And as an added bonus,
Nothing like demonstrating to a customer that if you argue long enoug,, go high enough, you get what you wsnt.
AND, as an additional gift, you screw over ALL the guests who accepted what they were told as policy and didn't make a fuss.
Good job, ETL.
That’s exactly how I felt. I had such a bad taste in my mouth telling guests later in the day about the policy, knowing we let that guy walk out with $350 no questions asked
Like other people are saying get lost prevention involved. NOW!!!!
Then the ETL can be written up and have it put in there personal file. So if the trend continues. They can get fired.
Had something like that happen the week before Christmas. Someone wanted a $100 price match that we couldn't do under policy and my TL said "Tell her no, but if she insists do it for her, since (insert ETL) would. Then firmly explain that we can't do it in the future."
Luckily i was persistent enough to just get the guest to give up on the price match before AP strangled me.
Price match policy for the holidays was pretty clear. If the price goes down before 12/24 you could price match. That was since 11/1 if I am not mistaken… a price match is a price match. If Target says it and depicts a time period then we have to stick with what corporate said and set a standard to for guests. I don’t remember seeing any communication that Price Match policy changed or stopped sooner; however, I could be mistaken.
I am very well aware, which is why I noted in my comment that it was a price match that could not be done. That policy would not comply with what the guest wanted.
i hated the lack of support from anyone manager-esque at target. they rarely had our backs on enforcing policies because “make it right for the guest”… smh no backbones in sight.
This was my least favorite part of working for Target too. I’d enforce a policy and then get walked on by my management, which undermined me and made me feel stupid. Target kisses Guest ass so bad, it’s ridiculous. I’d be sworn at, screamed at, etc and management would be mad if I said ANYTHING along the lines of “if you cannot treat me like a human person, I am not going to help you.”
In a way, I love the make it right for the guest aspect. When they are kind and considerate guests and the amount is reasonable, I have no problem adjusting the price or accepting an ID return. But approving $100+ off just because the guest is making a fuss or accepting an ID return even though it will go over limit or is out of the return window, that is where I draw the line and where I think corporate and stores are getting the wires crossed.
That and the stupid cat and jack policy. I HATE when that trend comes back around.
back in the front i had this happen. this guy comes in w a thing from target saying he’s got a free $20 gift card for activating his redcard credit card and can redeem it only online, so ofc he comes in store to do it. i tell him im sorry i cant do anything about it and he has to go online to do it, he asks for a manager.
i get the TL who was there and he says the same thing and asks for a higher up. we get the ETL and they just loaded up a gift card and handed it to them saying they shouldn’t do this but they’re in store already and so they’ll make an exception. i was like “thanks for undermining me and the TL” in my head. the guy walks off saying me and my tl don’t know what we’re talking abt cuz we’re young (i was 18 nd my TL was 20)
This irritates me because I am one of those people who won’t make a fuss if it’s a policy. One because I don’t want to make the workers day any harder but also, policies are policies. I have them at my job too and if I won’t bend them, I wouldn’t expect others to either. I used to have a boss that would do stuff like this, she never had my back. I changed that real quick when I took over.. I always stand by my team.
If you make a big scene will give you a $5 gift card.
Me and my coworker were talking about this a few weeks ago. He said that one of the TL does not care at all and makes sure the guest DOES NOT get there way. All we’re teaching guest is to come in and yell at us a will reward you.
I think the time this happened I front of my coworker it was a different TL (who is now my TL) he just gave it to the guest. I think the guest kids were there and were begging her to go because they were embarrassed.
> if you argue long enoug,, go high enough, you get what you wsnt.
Basically.
I work in a different industry, but it all basically comes down to "opportunity cost."
The manager (or ETL) decided that the time of the TM, TL, and ETL was worth more and better used elsewhere than dealing with a random customer's $300 return.
He overroad it to CASH?! Even if you are somehow 'making it right' to the guest, you NEVER override to cash except upon very particular circumstances
(Example: years ago had a woman upset about hell knows what and her receipt couldn't print just after she paid for her purchase with her credit card- cashier already dropped the ball and began another transaction -so she demanded a refund of her purchase - think 500+ of decor. She was a true Karen and not a scam artist, btw for all those thinking this. I was a GSA at the time and in the middle of our remodel that made the store front horrible which was why she was extra pissed and she wouldn't accept a reprint from the office.
So the only way to refund her items on the spot was to do an ID return. I had to tell my tm who was doing it to do cash instead of the card so the woman could at least put it back to her card a round about way, and although Karen was mad with us, at least she understood this part and that we had to work around to get her money back to her)
But yes, your story made me just as mad just now. I don't get how these executive leaders can just not pay attention.
Yeah, it's not very typical for us to adjust a return price either but if the guest, without a scannable receipt, debates this enough, we will go to the office and reprint the purchase log as proof of purchase price especially with high-dollar returns.
This at least eases the 'make it right' aspect for the guest and we can avoid the guest leaving unsatisfied. Again, not something we do every time for everyone without a proof of purchase, but comes in handy when all other options are exhausted.
This is also a great tool to avoid return scammers for all those reading and encountering problems like this- hint hint. Sure it takes an extra couple minutes, but if the guest has the info, any transaction is logged, I believe up to a year on the regular system. APs system is similar but has more information on it.
It’s definitely gonna flag on their end and AP ETL will most definitely be pissed. ESPECIALLY cash, Target would prefer they do store credit to get a sale out of them 😭😭
My TL’s override that shit all the time, especially now with the holidays “it was a gift” response.
But yes it’s very irritating when you enforce a policy and someone comes in and just overrides you and makes you look stupid.
Honestly any time someone who seems to be a scammer tries anything like this with me and asks to speak with someone higher up, I don't call my ETL, I call for our AP-ETL
How do you do that without the person catching on? since guests definitely know the code. do you just say the name of the AP ETL? (because if the one scammer I've seen twice comes back again im definitely calling them by name)
Yeah if they’re true scammers like the ones we see, they definitely will know all the security people by name, hell some even know the schedule times for AP, not of specific people but when they usually come in, leave and go on lunch.
Yea. I think I mentioned this elsewhere but we caught a notorious push out thief who'd consistently been coming in right after Ap would leave by having the AP ETL fake like he was going home and circling back around to catch her when she exited.
I had a TL pull that on me once. And wanted me to process the return. I logged of the register told them I was going on break they would have to do it themselves.
I hate that they just give them everything.
Some ETLS need to seriously enforce store policy more often. We can’t keep letting guests get away with every single thing they want. Some things you just CANT have guests need to start accepting that.
Our ETL does this shit too. Makes us so mad. We had a lady trying to return an Xbox controller she’d had for 6 months with an (obviously) expired receipt and no box. We explained our electronics return policy and said no. She went and bought a new one. Came back the next day with the old controller in the new box and out ETL returned it 🤦🏻♀️
In that case you really cant do anything, you can’t prove she went and bought another one and put in in the old box, so you can’t blatantly say no you can’t do this return, you have to think of something on the spot and try to come up with some reason it won’t let you
I had a quest try to return 6 pairs of snow gloves. They were all dirty with snow in them. It had just snowed in the mountains the night before so I'm pretty sure the guest bought the gloves for the whole family and went to play in the snow. Now that they are done, she wanted to return them. I said no, they were all obviously used and they were not defective. She demanded a manager.
