuff from corp? One of them always has online only furniture every time I'm in there.

 

[Electronics Man]

Ya know I wonder the same thing sometimes. We get "Item Not sold in store" items quite often in my department. Sometimes books, sometimes DVD's, or other misc electronic items. I wonder if corp just dumps random items it doesn't want anymore on the stores.

 

[Retail Girl]

We seem to just get a lot of online returns at my store from guests. But the good deals rarely hit the floor and are usually snagged by a TM long before a guest could find out about them.

 

[jenna]

Price change team should be scanning them regularly (every week or two) - and lowering the price until it sells. Maybe no one is doing this?

Once in awhile, we get random stuff from the DC, but it's rarely furniture. And it's usually just a few pieces, or 1 casepack.

 

[antivibe]

every week or two? We have online only items that have been sitting in electronics for at least 8 months.

 

[StaticSun]

Single Item Markdown!

 

[redeye58]

We actually had a guest who would order on-line only to cancel it before delivery.
She would then cruise the closest store in her area (us) to see if it had been marked down & sent to the floor. If it was lower than what she forfeited for S&H, she'd buy it.
Several TMs got suspicious when they noticed her ALWAYS buying "on-line only" stuff & alerted AP so they started holding stuff in the back for varying timeframes before sending them out to the floor.
And, yeh, TMs would descend like locusts.

 

[Barcode]

Wow, can't say I've seen that one!

 

[daninnj]

We actually had a guest who would order on-line only to cancel it before delivery.
She would then cruise the closest store in her area (us) to see if it had been marked down & sent to the floor. If it was lower than what she forfeited for S&H, she'd buy it.
Several TMs got suspicious when they noticed her ALWAYS buying "on-line only" stuff & alerted AP so they started holding stuff in the back for varying timeframes before sending them out to the floor.
And, yeh, TMs would descend like locusts.

Ha! I can see them doing that to me in the store that's close to one of my clients. I go in there, look at the online-only stuff and only shop the clearance endcaps. I'm in there twice a week so most of the time I leave empty handed. I don't order anything online and then cancel it though.

 

[buliSBI]

If it was online item returned to the store, I usually seen stuff get a Online Only label and go back to Chargeback. Any shipping labels are removed or blacked out, and a clearance sticker is added.

If its returned back to Target.com or surplus from Target.com, it is usually sent to stores where it might sell.

 

[JuicedSoftball1]

I think that is a perfect scam! Surprised it does not happen more. Have someone buy something online. Return to store. Have someone else buy it at a crazy discount! Surprised this is not a more widespread thing.

 

[redeye58]

Don't be giving our forum guests any ideas....

 

[Retail Girl]

The chances of the product making it on the floor (save for soft lines returns) at my store is so small, it would be pointless to try it. And finding the stuff in the millions of clearance racks for clothes would be impossible.

 

[sher]

Idk why Target felt the need to make the orange stickers for those products say "Online Item." That gave it away. I don't think anyone returns things to my store just to buy em.

Some couple found a single $400 Dyson marked down to $100. I didn't see the sticker, but I'm assuming it was online only because I've never seen one marked down that much and those Online Item discounts are always huge.

We got a pair of shoes in recently that we carried, but in a color we didn't carry them in. Hadn't had the Online Item sticker on it, so the woman bought em at full price. I think in a case like that, it shouldn't be marked down anyway. I don't really go around the rest of the store unless I'm specifically shopping for something, but we get a ton of that stuff in SL. I missed out on a $7 swimsuit because I had a closing shift and didn't know about it until after my break... :/

 

[doxie71]

Online items can be so much fun sometimes. Don't know about everyone else, but for us they get stuck on clearance end caps since we have no other spot for them. Some people (who never seem to know how to read) think that it should be an additional percent off because of where it is at. Then you have to explain a million times that it is an online product that we have nowhere else to put. And hope they grasp it.

Had a woman one day demand I double check the price of an online table we had in store. She said she will buy the online items and they ALWAYS come up less at the register than what they are marked, but she wanted to be sure because this was a heavy item. I attempted (knowing that my pda would laugh) and explained to her that since it is an online only item, my pda simply tells me we do not carry this item and price varies by store. She then demanded a manager. Called my TL over. She gave the same answer I did. Guest was still pissed. So TL got a cart, loaded it up and checked the price. A few min later I get a call for a team lift. TL is loading the item back on the shelf. They then say to me "some people will bitch about stuff just to bitch. I can't stand it"

Great, great times.

 

[daninnj]

Online only items are fun for me too especially when I buy $170 dining chairs for $9.

 

[watchdog9000]

We had a guest a couple years ago who returned a pair of target.com shoes because they "didn't fit". She later came back to guest services saying she wanted to buy them back at the DISCOUNTED price but couldn't find them on the shelf anywhere. I told her that I could post void the return receipt, but that we were not allowed to sell clearance/online only items out of our reshop, that she would have to wait until softlines put it back on the shelf (this was our actual policy at the time, due to people trying to buyback online only items and clearance that they had just returned once it had gone down an additional percentage). She hung around for at least another hour waiting for softlines to get the shoes, but eventually she gave up hehe.