So those beautiful young women they hire need to sign me up for something or else?

What did you say, Miss? Really? Anything?

They did this to us when I worked for a cosmetics company at Foley's (which is now Macy's). I believe it was required to have 2 credit applications a week. A friend and I were barely getting 2 a month.

The department head made us walk around the mall and ask people to apply. We went to get smoothies and goofed off for an hour instead. Came back "defeated" (ha) and told her we tried our best.

I mean, who wants to be harassed by two Foley's employees while they are shopping at Radio Shack?

I used to work at American Eagle, where we were also "encouraged" to sign up customers for store credit cards. Luckily though, the atmosphere wasn't nearly as menacing as Jesica's.

The worst you would ever get was an earful from your manager if you failed to *mention* to a customer how they could save 20% by signing up for a credit card, but that's about it.

Hell, I think AE even ran a promotion or two where top-selling stores that got the most credit card sign-ups got prizes. Crappy AE-branded prizes, but I'll take a cheesy carrot to a stick any day.

This isn't really any different then what Target does. Working as a cashier you are expected to get one RedCard for every 120 guests works out to something like two in a five hour shift, I think. If you don't get enough RedCards you get a warning. If you continue to not push the tasty Target debt, you either get booted out the door, or the nickle raise with your yearly review.

The company that actually owns the Victoria's Secret and Limited credit cards (among other store cards) is called World Financial Network National Bank (aka WFNNB), and they are crooks.
Some googling around will quickly uncover a list of very similar complaints as well as actions taken against their collections goons by Attorneys General in several states. It's no surprise they're pressuring their salespeople to push their shitty product.

"Then I started to get harassing phone calls from the creditor stating that I owed over $100 in late charges. I will not detail the chaos and upset that ensued, but it involved many hours of phone calls with moron CSRs, being juggled from department to department, and them trying to make it as hard as possible for me to close the card even after I paid off the "alleged" balance.

Exactly.

Oh, goody... now I'll use my "I'm buying a house" excuse with even more glee.

@laurenl842: As a former MayCo employee (F-B/LSA) I've had to do the same thing. After awhile, the mall folks told us we couldn't do "instant credit" solicitations outside of our own store, so we set up a booth at the main entrance to the store from the mall. You wouldn't believe the cereal-box toys the managers brought in to give away as "incentives." This was the usual treatment for those who were about to miss their quota for the 2nd month in a row. We used to even credit other associates for our own credit apps to keep them from getting canned, call friends and family at the last minute, etc..

@laurenl842: I believe Foley's was also owned by the same company as a department store I worked at one summer: Filene's (in the north east). When I worked there, we were encouraged to sign people up for credit applications and got a small reward for each application (like $10 or $20). I think I got a couple that summer, but I rarely asked anyone because I hated being asked those questions anytime I went shopping.

Do unto others as you would do to yourself =P

but back then, I *had* to have and use the Filene's credit card in order to qualify for the employee discount on clothes.

I worked for Banana Republic, part of Gap Inc. While they were not nearly as draconian as the Limited is/was, they gave us a $1-$2 bonus for each new card opened up. It got to the point where they were even giving the bonus out for processing an application, whether it was approved or not. Each month there was a contest and whomever got the most approvals won $120.

I offered it almost never. Even though i would get some crappy shifts or the store manager would pressure me a little bit. I could care less because i knew that people didnt need it. The people who wanted one would ask for it and i would process it happily.

@nick:

I worked at AE as well and what Nick is saying is true. The pressure wasn't nearly as bad as Jesica's story, but the managers were always annoying about "We need 'X' number of cards this hour...Why didn't you ask them if they wanted a card?...Did you tell them how much they could save with the card?" The story works in two ways...
1) If an employee asks you about the program, don't immediately be pissed off! Trust me, they aren't telling you about it because they want to bother you, its so they don't get bothered by their manager. (And sometimes, if the company isn't a bunch of money stealing crooks, you can save some decent money)
2) Lots of places, from the sounds of Jesica's story, are crooks, so keep your eyes and ears open!

My wife is an employee of Dillard's, and she gets the same kind of pressure. Every week its a new threat: get x number of new credit cards or you're fired. It's unbelievable.
When I get asked that line: Would you like to save % with your new card today? I always say: "No, I hate saving money."

@SadFootSign: All of this is so pathetic and disgusting. I knew it went on at some retail establishments, but it seems like the retail industry standard! I wish there were a way to get people to refuse these credit cards en masse. That is the only thing that will get the message through to these bone-headed management people.

Ten years ago, I worked for Hecht's department store (part of the May Co.) and it was called "1 for 20." for every 20 sales, you were expected to sign up at least 1 customer for the store credit card. Employees received a small bonus ($10-15 if I remember correctly) for each credit card sign-up.