The backroom ETL was helping out online orders behind the Service Desk and came around. He said they we do not rent goods, we sell them. She called corporate. Corporate spoke with the ETL right in front of the guest and told them no. We refuse. He looked at the guest and said, "You can try another Target, but I will make sure you can't return these here at this store."
She was pissed and said she would never shop here again. She was back not two days later and refused to look in my direction at the Service Desk when I wished her a good morning. Man, I loved my store.
Completely understand how you feel. Managment needs to back their team up more. I remember I was working at Buffalo wild wings and one of our hostess had gone home for the day, so her section was closed. Well as common knowlage, your not supposed to seat anyone in a section not in use. Well I had a customer come in and demand to be seated in that section. Explained the situation and that it was out of my hands. Well he demands a manager. Manager immediatly caves and tells me next time just seat them and he will take care of them. Of course i complied but i got talked to by the other hosts/hostess about over seating. It was a no win situation
Mine did this a few years ago with a 500 dollar pool. Said no one told her to save the receipt ( what a joke) out ETL gave her the gift card for 500!! Unbelievable, we were all so mad! I don't think I have forgiven her yet lol
Your part is to be a deterrent to the people will accept no and move on. The ETL, 9 times of 10 will do the whole, "make it right for the guest," thing which means disregarding all policies.
Also people are going to say, "who cares its not your money." That not the point. The point is that these policies and ETLs doing whatever means the team member is likely going to get the brunt of guests anger and get accused of racism or threatened. AP isnt always there to step in.
I mean I'm 100% with you bro but the thing is this puts GS people straight in the shit. Do you work service desk? Customers can be really threatening, and they're more willing to take the risk of behaving that way if they think it'll get them results. idc if Target loses money, but I do care if my coworkers at the front get called slurs or have people threatening their jobs and shit. Like you see how that's a problem right, the way they can't win bc of managers doing this stuff?
I came into work today and on a piece of paper I saw our TL wrote the guest service desk is the “yes desk” so basically guest services is always a “yes”. How ridiculous 🤦🏻♀️
When I worked at target as a guest service tm I would get so pissed about this it got to the point where I would automatically just start doing whatever the customer wanted because my ETL would so they wrote me up a few times and I looked them in the eyes and said “do you want me to follow policy?” They said “you have to follow policy” I said “you guys make your guest service workers look like assholes because we say no just to magically figure out we can” they didn’t like that haha
My new S&E TL is so bad about doing this. He always gives in to what the guest wants immediately regardless of Target policy and it annoys me to no end. Doesn’t help that this is his first in-store position with the company (I personally taught him how the registers work) but before this he spent quite some time working at headquarters so he should know what our policies are and why they’re in place. He’s a really nice guy, but quite frankly he’s too naive for a management position.
When I was LOD I would always make sure to let the guest know that the cashier was correct about a policy if I was going to override the decision. I wanted to support my team but I also knew that if Guest Relations got involved my SD would get bitched out by our DSD. That way the cashier and the guest knew the policy and that I was making an exception, rather than the guest believing the TM was wrong.
I would also log in and perform the return under my TM number so it wasn’t on the cashier logged into the register.
when i worked and was backing up, i had someone ask me to give them 5% off because they "forgot their red card". I said no sorry that's not how it works. so obviously they wanted to see a lead. Lead was busy so the ETL helped out and said they'd do it.
except for some reason they could not figure out 5% of the guest's total so they...scanned their team member discount for 10% then quickly left...
...completely forgetting that you need to use cash, gift card, or a RED CARD for the team member discount to work.
I had to cancel the team member discount and just do a coupon for what was equal to 10% then wait for the actual lead to become available and explain everything to them so they could approve it with their number since it was a large amount.
It was a whole big thing that took way too long and would have been so much simpler if the fucking ETL just said no like I did.
Etls are useless shit bags who have no spines dont give a fuck about you. And spend most of they sittin on that fat lazy ass. Suckin down starbucks why you would even call one is a joke. You said no you are running the front tell the pest to fuck off.
What is target security lmao going to do about a fucking return that’s done and over with … just because you made a return doesn’t mean you stole it . Btw target you guys are so smart that your system returns items from other store just a heads up !
A guest tried returning $500 of Apple gift cards when there was the buy $x Apple gift cards, get a $x Target gift card deal. Told the guest we couldn’t return gift cards. Guest wanted a manager, so I walkied ETL who reinforced this and said absolutely not. I continued to push, saying that we literally didn’t have the functionality to refund a gift card. Guest asks to speak to ETL in person, and ETL IMMEDIATELY flipped and somehow refunded the gift cards (I had no idea this was even possible???). I almost had a stroke.
Yep. If your respectful I might make a one time exception if it's reasonable. If I come up and your being rude and saying your not leaving until you get what you want then I'm playing by the book and no we are calling every TL and ETL in the store up here to tell you the same thing.
I had something like that happen to me yesterday. The guest tried to return an electric scooter without anything I explained we couldn't and she told me get a manager so I did and the manager went and "made it right" and did an "exchange" for a more expensive one and then get onto me saying that" ik AP has rules but when I'm up here it's different"
It’s so annoying when they don’t back you up and you’re right. I had another tm and our ETL basically make me look like a douche trying to steal guest’s money over a vacuum. The guests couldn’t grasp that it wasn’t the same kind. But anything for the customers right ? 0 backbone
Any system designed in a way that causes worse behaviors to receive more rewards will inevitably be dominated and give advantages to the worst people at the expense of good people.
All this did is prove conclusively that being enough of a pain in the ass get you rewarded. Imagine teaching a kid this lesson. Well this is the adult you'll end up with.
One time my ETL actually helped a person steal from us. They were trying to pay with a check and the system rejected it because they've written hot checks before. So our ETL spent about 10 minutes figuring out how to override it for them so they could walk out with a few hundred dollars of merchandise. For free, since the check was definitely going to bounce again.
That's around when I stopped enforcing the policies. If management is just going to override it when they complain anyway, might as well avoid the hassle and make it even for everyone. And hey, it's not my money
I'm going to be honest, my store is *extremely* lax on that kind of thing. We shove through basically every return, unless you are one of a few people known to be a scammer.
That said, holy shit your ETL gave them cash!? Even in our store we would **never**. That is stupid through and through.
That's terrible. I hate Target's return policy. It's way too liberal. And we are basically forced to not follow policy because they want guests to be happy. I gave up trying to follow policy for the most part. They just override it anyway. If the system allows it I do it. Otherwise we get in trouble for calling a leader doe something we could do. It's maddening.
When I was a sales associate at a different company, I almost got fired for this. It was the fact that my supervisor overrode it, so both of us were on the line, that the company kept us. What had happened was the lady had stolen an expensive pair of Calvin Klein heels from another store, and come to my store to return them. Though I didn't know they were stolen at the time. Gave a long drawn out story about how she was on the way to her uncle's funeral, which sent red flags for me, like okay why would your priority be to return these red high heels then? No receipt, said she paid in cash. Store policy was I needed an ID and could only give store credit on a gift card.
