UPDATE: A company spokesman told Consumerist that the worker was terminated for “gross misconduct and theft inside the store,” and that his firing was not related to any cans and bottles from outside. [More]
Retail Services
Walmart Worker Says He Was Fired For Redeeming $5.10 Worth Of Cans He Found In Store Parking Lot
By 11.19.15
Amazon Enables Two-Step Authentication To Give Users More Account Protection
By 11.18.15
Amazon joined a growing number of tech, social media and retail companies aiming to ensure your personal information is as secure as possible today, by enabling two-factor authentication for user accounts. [More]
Reminder: A Legitimate Online Retailer Will Not Ask For Payment In Amazon Gift Cards
By 11.18.15
An online retailer that isn’t Amazon, yet who asks to be paid in Amazon gift cards? That might sound strange to practiced scam-spotters, but there are apparently shoppers who don’t find that idea suspicious. They should: gift cards don’t have the same fraud protections as credit or debit card payments. [More]
Not Even Diaper Pail Bags Are Spared From Target Math
By 11.17.15
Buying in bulk is usually the way to save money on an item that you know you’ll be buying a lot of… like, for example, special deodorizing bags for your diaper pail. Unless you’re shopping at Target. Then, the normal rules don’t apply, and you shouldn’t assume that buying one package of 20 items will be cheaper than two packages of 10 or even four packages of five. [More]
Which Stores Will Have The Best Black Friday Deals?
By 11.17.15
How do you quantify what the “best” deals are, on Black Friday or any other day of the year? The most important factor should be whether the retailer sells stuff that you actually want, of course, and the value that those items provide for the money. Yet the sport of deal-hunting is all about the discounts, and WalletHub decided to compile raw percentages to figure out the best places to shop after Thanksgiving this year. [More]
Target Still Not Clear On How Clearance Works
By 11.16.15
What does “clearance” mean? Usually, it means that a retailer needs to get items off the shelves, and they’ve lowered the price by a little bit or by a lot. Usually, though, the plan is to lower the price so people are more likely to walk out of the store with that item. Unless you’re at Target, apparently. [More]
Sears Holds Members-Only Holiday Season Sale, Welcomes Anyone
By 11.13.15
For a while now, we’ve found something kind of confusing about communications that come from the parent company of Sears and Kmart, Sears Holdings. They refer to their customers as “members,” even though they are not a warehouse club and anyone can shop there. This holiday season, though, they’ve arranged a special members-only event: an exclusive sale the Sunday before Thanksgiving. [More]
Walmart Changes Black Friday Strategy: Drops Doorbusters, Bulking Up On Inventory
By 11.12.15
When Walmart stores across the country open their doors at 6 p.m. on Thanksgiving day there will be a Black Friday staple missing: hourly doorbuster deals. [More]
Amazon Expanding Restaurant Delivery Service To All Prime Now Markets
By 11.12.15
Just two months after launching the Prime restaurant delivery service in Seattle, Amazon plans to rapidly expand the service to 20 major cities already served by its quick-delivery Prime Now program. [More]
‘Jimmy Kimmel Live’ Produces A Fake Commercial For Sears That Could Work
By 11.11.15
This may come as a surprise to some of you, but Sears still exists. For a while, we wondered whether it was an advanced anti-capitalist prank that only pretends to sell goods in exchange for money, and that may still be the case for corporate sibling Kmart. The writers of Jimmy Kimmel Live noticed this, and decided to help Sears out by making them a commercial. [More]
Walmart Employees Want A Discount On More Grocery Items
By 11.11.15
After a successful effort to raise wages for many workers, Walmart staffers are focusing on a new goal: they want employee discount on more grocery items, as well as the 10% discount they already receive on all other merchandise. [More]
Banana Republic Has A New Euphemism For ‘People Don’t Like Our Stuff’
By 11.11.15
We’re always looking for the freshest new ideas in corporatespeak, which is why we’re very fond of a term that a Gap Inc. spokesperson used recently regarding falling sales at their Banana Republic brand. They called it “product acceptance challenges.” Turns out that’s not a new term: we found it used by now-bankrupt clothing retailer Coldwater Creek in 2011, for example. Not a good precedent. [Racked] [More]
Amazon To Make Echo Available At Home Depot, Radio Shack, Other Retailers
By 11.10.15
Three months after Amazon announced it would allow Staples to offer its high-tech, sort-of assistant speaker online, the company says it will allow retailers to sell the Echo at thousands of locations across the U.S. [More]
Target Will Open At 6:00 PM On Thanksgiving Day
By 11.9.15
We could be incredibly lazy today, since it turns out that Target’s Black Friday plans are pretty much identical to what they did last year. They’re opening at 6 PM on Thanksgiving Day, which is also what they did last year. They’re starting Black Friday-style deals on November 9 instead of November 10, so we’d have to change that. Otherwise? Pretty much the same. [More]
Walmart Tried, Gave Up On Using Facial Recognition Software To ID Shoplifters
By 11.9.15
If you’ve ever known a shoplifter, you’ve probably noticed that he or she has a tendency to hit up the same stores over and over until those victimized retailers either nab the shoplifter or do something to make theft more difficult. It would make seem to make sense then for Walmart to deploy a facial recognition program to identify known or suspected offenders. So why did the company recently give up on this sort of system? [More]
Sprint Giving Away 1 Year Of Amazon Prime With Pricier Samsung Phones
By 11.6.15
When Amazon tried to sell the public on its Fire Phone, one of the inducements was that the phone, which originally cost $199 with a two-year AT&T contract, would come with a one-year membership to Amazon Prime. Sweet deal, since Prime costs $99 per year, and Amazon eventually sold the phones for a buck. The Fire Phone itself flopped, but te idea of giving away Prime subscriptions with phones may hold promise. [More]
Target Believes Porn That Played Over California Store’s PA System Come From An Outside Source
By 11.6.15
A few weeks ago, shoppers at a California Target received an unsettling surprise when the unmistakable sounds of professional coitus aired loud and clear over the store’s PA system. While an investigation into the incident continues, the retailer believes the pornographic audio originated from an outside source. [More]
Marketers Are Robbing ‘Black Friday’ Of Any Meaning That It Ever Had
By 11.6.15
A few years ago, Consumerist looked around at the retail landscape and the nascent nationwide trend of stores opening up on Thanksgiving Day, and we wondered whether it was time to put a modern twist on an initiative from the Great Depression. President Franklin D. Roosevelt tried to move Thanksgiving up a week to lengthen the retail season, which didn’t catch on. Why can’t we just leave Thanksgiving where it is and move Black Friday up a week? [More]