I work retail and hate the whole store credit card nonsense. Our card has a 22% APR and the only benefit for the customer is she gets slightly more coupons than someone who just signs up for the mailing list. I ask every customer if they want to open a card since that is part of my job, but I'm not going to hassle her if she is reluctant.
Fortunately my company doesn't threaten to fire us if we don't make our charge goal. The worst that happens is we lose points on our reviews and we members of management might have to go to charge school to learn how to sell charges better.
I think my company has a slightly unrealistic expectation of how many charges a store should open a week. Our current goal is what we opened last year plus five. This doesn't take into account that every year customers are more aware of how pointless store cards are. People are also far more concerned about identity theft and we can't open an account if they won't give a social security number

I remember we had these puppies at Circuit City too. The floor guys hated it. They had to sell X number of Attachments per day (fancy do-nothing $500 A/V cables, sound systems, universal remotes, extended warranties, etc.) and X number of card applications. Didn't move enough? You got written up. If you still didn't improve your methods of leeching money out of your shoppers? Out the door with Unsatisfactory Performance.

Thankfully I was just a warehouse peon, hauling big screens for dingbats that yelled at me for not redefining the laws of matter to make them fit into their VW Beetles.

Victoria's Secret has been notorious for this for some time. This was bound to happen tho. Sears, for one, makes more money off of the sale of credit, than the sale of merchandise. So its a natural progression for pressure to sell more credit. And why not, its easy money for the store. You didn't walk into Sears not knowing how your were going to pay for that Craftsman Whosits. You had the money, or at least a way to pay (another credit card). But they lured you in with a 10% discount and you bought it. Then a month later, you forget that you now have another to pay off and get hit with the obligatory late fees and interest. Bye bye 10% discount. And don't think that this doesn't happen very often and "we pay them off every month". Its often enough that every retail store in America now has its own card. And it happens often enough for Sears Credit to support Sears Merchandise. If they weren't making a killing off of these then they wouldn't be doing it.

So when you clock into the sales floor at VS or Sears, or wherever, understand that you aren't selling products. You're selling credit, the product is just a carrier.

Victoria's Secret even keeps track of how many customers enter the store, light sensor on the door, to see how many people were converted into purchases and credit card applications. The numbers probably reflect on managers who in turn threaten workers.
My gf used to work at Victoria's Secret.

@plim: I forgot about that! We had to have a Foley's card to get our employee discounts as well. I also remember that all of the discounts would be charged to the card if the employee quit before a certain time (3 months?).

If an employee chooses to work at a company that mandates these policies then that employee will get treated as a representative of a store whose policies are obnoxious.

I have no problem with this. You choose your lot, accept the consequences. This is as bad as telling me not to give hell to telemarketers... whatever, I didn't tell them to work there.

BN is the same way; pushing memberships and credit cards.

The problem is that VS/LE is backed by WFFNB. How can they meet their quota when people are being denied credit by them? It's not instant approval.

I worked for the Banana Republic in Boulder, CO during college. We DID receive a bonus for card sign-ups. In fact, we had a "gold star" poster in the employee break room charting our incredible capitalistic hawking ability.

Many intangibles here, but I believe the author of the letter seems a little jaded towards "credit" in general. Although I worked for BR about 6 years ago, I find it hard to believe companies with such a high turnover ratio (coupled with ridiculous training and HR costs) would implement a "de-incentive".

My wife worked at a Victoria's Secret before we were married and she said their #1 method of evaluation was how many cards they signed people up for.

She also said they weren't allowed to call them credit cards. I forget what they are called (Pink Card, something like that).

I work for a large retailer that has a store credit line. It is nothing new for us to be threatened in order to push credit cards on to our customers.

The whole practice of pushing credit is disgusting to me.

Later,
Chrome...

Deltasleep - I'm with you. I also tell those clerks that I don't use credit cards b/c I don't like debt. That statement always raises a few eyebrows.

my sister worked for express when she was in high school. i found it pretty appalling that they use their employees as a revenue stream. she was expected to purchase the new line of clothing every season & the company (or store manager...i dunno which) would arbitrarily create "theme days" where a specific clothing item or color was deemed mandatory dress code.

i remember one day she wore jeans from another store (b/c her express jeans ripped or something) & was sent home for not being in dress code.

@LTS!: I agree on GP but I'm never rude to store clerks. It's probably their first (and maybe the last) retail job many of them will have. They ask, you say no thanks, and the world keeps turning. Now, telemarketers are a completely different story and fair game for the ripping of a new one or two.

Sears does the same thing.

Most retailers make more money from their Credit Cards than they do from selling merchandise.