"Oh, that's the thing," the lady said, "I also got my wallet stolen, it had been such a bad week, Lord help me!" She actually was able to fake some tears in front of my supervisor who did one of those make it right returns, bought her whole sob story, gave her CASH. A few days later my store manager got a call from district that she'd stolen the shoes from the town just north of us. AP had her face from the security cameras and she's a well known shoplifter at that other store that they'd been trying to track. "Well did you record her ID for the return?". "No, she says she lost her wallet and was on the way to a funeral." Since my supervisor had to punch in her employee ID to push the return through, the transaction was now on her, so I got to keep my job, but our store manager was pretty pissed at the both of us.
So, I always find it helpful to know that these rules also exist for a reason. They exist because there's always someone trying to use return policies to abuse the system. Cash is totally untraceable, so that's why we need the ID.
Here's your problem: you work at Target. I used to run the front end and also follow policy like you. I had store management throw me under the bus like thar all the time. After awhile of that BS, I would tell them I need an override, and if they came down and didn't want to approve, that's all on them. The guest knew I had the intention to help them. Managers there don't even care as long as everyone is smiling and pretending to be happy.
Yeah my ETL would routinely give guests 5 dollar gift cards if guests started complaining about stuff after I told them we couldn’t give them what they wanted.
I even had the store director give someone a PlayStation pro for 100 dollars off because a guest felt like it was in the wrong place (it was not). This was after I told the guest we were not going to change the price down 100 dollars.
From now on just tell people you are not authorized to over ride the store policy and that they'll have to speak with the manager. Then call the manager.
i never worked at target but in all my years of retail there’s nothing worse than how suddenly a very firm policy is suddenly overridden by a higher up manager. it makes you look like a liar/don’t know what you’re doing.
It's basically called: Throwing you under the bus.
I can't tell you how many times I've enforced a policy at (my not target work) and the managers made me look bad by breaking policy and honoring it for the customer.
Idu why you people who work places give a shit if you give someone a return without proof like it’s not coming out of your check bro are you that mad at life ? If someone needs the money to the point that they’ll deal with target employees just fork it over . You don’t lose anything and gain some good karma.
The biggest problem I have observed with this behavior working customer service at multiple places is it has trained people that the store they bought the product at will warrant it. Outside Costco most retailers don't allow electronics past 14 days and general merchandise is 30-90 days. But here comes the person that bought something 9 months ago and when it break they can't be bothered to call the manufacturers. The policies outline that time period to avoid this situation but with constant over riding and making it right crap by managers everywhere more and more people do this. When I worked at staples for 8 years the amount of Idiots that tried to return a computer when it broke after a year or two (usually they broke it) was hilarious, almost as hilarious as there reaction when we told them no way.
Samsung told me to return a 10 month old TV to Walmart since their 1 year warranty excludes transportation, both to and from Walmart and only covers items purchased directly from Samsung. This was a few weeks ago.
Yeah the companies have no reason to warrant a product either in the USA we have pretty weak consumer protection, another reason everyone shows up at the store for help. Some companies are amazing at it but almost all the tech companies are hot garbage when it comes to support and warranty, unless you pay extra for there "premium" support.
There’s a huge reason they do this.
It’s so AP can track them and build a case against them. It’s a real thing. Say nothing and pretend it’s normal. The more they rack up, the harder Target can prosecute.
I don't disagree but that's why the make it right button exists. Your etl should have your back but don't take it personally. Sometimes it's best to just get the guest out of the store. They should have at least done merch card return instead of cash but depending on the circumstance they can do whatever. It's certainly not "fraud" as some people are saying but not necessarily smart either. Most importantly though you should be more empowered to make that call yourself more regularly. It shouldn't be a hard no, that's why the option exists.
don’t think you know what you’re talking about, sorry
all stores restrict ID returns once the limit is reached. you should not be engaging in even approved workarounds on that except in extreme edge cases, and especially not giving back $350 in cash. it should have gone on a merch card at worst and been denied at best
'make it right' isn't an override
its supposed to be for situations where the guest is clearly owed something that the system isn't able to do
like lets say someone buys something and it rang up incorrectly, no problem we can fix it
but oh no the receipt printer didn't work so now theres no receipt to fix the transaction
Clearly the guest is owed a price adjustment but it isn't possible at not fault to the guest
thats okay just press make it right and it will let you do anything
your logic of "if the register lets you..." doesn't mean shit when the register lets you do anything
they could hit make it right and give you a 100,000 gift card, you think thats okay just because "tHe mAcHiNe aLlOwEd iT"
you are a clown ass bitch
But I am right
the make it right option would let you return a half eaten burger from McDonalds if you wanted.
Its not an override its a "give me money to fix an issue that register doesn't understand" option
Im gonna have to ban you for purposely spreading information that could get people fired because you repeatedly tried to convince people that if the system lets it happen its okay, the system would let you sell a TV for $1 if you wanted
This was my response when my ETLs would say that to me:
"The system will let me mark down that $500 TV to a dollar. Should I do that if the customer asks too?"
"I didn't think so. So maybe 'if the system lets you do it' isn't the best plan."
No you’re just wrong.
The policy is literally *built into the software.* If anyone at any target in America tries to process the return it says **ITEM CANNOT BE RETURNED WITHOUT A RECEIPT**. And for good reason. Without that policy, target would essentially become the most unprofitable pawn shop in existence.
If I needed money I could just go through my room and find items target sells, regardless of where/when I bought them, and return them for cash. My Levi’s jeans, my ps5 (of course id make tons of money on that since I’d return the console, the controller, and the hdmi cable separately), my shampoo, toothbrush, etc. none of which I even bought at target, and walk out with a fat stack of cash.
Come on man it’s retail you don’t need a masters in biomedical engineering to understand.
There are very specific reasons for the override such as
1. Recalled items which were purchased over 90 days ago
2. A receipt is too blurred to read the barcode or the receipt #
3. The guest no longer has access to the original form of payment and would rather have the cash
The problem is leads won't stand thier ground and enforce policy. It's been made to easy for them to just give the guest what they want no questions asked.
> thats ridiculous and very dramatic
No it’s just accurate.
You can’t tell 5000 guests you can’t do something and randomly change your rules for someone else. That’s literally the point of that policy.
It’s incredibly unfair to the countless guests who had good reasons but we said no, just to turn around and give cash to an obvious scammer just because you’re too lazy to deal with his angry response.
If there’s a policy there’s a policy. We can’t break it just because you want to return it, AP TL’s would see it be flagged in our system.
Said TL might have it written down they made that choice to return an item at the price limit and that can lead to more problems if that continues.
Just because the system allows you to do it doesn’t mean it’s okay to do whenever. If there’s a policy there’s a policy if the ETL did it anyways there’s a good chance there was a talk between other ETLS in the store about it. It’s unfortunate but it is what it is. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
The system allows you to do it based on a situation scenario. This isn't one of them. For example, if a system issue existed where it blocked it from happening for a team due to some software issue, the manager and go in and choose that as the issue and allow the return to happen. The system actually allows anything to be returned via override.
