I no longer trust the cashiers at Sears. I was told I would "get $15 off my purchase just for applying for a Sears credit card".

After I gave her all of my information, I heard "Sorry, your application was denied. Would you like to reapply and try for $10 off?"

@BathroomDuck: I think those offers should be illegal. It sounds like fraudulent inducement to me.

You should get the discount whether you are approved or not.

Perhaps the cashiers get some sort of bounty for every e-mail they get, while all the person who gives the e-mail gets is spam.

@I Love New Jersey: More likely, the bounty the cashier receives is "you get to keep your job!"

@twophrasebark:

Actually that is how I killed my credit score in HS. I didn't know any better and would always apply for the cards at Sears with every purchase. I never got the card, but back then you would still get the $10 off your purchase.

I did this about 50 times because in HS you had no money and plenty of time. Who knew that every application was a hit to your credit score so by the time I turned 18 I had squat for credit.

It's all better now, but it did suck back then. These promotions should be barred or the public should be educated on what an application really does to the score.

Doesn't EVERYONE have a sacrificial email address to signup for these kinds of things by now?

Sears has this same "promotion" when you become a fan on Facebook. See the link here: [f.e.sears.com]

@Tamar Weinberg: Sears gave away $5 gift cards when they joined facebook...actually got it too...very professionally (as much as these offers can be) processed by a rebate company.

I might be able to shed some light on this. I've worked part time at Bed Bath & Beyond for two years (I'm a poor college student) and I get questions like this from time to time. No, they don't get paid for getting your emails, but the management will drill it into the staff to get them because if they don't get a certain quota per month then they get their job threatened (a legitimate fear in this recession, my district manager was recently demoted to a store manager and the store manager was fired, for no apparent reason beyond they were shrinking corporate), also, to encourage the boom times, there are incentives for top performers in each district and region. These policies are pretty ubiquitous in department stores from what I've seen and heard.

So employees are hassled to get numbers, and because they don't get in any real trouble for being deceptive, and are often poorly trained, they make frequent mistakes.

Just try to keep in mind that unless you are talking with a store manager, you are probably not talking with a bonafide Sears Coporation representative, and therefore you can't judge the company too far. My experience in retail has led me to trust pretty much nothing I don't see in print.

Hope that helps!

@Shadowfire: Pretty much. At a previous sales job I had you could get fired for not making your e-mail address quotas each week.

@Ronin-Democrat: A lot of people just prefer to NOT give an e-mail address in these cases. I mean why should your email address be required if you are making a purchase?

@twophrasebark: At most places, you -do- get the discount whether you're approved or not (since in the fine print it says they can send you marketing messages).

There's just one or two shady places that don't.

Sears and K-mart both make employees ask for e-mail addresses. No, there is no bounty on e-mails.

There is the standard douchebagery management push to get them, and most stores post the results in the break room, like the employees actually give a crap if the other employees got more e-mails than them.

Yes, it is two $5 coupons off a $50 or more purchase. At my store, we never call them gift certificates. We simply ask if the customer has an e-mail address they'd like to share in return for special savings in future e-mail offers.

We don't like pestering our customers, but management wants us to do ALL of these things on every sale:

1. Ask for e-mails
2. Ask if they'd like to donate money to the March of Dimes
3. Ask if they'd like a smart plan (third party warranty offered by Sears and K-mart stores)
4. Ask if they'd like to put their purchase on their Sears card.
5. Ask if they'd like to apply for a Sears card if #4 was no.

It's a pain in the ass to do this on EVERY friggin' sale.

When I worked at Sears in the mid-1990s, salespeople were paid a $5 spiff for each new approved credit card application they processed at the time of sale.

I wonder if Sears is paying salespeople a spiff for getting a customer's e-mail address - if so, this could explain the salesperson's pitch.

@Wombatish: Thanks for the FYI.

I have domain names and mail servers. I'll trade you 10,000 email addresses in exchange for a 25% cut of the savings.

@dragonfire81: same as phone numbers (like at toys r us) and even zip code at gas stations (i'm in NJ and it's full service) at quick cheks.

@BathroomDuck: at target we would get a $15 store credit for every 5 people to sign up for the target red card.

@RB_Bhoy: All zip codes are are artillery/bombing coordinates so the NWO can neutralize us quicker.

Sears started spamming an e-mail address of mine with their crap. I wrote to them and asked them how they got it, and they said they did not know. And, I could unsubscribe if I didn't want their e-mail. So that's who we're dealing with.

If you want to start the Sears Death Watch, go ahead because I saw Joe Boxer signs up in Sears over the weekend. The once proud Sears is reduce to selling K-Mart's knockoff brand. I was kinda hoping that Sears would be a good influence on K-Mart, but it looks like K-Mart is dragging Sears down.

Kohls runs precisely the same promotion.

Oh they give out $10 for every email address. They just don't give it to the person giving it. :D

@RB_Bhoy: Does it matter if they're approved or not?

@BathroomDuck: Almost all the stores require approval of the application to get the discount. But that was weird that the cashier asked you if you wanted to reapply.

No, there is no real money incentive to get email captures. I have worked at Sears for a little under five years at this point. Each store has to meet a certain percentage of email captures from the overall sales.