I worked at Target and they did the same crap too with their visas. We were supposed to ask ANYONE we came in contact with at that store. If someone was spending 50 cents on a candybar, we were supposed to ask them if they want to save 10% on that. One of my friends got bitched at for not asking a little kid who came through his line if he wanted to sign up for a credit card. We were told to high pressure people and pull dirty used car salesmen tactics to get people to sign up. Customers who were still shopping on the salesfloor were supposed to be asked too. The unwritten rule was that every customer should be asked at least THREE times if they want the damn card.

Employees didn't necessarily have a quota, and no one I know of got fired for not getting enough, but you'd definitely get a nice little lecture from the managers (who sat in their office all day and never asked anyone) if you didn't get enough. And every day as a group at our little meetings, we'd get the same line of crap "Ask every guest!!!" And then you'd get the guilt trip...."Well so and so just got 3 credits today and you don't have any!"

I alternated between the sales floor and stockroom so they didn't expect as many credits from me as they would a cashier, but I still never got enough...I don't think there is a way to get enough, you could get 30 in a day and it wouldn't be enough.

I don't think these stores realize that the practice of high-pressuring people into getting a credit card is repulsive and turns people away. Same goes for extended warranties. One of the many reasons I don't shop at Best Buy anymore is because any time I walked in there, they would try to get me to sign up for a credit card and get the warranty. I got sick of it and buy all my electronics at Circuit City. IF they ask (and at the one by me, that's a big if), they take "no" for an answer the first time. The only thing that makes shopping at Target bearable is that most of the employees feel the same way I did when I worked there and either don't ask, or accept "no" for an answer. Plus, the alternative's Wal-Mart, so the clear answer is Target. But if you're unfortunate to set foot inside a Target when a manager actually gets off their lazy ass and goes out on the floor, then it can be a "would you like to save 10% by opening a red card" nightmare.

Needless to say, calling my boss to tell her that I would not be returning from my college leave of absence was the best phone call I've ever made in my life.

@camas22:

Almost all "Mall stores" have those people counters. If you look up, you'll see them on the ceiling as you walk in. At AE, they kept track of how many people came through the store, how many people bought stuff (Conversion = Customers / Traffic), how many people signed up for a credit card (Apps to Trans = CC Apps / Transactions), Average units per transaction (UPT = # of Items Purchased / # of transactions), etc...

Store credit cards were the lifeblood of Kohl's, too, which is where I worked for manymany years in high school. We were always supposed to be asking people to sign up, but it was more the managers, with Corporate breathing down their necks, who would have to worry about quotas. We got incentives too - usually $1 per, but sometimes they would have special promotions where you could get a scratch-off card (worth $1-$5) for each application or they'd give you a $5 bonus if you got 10 or more in one shift. Being a young, underpaid kid, I ate this up & made it my personal mission in life to get people as many credit cards as possible; I once made $30 in incentive bonuses in one shift (which was awesome!).

However, Kohl's cards can be paid off by check or cash at any register, so my sales pitch took advantage of this as a caveat. As a matter of fact, I actually got investigated by the manager because I was opening so many more cards than anyone else - but since Kohl's doesn't see any interest profits at the store level, they were fine with it. Kohl's, more so than Bath & Body or other small specialty retail stores, sells enough big-ticket items that $300, $400 totals aren't that unusual. So especially for people who were planning on paying by check anyway, opening the credit card for 15% off & then immediately paying the balance wasn't such a bad deal.

…or so I told myself. However, I limited my haranguing to those people who really would save a significant chunk of money; I absolutely hate it when cashiers tout the 10% savings you'll get on, like, one pair of socks. "Ooh, I could save 30 cents? REALLY!?"

That probably wasn't that interesting to anyone else, but it sure was cathartic. :)

I used to work at express and at our store if you didn't meet your quota for credit card sign up you would be assigned a chore like sweeping or cleaning the bathroom and such.

@yg17: I don't think these stores realize that the practice of high-pressuring people into getting a credit card is repulsive and turns people away.

If only it were true. More likely, they couldn't care less. Sales volume has gotta be the a-number-1 measure of performance in the retail biz. On top of that, consider the financials of consumer credit cards...

Many people go for the 10% cookie, charge a bunch of stuff up and then carry a balance, and if they're late on a payment, so much the better. Bingo! Here's a late fee and a higher interest rate.

Here's the real ass-kicker that is completely transparent to most people: When you charge something on a credit card, you virtually just *created* both the principle AND the interest for the bank's/store's benefit.

Girl, it's a wonder they aren't flogging you with whips in the back room for not making your credit card quota.