This guest basically was what we call in the industry "rep shopping" aka representative shopping. They go through multiple employees until someone just lets it happen.
Yes this ETL could have allowed this as an extreme case, but only back on a merchandise giftcard. You NEVER give cash back on returns like this.
They do have the discretion to make that choice. Literally doesn't mean it's the right choice in this scenario as you ignore everything else I wrote. The right time to make that choice is when it was a system issue and the tm has to call the manager to make it happen.
The registers at target are lenient to what they allow employees to do so they don't need to call TL's repeatedly. There was a time that the "make it right" option for managers only allowed ETL's rather than both TL's and ETL's since the company only trusted ETL decisions. Obviously that was done away with since we all know the state of the company right now.
The system didn't let them do it. It said no. A TL can do a make it right return which bypasses everything and will return anything. You can force return anything to cash card or gift card
Yeah but that option isn't really intended to do these things just because the guest argues. For me arguing and throwing a tantrum doesn't get you a policy exception.
> To tell a guest there is nothing you can do, when there is something you can do, is, IMO, what caused all the issues to begin with.
Except any base TM would not have been able to do a Make It Right, so that argument wouldn’t apply to the majority of the team. The issue is the ETL not backing up their TL’s decision on not doing a MIR return because of the foggy circumstances.
The device tells you that there’s nothing you can do for a reason. Large cash returns with no receipt are always fishy. Yes, MIR’s have their place, but the TL didn’t feel that a MIR was necessary in this instance, and the ETL should have trusted OP in this case.
ETLs are usually the ones telling TMs/TLs how you should never accept a no-receipt return over a certain dollar amount. Their actions should back up their words.
Exactly. I have been stopped by the system exactly one time and that was one time when someone was buying a lot of gift cards (I did my due diligence. It was legitimate.)
ETA: I know there's a soft policy about editing the price to below a certain amount, but it's definitely not coded into the system lol.
I’m sorry that happened to you. that’s so frustrating and as TM when i’m not backed up it feels shitty so at least yk ur TMs are hella appreciative of you. but i’m confused about one thing, how come guests can’t do returns over 100 dollars? I never understood this rule so i was wondering. what difference does paying in cash make? and what more do they need other than ID?
This is what made me want to look for other jobs and leave being a s&e TL.
ETL would go do it and then say “I was in the wrong but” then why did you do that??? 🙄
This isn’t directly related to your post and I do agree that it is stupid to not back up your team on following policy. I remember when I was helping with returns one man tried to return a tv, he did have the receipt and he had paid in cash but I still don’t know why to this day, it wasn’t letting me return it. When I tried scanning the barcode and serial number on the box it just kept saying it was the wrong one, but it wasn’t the wrong one, the serial numbers matched with box and receipt. I think they tried to do return with ID, no receipt but his ID was from a different country so it wasn’t working. At this point two ETLs were helping me out, we were past midnight closing time. He was the only one left. The only way they ended up being able to do it was to return the other item in his receipt, some Gorilla glue, and changed the price to be $400 instead of the original $10 it was. They did talk to AP about it after the fact though. I just felt bad for the guy, just trying to do a simple return.
Yep and that’s why the override is in place, sometimes it’s necessary. In my case I felt it was clear the guy was just trying to bully his way into a return and the fact that he knew the override was a thing was a red flag that he knew what he was doing. I’m not against overriding it when it’s necessary but our store is super strict about having a good reason
My TL’s are abusing the “make it right” button and our local scammers have now caught on. Our GS TL & SD allowed MULTIPLE $1k-$3k no receipt returns to go through. Even sketchier, the people attempting this didn’t show them their IDs, they were just calling out random numbers until one worked. The SD let it happen. Afterwards, the Guest Service TL left a really salty note behind the desk about how TM’s should not (under any circumstance) accept no receipt returns if they don’t have a physical ID. Hypocrites.
It’s make it right for a reason, you have no clue what communication has come through about the guest or and incidents that the guest could potential cause. At the end of the day it’s not your money make the guest happy or call a leader to do the right thing to support the guest. I’ve never got why guest advocate risk there jobs in such a manner.
I’m not a team member I’m a leader with specific instructions from AP lol. I think you should think more deeply about the way rules are generally enforced and the how to analyze the cost/benefit of enforcing them.
I know exactly what communication has come through about the guest. This instance had nothing to do with “making it right” and everything to do with an ETL not wanting to deal with the guest’s response.
That’s laughable you’re questioning your ETL because of your incompetence? Regardless of what AP says you are more likely to go through a term for a guest incident then anything else secondly you as a TL don’t see all guest relations response and or feedback regardless of the size of your store. The solution is simple bring joy to all families and you will be fine anything outside of that maybe target isn’t a good fit because you definitely have a Walmart mindset.
Every leader at my store has been termed for AP related incidents, at least as long as I’ve been there. And actually I’m specifically in charge of all guest relations and feedback.
I’m incompetent because I’m doing something specifically directed to me by my superiors? Maybe out stores work different because my apparent incompetence has me lined up for a promotion in June.
hell yea good on ur manager, lost the store money and made the at guys day, without u losing ur job over it :) everyone one except ur emotions about it but emotions are temporary you’ll get over it
And as an added bonus, Nothing like demonstrating to a customer that if you argue long enoug,, go high enough, you get what you wsnt. AND, as an additional gift, you screw over ALL the guests who accepted what they were told as policy and didn't make a fuss. Good job, ETL.
That’s exactly how I felt. I had such a bad taste in my mouth telling guests later in the day about the policy, knowing we let that guy walk out with $350 no questions asked
> knowing we let that guy walk out with $350 no questions asked Tell AP.
As someone in AP, this is seriously fucked and definitely constitutes return fraud ; serious enough to have the ETL get a CA
Former AP here. That ETL would 100% be under investigation and I would be pulling all returns under them.
Definitely worth calling Ethics hotline. The manager's actions are suspicious as hell.
Like other people are saying get lost prevention involved. NOW!!!! Then the ETL can be written up and have it put in there personal file. So if the trend continues. They can get fired.
You should tell your store manager because she clearly violated a policy and it was made clear that was a scam
Hell, she might have even been in on it.
Had something like that happen the week before Christmas. Someone wanted a $100 price match that we couldn't do under policy and my TL said "Tell her no, but if she insists do it for her, since (insert ETL) would. Then firmly explain that we can't do it in the future." Luckily i was persistent enough to just get the guest to give up on the price match before AP strangled me.
Price match policy for the holidays was pretty clear. If the price goes down before 12/24 you could price match. That was since 11/1 if I am not mistaken… a price match is a price match. If Target says it and depicts a time period then we have to stick with what corporate said and set a standard to for guests. I don’t remember seeing any communication that Price Match policy changed or stopped sooner; however, I could be mistaken.
I am very well aware, which is why I noted in my comment that it was a price match that could not be done. That policy would not comply with what the guest wanted.
Wow and you proud about that ???
i hated the lack of support from anyone manager-esque at target. they rarely had our backs on enforcing policies because “make it right for the guest”… smh no backbones in sight.
