Service & Engagement Product UPCs unscannable at register

[jackandcat]

I'm picking on Blossom cosmetics, a fairly new line at our store, because their SKUs not only are extremely tiny but combined with poor printing quality they are basically unscannable. Even worse, the UPC number is unreadable without a magnifying glass at smaller than 1 point font. It's hard to imagine the company hasn't fixed this problem, I'm sure they've received complaints from resellers of their products about this issue.

I've seen other items with unscannable codes. It's not just specialty companies (like Blossom) with very small-sized items that want the UPC to be very inconspicuous. For too many products, the manufacturer is sloppy in printing the UPC codes, so they don't align properly and are scan-resistant. On other products, the UPC code is printed against a very dark or bold color background and the scanner simply can't read it. Kodiak food mix products (pancakes) often bore unreadable UPCs but they've improved, probably because of reseller feedback. Makers of toys and baby products periodically use cutesy UPC designs which may look artistic but which are a PIA to scan at the register.

What are the products you've found to be unscannable at the registers, even when you fiddle around with the hand scanners and hope to find just that right angle?

 

[seasonaldude]

Apple accessories suck to scan with their barely visible ink.

 

[tracemick8824]

I get a little annoyed when companies make the bar codes into the shape of something. Like the Kodiak pancake and muffin mixes are in the shape of a bear. They can be difficult to scan.

 

[Mikuhl]

Apple accessories suck to scan with their barely visible ink.

Well Apple products I understand because they are made to be scanned with phones in the apple store.
I wish everyone just used that technology that encodes the barcode into the ink on the box.

 

[jackandcat]

One impact of "surfing the web" for answers is you bring up background information which is informative and historical, albeit not a direct answer to your core question. As such, here is a very interesting and brief article about the implementation of UPCs, ththough it only laterally touches on different barcode and scanner specifications (unscannability issues):

UPC-A and EAN-13 barcodes | Wiki | Discogs Reference Wiki

Reference Wiki Wiki.

reference.discogs.com

 

[Anelmi]

Certain bottles of juice/beverages with the barcode in between the creases.

Scanning the barcode on egg packaging can be difficult at times especially if the ink isn't printed uniformly across the barcode.

Certain *other Target store* receipts are always difficult/unscannable to scan for returns.

 

[qmosqueen]

Take a picture with the mydevice then enlarge it Then scan it

 

[jackandcat]

Certain *other Target store* receipts are always difficult/unscannable to scan for returns.

Too many Target stores don't keep their thermal printers properly maintained. Misaligned or dirty thermal printers don't print evenly across the receipt. It seems like the stores don't have money to fix things like this. 🙄

 

[Kvothe]

Too many Target stores don't keep their thermal printers properly maintained. Misaligned or dirty thermal printers don't print evenly across the receipt. It seems like the stores don't have money to fix things like this. 🙄

No. Just no one cares enough to call CSC and report the problem to have the printers fixed or replaced.

 

[jackandcat]

No. Just no one cares enough to call CSC and report the problem to have the printers fixed or replaced.

I've brought this up a few times to my ETL as well as our TLs. Our S&E ETL states there's nothing which can be done about it right now. I regard our S&E-ETL very highly, we have a fairly new SD, the previous SD was aware of these things, so I wonder if there's other reasons that "no one" is willing "to call CSC and report the problem..."

I don't have the authority to notify CSC about the problem, and am not about to risk being accused of insubordination by my higher-ups.

As a "Guest Advocate", I see how defective or malfunctioning front-end equipment occasionally ruins the user experience for our guests. A few nights back, during my shift I had four different register lanes malfunction during a guest transaction - malfunction in a manner where the machinery was unresponsive and could not be fixed via the "suspend" function or something else. Neither I nor our guests find it particularly enjoyable to have to abruptly pull up all purchased items, shut off the lane I was on, move to another lane and notify guests in line that I am moving lanes, then log in to a new register, re-ring each and every purchased item, and hope and pray the new register doesn't have a tech repair issue as well.

Doesn't anybody at Corporate see how embarrassing it is for your Guest Advocates to have to move lanes, or move lanes multiple times, because of malfunctioning equipment? Multiply that when there is a line of guests who need to follow, and that's IF there's another register available that's working when the store is crowded.

Is Target really, truly unable to afford the financial cost of typical, normal and prompt maintenance and repairs for malfunctioning front-end equipment? On behalf of our wonderful guests who love to shop at Target, is this too much to ask?

 

[Kvothe]

I've brought this up a few times to my ETL as well as our TLs. Our S&E ETL states there's nothing which can be done about it right now. I regard our S&E-ETL very highly, we have a fairly new SD, the previous SD was aware of these things, so I wonder if there's other reasons that "no one" is willing "to call CSC and report the problem..."

I'm not raising this issue to stir up trouble. I don't really care about conspiracy theories as to WHY this hasn't been fixed.

Since our job title is "Guest Advocate", and unrepaired receipt printers (along with card readers/PIN pads and registers) harm the guest experience, and I and my co-workers are supposed to advocate for our guests, I really would expect these things to be fixed. Not a month from now, not two months from now, not sometime after Thanksgiving. This has been going on too long!

Is Target as a company really, truly unable to afford the financial cost of typical, normal maintenance and repairs for malfunctioning front-end equipment? From the viewpoint of our guests, is this asking too much from Target as a company?

If I see a problem, I call CSC. They send a tech. Problem solved. Any TM can call CSC, doesn't have to be a TL or above.