Every store does this, Best Buy sells the warranties (and MSN packets back in the day), when I applied at Macy's they told me right during the interview that I would need to sell a certain amount of their cards weekly, etc... It it wrong, but they all do it.

Oh yeah, just to add on, this is why some employees lie when selling products like when the AMEX rep lied to me while signing me up for account protector by telling me I only owe money if I carry a balance to the next month, when it was actually a charge whenever I had a balance at the end of a billing cycle.

@xamarshahx:

My dad works at a Macy's and has it much worse than I did at Target....I've heard some pretty bad stories.

I think this is pretty common, unfortunately. I worked years ago at Kohl's, and they would have us wander around and accost shoppers and ask them to sign up for a Kohl's card. I think they stopped that because it pissed customers off.

When I signed up for a Victoria's Secret card a few years ago, they never did give me the 10% off the first day's purchases. I checked with a friend who had gotten her card around the same time, and her discount didn't show up on her bill, either.

A friend of mine worked at Bath & Body Works in college. She got a job there because they were environmentally friendly and cared about political issues. Within a few months she was promoted to assistant manager, and every time I stopped by to see her she was in tears because she wasn't making her sales quota. Every shift that she worked that she didn't meet her quota she would get written up. It seemed absurd that she could personally be written up because no one wandered in to her quiet corner of the mall. The stress level she felt was unbelievable, and thankfully she quit after some time. But I've never felt the same way about that place since.

This is true of nearly everywhere that has a offers credit, including banks. I worked for a year and a half at a bank that offered credit cards and our jobs were practically threatened if we didn't have a certain number of "conversations" with customers each day. It didn't matter if the person you were helping had overdrafts in excess of $500, offer them a credit card anyway! I left the job because I couldn't handle the pressure and hated harrassing people to add on bank services they didn't need.

@yg17: i remember target hawking credit cards back when i worked there in the summer of 2001. cashiers didn't have any quotas, and i only mentioned it to people if they spent over $100 dollars. occasionally they'd have a cashier roam the store asking people if they wanted to apply for the card - i had to do it once and hated it. ugh.

This makes me want to get a job at one of these places just to screw up their whole scam! I have been at a job where screwing others was a fine art, and learned quite a few ways to "stick it to 'em"!
MWAAAAHHHHAAAAAAAAAA

Ugh, Gap was the same way--worked there for two years in college (very recently). Same thing: harassing customers around the store, getting an earful if a card wasn't offered to each and every customer (never mind that the interest rate was something like 25%), et cetera. No extra incentive was given to push these things, except that it was used as an evaluation tool... no wonder Gap, Inc. seems to have such a high turnover.

Speaking as a former Limited Brands employee, I never recall anyone threatening to fire the salespeople because they didn't make quotas. However, the pressure was there (as I'm sure it is at many stores that push credit cards). I didn't feel right pushing people to get the card.

Also, even if you get someone to bite, then you have to get them to give their info and enter them into the database and give them their card materials, and the line behind them starts getting antsy, leading to unhappy customers.

Now, I thought that was bad, but you know what's WORSE? Mervyn's now has signs in their stores that say essentially, "If our cashiers don't ask you whether you want to sign up for our credit card, tell us and get a free picture frame!"

Yeah. Like I'm going to report the sales clerk for not asking me for a debt card. For a picture frame. At least LB didn't threaten us with customers wanted freebies!

^----Former Limited Store Manager (10 + years)

Yes, it's horrible to expect that retail associates perform the duties that they were hired to do. Why not do away with UPT - "units per transaction, or ADS "average daily sale" goals, as well.
Just have zombies sit behind the counter texting or talking on the cell phone - like at Mervyns.
These associates know the expectations set by the company and rather than whine about it as you get your 40% discount, go work at Cinnabon or Hot Dog on a Stick.

@xamarshahx:
And if it's like my fucking Chase card, they'll change when the billing cycle ends at random, and then tell you "It's always been like that."

@LTS!: That's a nice principle, but with more and more stores getting into the credit business, it's going to be harder and harder to find a job that doesn't require you to be obnoxious.

I mean, if your average service worker decided not to work for places that a) push credit and upsells, b) sell sweatshop products, c) exploit immigrant labor, d) contribute to childhood obesity, e) send junk mail or make cold calls... you see where I'm going with this? Every service job is going to screw you over somehow; credit-pushing may be the least of available evils. That doesn't mean employees should just expect mistreatment for choosing an alternative that doesn't make their lives more difficult.

@gruffydd:

"Just have zombies sit behind the counter texting or talking on the cell phone - like at Mervyns. "

That's why I LIKE Mervyns. I'd rather have texting zombies than hovering vultures.

The world will be richer the day you die.

@gruffydd: Moved on to used cars, huh?