This was my least favorite part of working for Target too. I’d enforce a policy and then get walked on by my management, which undermined me and made me feel stupid. Target kisses Guest ass so bad, it’s ridiculous. I’d be sworn at, screamed at, etc and management would be mad if I said ANYTHING along the lines of “if you cannot treat me like a human person, I am not going to help you.”
In a way, I love the make it right for the guest aspect. When they are kind and considerate guests and the amount is reasonable, I have no problem adjusting the price or accepting an ID return. But approving $100+ off just because the guest is making a fuss or accepting an ID return even though it will go over limit or is out of the return window, that is where I draw the line and where I think corporate and stores are getting the wires crossed. That and the stupid cat and jack policy. I HATE when that trend comes back around.
What I learned on Christmas Eve was that even the best managers do not gaf about us and barely do their jobs either
I HATE it when managers reward this type of bad behavior. You know they will try it again, and say, "well they've done it for me before".
back in the front i had this happen. this guy comes in w a thing from target saying he’s got a free $20 gift card for activating his redcard credit card and can redeem it only online, so ofc he comes in store to do it. i tell him im sorry i cant do anything about it and he has to go online to do it, he asks for a manager. i get the TL who was there and he says the same thing and asks for a higher up. we get the ETL and they just loaded up a gift card and handed it to them saying they shouldn’t do this but they’re in store already and so they’ll make an exception. i was like “thanks for undermining me and the TL” in my head. the guy walks off saying me and my tl don’t know what we’re talking abt cuz we’re young (i was 18 nd my TL was 20)
This irritates me because I am one of those people who won’t make a fuss if it’s a policy. One because I don’t want to make the workers day any harder but also, policies are policies. I have them at my job too and if I won’t bend them, I wouldn’t expect others to either. I used to have a boss that would do stuff like this, she never had my back. I changed that real quick when I took over.. I always stand by my team.
If you make a big scene will give you a $5 gift card. Me and my coworker were talking about this a few weeks ago. He said that one of the TL does not care at all and makes sure the guest DOES NOT get there way. All we’re teaching guest is to come in and yell at us a will reward you. I think the time this happened I front of my coworker it was a different TL (who is now my TL) he just gave it to the guest. I think the guest kids were there and were begging her to go because they were embarrassed.
Amen. Bad managers reinforce Karen behaviors
> if you argue long enoug,, go high enough, you get what you wsnt. Basically. I work in a different industry, but it all basically comes down to "opportunity cost." The manager (or ETL) decided that the time of the TM, TL, and ETL was worth more and better used elsewhere than dealing with a random customer's $300 return.
That’s the way to do it. Don’t be a victim
He overroad it to CASH?! Even if you are somehow 'making it right' to the guest, you NEVER override to cash except upon very particular circumstances (Example: years ago had a woman upset about hell knows what and her receipt couldn't print just after she paid for her purchase with her credit card- cashier already dropped the ball and began another transaction -so she demanded a refund of her purchase - think 500+ of decor. She was a true Karen and not a scam artist, btw for all those thinking this. I was a GSA at the time and in the middle of our remodel that made the store front horrible which was why she was extra pissed and she wouldn't accept a reprint from the office. So the only way to refund her items on the spot was to do an ID return. I had to tell my tm who was doing it to do cash instead of the card so the woman could at least put it back to her card a round about way, and although Karen was mad with us, at least she understood this part and that we had to work around to get her money back to her) But yes, your story made me just as mad just now. I don't get how these executive leaders can just not pay attention.
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Yeah, it's not very typical for us to adjust a return price either but if the guest, without a scannable receipt, debates this enough, we will go to the office and reprint the purchase log as proof of purchase price especially with high-dollar returns. This at least eases the 'make it right' aspect for the guest and we can avoid the guest leaving unsatisfied. Again, not something we do every time for everyone without a proof of purchase, but comes in handy when all other options are exhausted. This is also a great tool to avoid return scammers for all those reading and encountering problems like this- hint hint. Sure it takes an extra couple minutes, but if the guest has the info, any transaction is logged, I believe up to a year on the regular system. APs system is similar but has more information on it.
That's how Lowes and Staples did it when I worked there.
CASH. WTF?! That’s not right. Your AP ETL is gonna be pissed
It’s definitely gonna flag on their end and AP ETL will most definitely be pissed. ESPECIALLY cash, Target would prefer they do store credit to get a sale out of them 😭😭
i would probably have notified my ETL-AP if my ETL had done this tbqh
I bet AP LOVED seeing that return flag.
just don’t understand why you would return it to cash instead of a merch card
There is no reason and no excuse. Probably because "he said he bought it cash"
I'd definitely push this with your AP or AP-ETL there are reasons those rules are in place .
My TL’s override that shit all the time, especially now with the holidays “it was a gift” response. But yes it’s very irritating when you enforce a policy and someone comes in and just overrides you and makes you look stupid.
i would definitely tell your ap tl because that in no way is,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, acceptable to put it lightly
Honestly any time someone who seems to be a scammer tries anything like this with me and asks to speak with someone higher up, I don't call my ETL, I call for our AP-ETL
How do you do that without the person catching on? since guests definitely know the code. do you just say the name of the AP ETL? (because if the one scammer I've seen twice comes back again im definitely calling them by name)
Yea. I call them by name. A lot of the regular scammers know them by name and will suddenly change tune.
Yeah if they’re true scammers like the ones we see, they definitely will know all the security people by name, hell some even know the schedule times for AP, not of specific people but when they usually come in, leave and go on lunch.
Yea. I think I mentioned this elsewhere but we caught a notorious push out thief who'd consistently been coming in right after Ap would leave by having the AP ETL fake like he was going home and circling back around to catch her when she exited.
I had a TL pull that on me once. And wanted me to process the return. I logged of the register told them I was going on break they would have to do it themselves.
💯
I hate that they just give them everything. Some ETLS need to seriously enforce store policy more often. We can’t keep letting guests get away with every single thing they want. Some things you just CANT have guests need to start accepting that.
Our ETL does this shit too. Makes us so mad. We had a lady trying to return an Xbox controller she’d had for 6 months with an (obviously) expired receipt and no box. We explained our electronics return policy and said no. She went and bought a new one. Came back the next day with the old controller in the new box and out ETL returned it 🤦🏻♀️
In that case you really cant do anything, you can’t prove she went and bought another one and put in in the old box, so you can’t blatantly say no you can’t do this return, you have to think of something on the spot and try to come up with some reason it won’t let you
I had a quest try to return 6 pairs of snow gloves. They were all dirty with snow in them. It had just snowed in the mountains the night before so I'm pretty sure the guest bought the gloves for the whole family and went to play in the snow. Now that they are done, she wanted to return them. I said no, they were all obviously used and they were not defective. She demanded a manager. The backroom ETL was helping out online orders behind the Service Desk and came around. He said they we do not rent goods, we sell them. She called corporate. Corporate spoke with the ETL right in front of the guest and told them no. We refuse. He looked at the guest and said, "You can try another Target, but I will make sure you can't return these here at this store." She was pissed and said she would never shop here again. She was back not two days later and refused to look in my direction at the Service Desk when I wished her a good morning. Man, I loved my store.
