Anyone work in retail at holiday time?

iVillage Member
Registered: 09-22-1999
Anyone work in retail at holiday time?
14
Mon, 12-06-2004 - 7:34pm

Do you work in retail at holiday time? How is your store doing so far this year for holiday sales? What are you thinking when someone hands you their credit card to pay for a purchase? When someone makes a large purchase or buys an expensive item or an item you really wanted, how do you feel? Have you declined a sale to someone? Have you learned anything personally from working in retail in regard to spending?

Littlesbigs

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iVillage Member
Registered: 03-16-1999
Sat, 12-11-2004 - 8:46am
I think now the store gets a message to request an alternative form of payment. We were in Vegas a few weeks ago and our card was denied and that is what they did.By the way... the reason it was denied is that because we decided to go on a whim plane tickets, hotel, and tickets to shows were showing up all at once. The CC was worried that our card had been stolen. We called and proved it was us and everything was ok. For any of you who are thinking this woman must be crazy... charging a trip to Vegas... We had saved the money for the trip and were using the cards for convenience. We paid it off as soon as the charges posted.
iVillage Member
Registered: 12-05-2004
Sat, 12-11-2004 - 1:16pm

We had the same thing happen to us when we tried to buy a new bed two years ago. At that point, we had no debt to speak of, and we rarely used our credit card. When it was time to pay for our bed, we went to the counter to set up delivery, and we ran into a problem. Our card was denied. How embarrassing. People on either side of us were paying for their furniture purchases, arranging delivery, and then moving on....and we were still there. It took us almost 45 minutes to finish the purchase and arrange delivery because we had to have the associate call the card company, have the associate talk to someone, have my husband talk to someone to confirm identity, get transferred to another person for a secondary security check, etc. The poor Associate kept saying, "I'm so sorry about this....they gave me your available credit, and you have more than enough for this purchase....I'm just so sorry...". I guess it's a good thing that they have these security features, but sometimes they can be so embarrassing.

Patty

iVillage Member
Registered: 04-27-2004
Sat, 12-11-2004 - 4:01pm

I have worked a couple of retail jobs through the holidays over the years and the one thing that always made my tummy turn was when one card would be declined and they would give you another, and another, and so on until one finally went through ~ you just felt so bad for them and yet surprisingly these are the same ones who never seemed embarassed about it, they just seemed sort of like "oh well".

When the checks were declined the register would just print out a toll free number for the customer to call, we were never told why they were declined.

One thing that shocked me is when they didn't have enough funds to coverage the purchases they seemed to put back items that seemed important such as food, toiletries, ect... but kept things like videos, candy, etc... I never quite got that.

iVillage Member
Registered: 10-14-2003
Sun, 12-12-2004 - 12:22am

It is amazing but when I worked at Walmart the same thing happened to me. People would go over the amount they had on their card and put back neccessities, diapers, formula, tolietries, etc. Or even if they brought cash to spend they would have me ring the "goodies" first and subtotal it. Candy, videos, toys, etc was always rang up first. Other times I had customers that would do the same thing but with food stamps. I've had to use them before almost 2 years ago but I didn't spend any differently then I would have if it were "real" money. In fact, I spent them wisely enough that I still had a balance most months!

Now I work at Gymboree in our Mall. I can't tell you how many people tell me that they are so broke and then charge $300 worth of clothes because they are "on sale!" One lady plainly told me that she didn't know how she was going to pay the house payment for the month after buying $700 worth of clothes (with 30% off her purchase!)

Some people just don't understand that 30% off isn't any good if you can't afford it. I know that I'm not perfect but we are trying really hard to get out of debt. :) And all of my "bills" are paid before I go shopping! :)

Stephanie

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