I don't even bother asking people because I know of how much crap Sears sends out through emails, nor do I ask the customer if they want credit cards because the APR is ungodly high.

I think Barnes and Noble is the worst at trying to get you to sign up for things. I think I have to say "no" at least ten times every time I make a purchase there.

@dragonfire81: Question about that one, what if your customers that week are regulars who have already given their email addresses? The quota system seems kind of unfair in a situation like that.

I was at Sears yesterday and they said the exact same thing about giving your email address so you can get a "$10 coupon" Oh Sears, you are always misleading...

@Black-Cat: Uncalled for. For all we know, it was an email address set up for stuff like this. It's not like this was a "Sign up and get a free iPod!!!!" banner ad-it's a large company. I've had other companies follow through with sign-up promotions.

About a year or two ago, I had a similiar "deal" with K-Mart. I followed the instructions, but never got my gift card. I don't remember exactly what the issue was, but it was something like I had to spend X amount of dollars before I could get the card. Which made no sense and wasn't mentioned anywhere when I signed up.

As far as I'm concerned Sears/K-Mart are scammers. Don't give them any personal info!

@gman863:

Same here for when I worked @ Monkey Wards. We got 5 bucks as well for every credit app that was approved. It was uncommon for me to make an extra 100 bucks on a good weekend just on those credit apps. And don't even get me started on selling those extended warranties!!

Being a consumer is too har. So I stopped.

$10 is not worth the time it takes to comply with their rules. Then you may not even get it. Then dealing with the spam? No way.

@RB_Bhoy: You do realize that a number of credit card processors use the card's billing ZIP code to help verify that you're the cardholder, right?

@joshua70448: Right I can understand needing a zip code, but an email address? Really now?

@skizsrodt: The computer would show who we already had emails from and who we didn't. We were tracked by how many emails we collected from those that weren't already on file.

@RB_Bhoy: When I worked at Sears it was 2 for each of these we got and sometimes 3. I always got knocked for not offering them. I'd rather just ring people up and not nag them about a card they don't want and they could get their money.
Occassionally like 1 or 2 times a year they had a 10 dollar coupon off any purchase just for apply but any other time you had to be approved to get the discount.

Most the time to meet our quotas we'd just have friends with bad credit all ready come in and apply for cards once a month to meet our goals.

Years ago when I worked at JCPenney we would get $2 cash on the spot for every CC app we put through.

Sears has started asking a million questions at the register, which is one of those things that really, really really annoys me. I am not in the store to inflate the companies bottom line, I am most likely in the store to purchase a clearance item that is cheaper than I can find anywhere. First they ask you for your email address, then they ask you for a dollar donation to the manager's retirement fund, then they ask you for your email address, when will it stop???

This shouldn't be too painful: collect the coupon e-mail and create a rule to send any other Sears marketing information to your junk e-mail folder.

@dragonfire81: Yeah, email addresses and phone numbers are completely unnecessary, I agree on that. What I find really funny is how a lot of places have started asking for the last 4 digits on the card. That can be useful if a cashier is swiping a cloned card that doesn't match with the info on the stripe, but I had a self-check at Lowe's ask me this last night. If someone's using a cloned card, they probably know what number they encoded on it. So really, the only thing it does is make me take my wallet back out because I thought I was done with my card.

@Ronin-Democrat: Exactly , why not just use a disposable and/or anonymous e-mail . Or better yet simply refuse to give it to them .

I'm sure the employees have some kind of quota system but that's unfortunetly their problem . If enough people would refuse to give e-mail there wouldn't be the pressure for you to give it .

A ten dollar coupon for your private information ? That's just as bad as those who get all giggly for getting a free bottle of soda while applying for a credit card - except now you are not only sacrificing personal information you are dinging your credit score .

If anyone cares, I am a apologizing to the op for being so mean. I truly was over the limit.

Wll, tht ws prtty dmb t d. Frst, why th hll wld y ctlly blv sm bllsht lk tht?
Cmpns lv t gt ml ddrsss nd thn sll thm t thr dvrtsrs.
Y DDN'T thnk tht y wr gng t gt bmbd wth spm nd trsh ml frm thm? Scnd, y srsly dn't hv crp ml ccnt fr ths knd f thng? Dd y jst strt sng th ntrnt?

Id, say, well what can you do for me today?

I gave them my email address last week, the result: Sears you fail. The 2 $5.00 coupons are duds: the in-store one expires in 10 days on a $50.00+ purchase and the online one exposes you to the risk of a click-through link to their website (it is the only way to redeem it) and did not work despite 4 attempts over 2 days. I called online CS to try to use that coupon, only to be told no such promo exists and called "rude" for criticizing their "new and improved beta" website's internets & tubes. I love the online feature that requires you to continue through all checkout pages (including entering credit card info) before showing all discounts that will be applied (so you can only know to abort at the final submit order page). Bad Sears, no more cookies from this multi-thousand dollar Craftsman Tool Club member! I actually got the CSR to pull up this site/thread & read it: their attitude changed slightly & they acknowledged the promo, but made no offer to correct the problem & place my order, DOH (24 minutes of prepaid cell time wasted)!