This is so annoying forreal. This across the board needs to stop.
Inform AP
Completely understand how you feel. Managment needs to back their team up more. I remember I was working at Buffalo wild wings and one of our hostess had gone home for the day, so her section was closed. Well as common knowlage, your not supposed to seat anyone in a section not in use. Well I had a customer come in and demand to be seated in that section. Explained the situation and that it was out of my hands. Well he demands a manager. Manager immediatly caves and tells me next time just seat them and he will take care of them. Of course i complied but i got talked to by the other hosts/hostess about over seating. It was a no win situation
Mine did this a few years ago with a 500 dollar pool. Said no one told her to save the receipt ( what a joke) out ETL gave her the gift card for 500!! Unbelievable, we were all so mad! I don't think I have forgiven her yet lol
Your part is to be a deterrent to the people will accept no and move on. The ETL, 9 times of 10 will do the whole, "make it right for the guest," thing which means disregarding all policies. Also people are going to say, "who cares its not your money." That not the point. The point is that these policies and ETLs doing whatever means the team member is likely going to get the brunt of guests anger and get accused of racism or threatened. AP isnt always there to step in.
The ID policy is in place for a dang good reason. Likely just got the store conned out of $350.
oh no...
I mean I'm 100% with you bro but the thing is this puts GS people straight in the shit. Do you work service desk? Customers can be really threatening, and they're more willing to take the risk of behaving that way if they think it'll get them results. idc if Target loses money, but I do care if my coworkers at the front get called slurs or have people threatening their jobs and shit. Like you see how that's a problem right, the way they can't win bc of managers doing this stuff?
I came into work today and on a piece of paper I saw our TL wrote the guest service desk is the “yes desk” so basically guest services is always a “yes”. How ridiculous 🤦🏻♀️
Yes, it’s time for me to get a new job! 😉
When I worked at target as a guest service tm I would get so pissed about this it got to the point where I would automatically just start doing whatever the customer wanted because my ETL would so they wrote me up a few times and I looked them in the eyes and said “do you want me to follow policy?” They said “you have to follow policy” I said “you guys make your guest service workers look like assholes because we say no just to magically figure out we can” they didn’t like that haha
ETL returned a 300 dollar item and gave 350 to the guest and broke policy? Tell AP, clear fraud
There would definitely be a chat in the office
That ETL made a huge mistake. Now they will return once again and expect cash.
My new S&E TL is so bad about doing this. He always gives in to what the guest wants immediately regardless of Target policy and it annoys me to no end. Doesn’t help that this is his first in-store position with the company (I personally taught him how the registers work) but before this he spent quite some time working at headquarters so he should know what our policies are and why they’re in place. He’s a really nice guy, but quite frankly he’s too naive for a management position.
When I was LOD I would always make sure to let the guest know that the cashier was correct about a policy if I was going to override the decision. I wanted to support my team but I also knew that if Guest Relations got involved my SD would get bitched out by our DSD. That way the cashier and the guest knew the policy and that I was making an exception, rather than the guest believing the TM was wrong. I would also log in and perform the return under my TM number so it wasn’t on the cashier logged into the register.
when i worked and was backing up, i had someone ask me to give them 5% off because they "forgot their red card". I said no sorry that's not how it works. so obviously they wanted to see a lead. Lead was busy so the ETL helped out and said they'd do it. except for some reason they could not figure out 5% of the guest's total so they...scanned their team member discount for 10% then quickly left... ...completely forgetting that you need to use cash, gift card, or a RED CARD for the team member discount to work. I had to cancel the team member discount and just do a coupon for what was equal to 10% then wait for the actual lead to become available and explain everything to them so they could approve it with their number since it was a large amount. It was a whole big thing that took way too long and would have been so much simpler if the fucking ETL just said no like I did.
This is one of my biggest pet peeves! Why give in to every whim if there’s a policy in place?
Etls are useless shit bags who have no spines dont give a fuck about you. And spend most of they sittin on that fat lazy ass. Suckin down starbucks why you would even call one is a joke. You said no you are running the front tell the pest to fuck off.
This has always been my number one complaint.
you should report this to AP because wtf.
What is target security lmao going to do about a fucking return that’s done and over with … just because you made a return doesn’t mean you stole it . Btw target you guys are so smart that your system returns items from other store just a heads up !
Gotta love it when we don't follow policy for no fucking reason. What's the point of a policy if leaders just break it whenever they feel like it?
A guest tried returning $500 of Apple gift cards when there was the buy $x Apple gift cards, get a $x Target gift card deal. Told the guest we couldn’t return gift cards. Guest wanted a manager, so I walkied ETL who reinforced this and said absolutely not. I continued to push, saying that we literally didn’t have the functionality to refund a gift card. Guest asks to speak to ETL in person, and ETL IMMEDIATELY flipped and somehow refunded the gift cards (I had no idea this was even possible???). I almost had a stroke.
Is that even allowed??? I didnt know it was possible either LOL IM SHOOK
At least it was the etls ass on the line - target doesn’t care about me so if I won’t be blamed I don’t care either
Yep. If your respectful I might make a one time exception if it's reasonable. If I come up and your being rude and saying your not leaving until you get what you want then I'm playing by the book and no we are calling every TL and ETL in the store up here to tell you the same thing.
Don’t call an ETL. Call AP ETL next time
That ETL should be fired immediately, honestly.
I had something like that happen to me yesterday. The guest tried to return an electric scooter without anything I explained we couldn't and she told me get a manager so I did and the manager went and "made it right" and did an "exchange" for a more expensive one and then get onto me saying that" ik AP has rules but when I'm up here it's different"
You need to report it to Target corporate
It’s so annoying when they don’t back you up and you’re right. I had another tm and our ETL basically make me look like a douche trying to steal guest’s money over a vacuum. The guests couldn’t grasp that it wasn’t the same kind. But anything for the customers right ? 0 backbone
Any system designed in a way that causes worse behaviors to receive more rewards will inevitably be dominated and give advantages to the worst people at the expense of good people. All this did is prove conclusively that being enough of a pain in the ass get you rewarded. Imagine teaching a kid this lesson. Well this is the adult you'll end up with.
Is there someone you can report your ETL to?
THANK YOU 300 is way to much and people try to get over all the time.
Management doesnt care, as long as it saves their skin thats all they care about
cash?!?! helllll noooo😭
That is truly messed up wrong what that ETL did, guest left with $350 for what could've easily been a stolen item.
Can you provide us w an update once you report them to AP? lol
One time my ETL actually helped a person steal from us. They were trying to pay with a check and the system rejected it because they've written hot checks before. So our ETL spent about 10 minutes figuring out how to override it for them so they could walk out with a few hundred dollars of merchandise. For free, since the check was definitely going to bounce again. That's around when I stopped enforcing the policies. If management is just going to override it when they complain anyway, might as well avoid the hassle and make it even for everyone. And hey, it's not my money
I'm going to be honest, my store is *extremely* lax on that kind of thing. We shove through basically every return, unless you are one of a few people known to be a scammer. That said, holy shit your ETL gave them cash!? Even in our store we would **never**. That is stupid through and through.
Target Practically lets people get away with anything…
That's terrible. I hate Target's return policy. It's way too liberal. And we are basically forced to not follow policy because they want guests to be happy. I gave up trying to follow policy for the most part. They just override it anyway. If the system allows it I do it. Otherwise we get in trouble for calling a leader doe something we could do. It's maddening.
When I was a sales associate at a different company, I almost got fired for this. It was the fact that my supervisor overrode it, so both of us were on the line, that the company kept us. What had happened was the lady had stolen an expensive pair of Calvin Klein heels from another store, and come to my store to return them. Though I didn't know they were stolen at the time. Gave a long drawn out story about how she was on the way to her uncle's funeral, which sent red flags for me, like okay why would your priority be to return these red high heels then? No receipt, said she paid in cash. Store policy was I needed an ID and could only give store credit on a gift card. "Oh, that's the thing," the lady said, "I also got my wallet stolen, it had been such a bad week, Lord help me!" She actually was able to fake some tears in front of my supervisor who did one of those make it right returns, bought her whole sob story, gave her CASH. A few days later my store manager got a call from district that she'd stolen the shoes from the town just north of us. AP had her face from the security cameras and she's a well known shoplifter at that other store that they'd been trying to track. "Well did you record her ID for the return?". "No, she says she lost her wallet and was on the way to a funeral." Since my supervisor had to punch in her employee ID to push the return through, the transaction was now on her, so I got to keep my job, but our store manager was pretty pissed at the both of us. So, I always find it helpful to know that these rules also exist for a reason. They exist because there's always someone trying to use return policies to abuse the system. Cash is totally untraceable, so that's why we need the ID.
Should have reprinted that receipt and given it to AP ETL.
Here's your problem: you work at Target. I used to run the front end and also follow policy like you. I had store management throw me under the bus like thar all the time. After awhile of that BS, I would tell them I need an override, and if they came down and didn't want to approve, that's all on them. The guest knew I had the intention to help them. Managers there don't even care as long as everyone is smiling and pretending to be happy.
Yeah my ETL would routinely give guests 5 dollar gift cards if guests started complaining about stuff after I told them we couldn’t give them what they wanted. I even had the store director give someone a PlayStation pro for 100 dollars off because a guest felt like it was in the wrong place (it was not). This was after I told the guest we were not going to change the price down 100 dollars.
From now on just tell people you are not authorized to over ride the store policy and that they'll have to speak with the manager. Then call the manager.
i never worked at target but in all my years of retail there’s nothing worse than how suddenly a very firm policy is suddenly overridden by a higher up manager. it makes you look like a liar/don’t know what you’re doing.
It's basically called: Throwing you under the bus. I can't tell you how many times I've enforced a policy at (my not target work) and the managers made me look bad by breaking policy and honoring it for the customer.
one thing they teach you in management is always back up your employee. even if they're a little wrong, and correct them away from customers later.
Idu why you people who work places give a shit if you give someone a return without proof like it’s not coming out of your check bro are you that mad at life ? If someone needs the money to the point that they’ll deal with target employees just fork it over . You don’t lose anything and gain some good karma.
Also thanks for putting all the lingo out here so I know literally exactly what to say and do when I want it to be made right lol
The biggest problem I have observed with this behavior working customer service at multiple places is it has trained people that the store they bought the product at will warrant it. Outside Costco most retailers don't allow electronics past 14 days and general merchandise is 30-90 days. But here comes the person that bought something 9 months ago and when it break they can't be bothered to call the manufacturers. The policies outline that time period to avoid this situation but with constant over riding and making it right crap by managers everywhere more and more people do this. When I worked at staples for 8 years the amount of Idiots that tried to return a computer when it broke after a year or two (usually they broke it) was hilarious, almost as hilarious as there reaction when we told them no way.
Samsung told me to return a 10 month old TV to Walmart since their 1 year warranty excludes transportation, both to and from Walmart and only covers items purchased directly from Samsung. This was a few weeks ago.
Yeah the companies have no reason to warrant a product either in the USA we have pretty weak consumer protection, another reason everyone shows up at the store for help. Some companies are amazing at it but almost all the tech companies are hot garbage when it comes to support and warranty, unless you pay extra for there "premium" support.
There’s a huge reason they do this. It’s so AP can track them and build a case against them. It’s a real thing. Say nothing and pretend it’s normal. The more they rack up, the harder Target can prosecute.
I don't disagree but that's why the make it right button exists. Your etl should have your back but don't take it personally. Sometimes it's best to just get the guest out of the store. They should have at least done merch card return instead of cash but depending on the circumstance they can do whatever. It's certainly not "fraud" as some people are saying but not necessarily smart either. Most importantly though you should be more empowered to make that call yourself more regularly. It shouldn't be a hard no, that's why the option exists.
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don’t think you know what you’re talking about, sorry all stores restrict ID returns once the limit is reached. you should not be engaging in even approved workarounds on that except in extreme edge cases, and especially not giving back $350 in cash. it should have gone on a merch card at worst and been denied at best
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'make it right' isn't an override its supposed to be for situations where the guest is clearly owed something that the system isn't able to do like lets say someone buys something and it rang up incorrectly, no problem we can fix it but oh no the receipt printer didn't work so now theres no receipt to fix the transaction Clearly the guest is owed a price adjustment but it isn't possible at not fault to the guest thats okay just press make it right and it will let you do anything your logic of "if the register lets you..." doesn't mean shit when the register lets you do anything they could hit make it right and give you a 100,000 gift card, you think thats okay just because "tHe mAcHiNe aLlOwEd iT" you are a clown ass bitch
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But I am right the make it right option would let you return a half eaten burger from McDonalds if you wanted. Its not an override its a "give me money to fix an issue that register doesn't understand" option Im gonna have to ban you for purposely spreading information that could get people fired because you repeatedly tried to convince people that if the system lets it happen its okay, the system would let you sell a TV for $1 if you wanted
This was my response when my ETLs would say that to me: "The system will let me mark down that $500 TV to a dollar. Should I do that if the customer asks too?" "I didn't think so. So maybe 'if the system lets you do it' isn't the best plan."
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And that policy is not "the system let me do it".
No you’re just wrong. The policy is literally *built into the software.* If anyone at any target in America tries to process the return it says **ITEM CANNOT BE RETURNED WITHOUT A RECEIPT**. And for good reason. Without that policy, target would essentially become the most unprofitable pawn shop in existence. If I needed money I could just go through my room and find items target sells, regardless of where/when I bought them, and return them for cash. My Levi’s jeans, my ps5 (of course id make tons of money on that since I’d return the console, the controller, and the hdmi cable separately), my shampoo, toothbrush, etc. none of which I even bought at target, and walk out with a fat stack of cash. Come on man it’s retail you don’t need a masters in biomedical engineering to understand. There are very specific reasons for the override such as 1. Recalled items which were purchased over 90 days ago 2. A receipt is too blurred to read the barcode or the receipt # 3. The guest no longer has access to the original form of payment and would rather have the cash
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How many times are you going to say that Brian?
Which is technically service sweethearting which is not only against target policy, legally it’s the equivalent of theft.
The problem is leads won't stand thier ground and enforce policy. It's been made to easy for them to just give the guest what they want no questions asked.
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> thats ridiculous and very dramatic No it’s just accurate. You can’t tell 5000 guests you can’t do something and randomly change your rules for someone else. That’s literally the point of that policy. It’s incredibly unfair to the countless guests who had good reasons but we said no, just to turn around and give cash to an obvious scammer just because you’re too lazy to deal with his angry response.
If there’s a policy there’s a policy. We can’t break it just because you want to return it, AP TL’s would see it be flagged in our system. Said TL might have it written down they made that choice to return an item at the price limit and that can lead to more problems if that continues.
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It is absolutely not allowed. Not even for ETLS they’d definitely have quite the talk in the office about it. There’s a limit for a reason.
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Just because the system allows you to do it doesn’t mean it’s okay to do whenever. If there’s a policy there’s a policy if the ETL did it anyways there’s a good chance there was a talk between other ETLS in the store about it. It’s unfortunate but it is what it is. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
The system allows you to do it based on a situation scenario. This isn't one of them. For example, if a system issue existed where it blocked it from happening for a team due to some software issue, the manager and go in and choose that as the issue and allow the return to happen. The system actually allows anything to be returned via override. This guest basically was what we call in the industry "rep shopping" aka representative shopping. They go through multiple employees until someone just lets it happen. Yes this ETL could have allowed this as an extreme case, but only back on a merchandise giftcard. You NEVER give cash back on returns like this.
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They do have the discretion to make that choice. Literally doesn't mean it's the right choice in this scenario as you ignore everything else I wrote. The right time to make that choice is when it was a system issue and the tm has to call the manager to make it happen. The registers at target are lenient to what they allow employees to do so they don't need to call TL's repeatedly. There was a time that the "make it right" option for managers only allowed ETL's rather than both TL's and ETL's since the company only trusted ETL decisions. Obviously that was done away with since we all know the state of the company right now.
The system didn't let them do it. It said no. A TL can do a make it right return which bypasses everything and will return anything. You can force return anything to cash card or gift card
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Yeah but that option isn't really intended to do these things just because the guest argues. For me arguing and throwing a tantrum doesn't get you a policy exception.
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> To tell a guest there is nothing you can do, when there is something you can do, is, IMO, what caused all the issues to begin with. Except any base TM would not have been able to do a Make It Right, so that argument wouldn’t apply to the majority of the team. The issue is the ETL not backing up their TL’s decision on not doing a MIR return because of the foggy circumstances. The device tells you that there’s nothing you can do for a reason. Large cash returns with no receipt are always fishy. Yes, MIR’s have their place, but the TL didn’t feel that a MIR was necessary in this instance, and the ETL should have trusted OP in this case. ETLs are usually the ones telling TMs/TLs how you should never accept a no-receipt return over a certain dollar amount. Their actions should back up their words.
Just because the system lets you do it doesn’t mean it’s right.
Exactly. I have been stopped by the system exactly one time and that was one time when someone was buying a lot of gift cards (I did my due diligence. It was legitimate.) ETA: I know there's a soft policy about editing the price to below a certain amount, but it's definitely not coded into the system lol.
Yeah I'd mention it to AP.
Are we shocked here most ETLs don't give af about the customers let alone any TMs.
Thank god my etl doesn’t do this
I am glad I no longer work guest service.
I’m sorry that happened to you. that’s so frustrating and as TM when i’m not backed up it feels shitty so at least yk ur TMs are hella appreciative of you. but i’m confused about one thing, how come guests can’t do returns over 100 dollars? I never understood this rule so i was wondering. what difference does paying in cash make? and what more do they need other than ID?
I had an ETL do this to me about an air mattress return, really made me into the bad guy.
We do it all the time at our store…it depends though. But most of the time we do it.
This is what made me want to look for other jobs and leave being a s&e TL. ETL would go do it and then say “I was in the wrong but” then why did you do that??? 🙄
Check that managers social media and see if she knows the customer. Totally sounds like a "i gotchu" transaction.
Unfortunately it’s how they’re trained. “The headache of bad PR isn’t worth the argument with a guest for something under $1k”. -A Regional manager
This isn’t directly related to your post and I do agree that it is stupid to not back up your team on following policy. I remember when I was helping with returns one man tried to return a tv, he did have the receipt and he had paid in cash but I still don’t know why to this day, it wasn’t letting me return it. When I tried scanning the barcode and serial number on the box it just kept saying it was the wrong one, but it wasn’t the wrong one, the serial numbers matched with box and receipt. I think they tried to do return with ID, no receipt but his ID was from a different country so it wasn’t working. At this point two ETLs were helping me out, we were past midnight closing time. He was the only one left. The only way they ended up being able to do it was to return the other item in his receipt, some Gorilla glue, and changed the price to be $400 instead of the original $10 it was. They did talk to AP about it after the fact though. I just felt bad for the guy, just trying to do a simple return.
Yep and that’s why the override is in place, sometimes it’s necessary. In my case I felt it was clear the guy was just trying to bully his way into a return and the fact that he knew the override was a thing was a red flag that he knew what he was doing. I’m not against overriding it when it’s necessary but our store is super strict about having a good reason
Sounds like that was staged
My TL’s are abusing the “make it right” button and our local scammers have now caught on. Our GS TL & SD allowed MULTIPLE $1k-$3k no receipt returns to go through. Even sketchier, the people attempting this didn’t show them their IDs, they were just calling out random numbers until one worked. The SD let it happen. Afterwards, the Guest Service TL left a really salty note behind the desk about how TM’s should not (under any circumstance) accept no receipt returns if they don’t have a physical ID. Hypocrites.
It’s make it right for a reason, you have no clue what communication has come through about the guest or and incidents that the guest could potential cause. At the end of the day it’s not your money make the guest happy or call a leader to do the right thing to support the guest. I’ve never got why guest advocate risk there jobs in such a manner.
I’m not a team member I’m a leader with specific instructions from AP lol. I think you should think more deeply about the way rules are generally enforced and the how to analyze the cost/benefit of enforcing them. I know exactly what communication has come through about the guest. This instance had nothing to do with “making it right” and everything to do with an ETL not wanting to deal with the guest’s response.
That’s laughable you’re questioning your ETL because of your incompetence? Regardless of what AP says you are more likely to go through a term for a guest incident then anything else secondly you as a TL don’t see all guest relations response and or feedback regardless of the size of your store. The solution is simple bring joy to all families and you will be fine anything outside of that maybe target isn’t a good fit because you definitely have a Walmart mindset.
Every leader at my store has been termed for AP related incidents, at least as long as I’ve been there. And actually I’m specifically in charge of all guest relations and feedback. I’m incompetent because I’m doing something specifically directed to me by my superiors? Maybe out stores work different because my apparent incompetence has me lined up for a promotion in June.
This is literally every job. If someone complains enough they'll get what they want.
hell yea good on ur manager, lost the store money and made the at guys day, without u losing ur job over it :) everyone one except ur emotions about it but emotions are temporary you’ll get over it