TARGET and CHASE...OUTSOURCING AND BANKING GONE SOUR?

We can all learn from lessons of the past, or from past lessons of others. The trick is in the listening, in the absorbing. Unfortunately, many businesses wait until customer attrition, business failure, significant revenue loss, before they wake up and work on changing things. (DTV comes to mind again)
I always find this incredible and amazing. I invision the worker bees not being "heard" by the powers of change, such as the CEO and Execs, until THEY spot the bottom line dwindling and only then begin to listen and act. A smarter approach would be to provide and maintain an open communication line for the worker bees to channel their concerns. Much like canaries in a coalmine, worker bees see it all...and usually long before it happens financially to the company.
Before I get to my story, the lesson is simply this: Always listen to your customer and with a little empathy, please. If you are not empowered to make a legitimate complaint right, escalate the concern. Keep escalating that. Write annonomously to the CEO if you have to.

So here is my story about Target. They went after my business, and gave me an initial 15k limit. We have a ton of cards, we cycle through them. I have to say my favourites are DiscoverCard, Amex Blue, StateFarm Visa, Fidelity, Nordstrom, and the now defunct Starbucks Visa....oh, Starbucks Visa, you are sooooo missed! We use the cards, typically 3 at a time, pay them in full when the bill arrives, wash, rinse, repeat. We had not used the Target card in several months, so when we took it out of our safe to shop, we were not initially surprised to have it declined after a couple of small purchases. We figured they wanted to validate that, yes, it is just us using the card. Instead, the bottom line is that, without any notice, they had lowered our limit down to $200 bucks. I daresay our Starbuck coffee bill is higher. What ensued next is just crazy. I spoke with various folks, several supervisors, numerous emails were exchanged, at which point I promised to blog about this! Target refused to raise the limit (at all), refused to re-run a credit check, if that is what they needed to still feel all warm and fuzzy about us, and said, when I asked why not, this was due to cost cutting. I paraphrased just to make sure I heard things correctly: Target is refusing to listen to its customers legitimate concerns, refusing to do the necessary business conductions, such as periodic credit checks, in order to manage its credit department, preferring to LOSE business instead by lowering limits to very unreasonable, unusable levels and not budging. The rep said yes, if that is how I want to put it. I asked that my account then be cancelled as it was not worth the wallet space with only a $200 limit. I tried reason...I've got cards with 20k limit, so why would I bother with $200? Makes alot of sense to my mind, but TARGET clearly prefers I take my good business elsewhere. So, my employer does business with Target. And I used to work in AR. I double checked Target was still paying our bill. Yep, still paying us...and I will continue to check on this, since the company really sounds distressed to me.
On that note, and particularly in this economy, EVERY employee out there should be alert to any subtle signs from any of your vendors, that things may be off. When you are doing your own personal business, just keep in the back of your mind anything that might affect your employer (and paycheck) downstream. Something that is odd behaviour personally can manifest financial hardship that is more global. We all need to step a bit outside ourselves and look around, and act more globally. Everything is connected so everything must be observed and acted upon accordingly. I like that I have saved my company alot of money by watching the AR of companies doing strange things, over the years. Just by following my gut and providing a heads up my company might otherwise not have had. Jobs get saved, maybe even mine.

In the case of target, they are paying, so appear to be solvent for now, although their shelves are very bare at the one near us (things that make you go hmmmmm).

My take at this point is Target is clearly cutting back on stocking shelves, at least in some areas, and more obviously, they have got to be phasing out their credit department. This should be huge news! Target closing their credit doors. I was told, repeatedly, that they do not check credit on any redcard accounts, any longer. Those customers are no longer being supported. Period.

Am thinking it would be cleaner to just make the announement, provide 60-90 days grace prior and then cancel the cards after notice is sent to the account holders, then close the department and be done with that. Why continue to hold it on a shoestring with a total lack of customer service and support? My personal interactions make me much less likely to even shop there using one of my real credit cards!

And in other news....CHASE Bank preferred I close my 4 savings and checking accounts, close my 6 credit cards, close my HELOC and our two business accounts, rather than give me back the $45.63 in fees for my Pier 1 card who, unfortunately chose Chase as their carrier, because they either failed to send the statement (to gain revenue in fees) or it actually honestly got lost in the mail.

We have all heard of banks 'forgetting' to mail out statements so they can collect on fees, but I cannot prove Chase did this egregious activity. There was a slight issue with the address, which I got fixed with the rep I was working with (in India), and since I always pay all our accounts on time and in full, after getting the statement, I asked for a break on this, as a good customer, because I just did not get the statement. I was blamed for their not sending me a statement, that I somehow should have known the bill was due. The break was denied. In all communication Chase remains very appologetic, sure, but do they offer to adjust the $45 bucks? Nope...so I am still no longer a customer. What was very funny, is that while talking to Mr. India, he saw 4 cards associated with the Pier 1 card, and offered right then and there to cancel them! I said sure, NUKE 'EM and Enjoy your $45.63...if that is the customer service level Chase is now offering, I want no further part.

BANKS - Just a hint on how to do business successfully: STOP blaming your customers, unless you want all of us to write you off as idiots who deserve to get stuffed and take our business elsewhere, we can, and we will! Looking into my crystal ball, what we will see soon is more and more worker bees getting good and righteously pissed off. Anger can be a very good and empowering energy, if channelled correctly. We will all close accounts we really don't need. You have to wake up, banks, because the populous are more savvy about rates and where to shop, and we already have way too much stress in our lives so one more stupid policy or more of the typical blame game and we are outta there! The beauty of individuals is when we come together, en mass, to fight for justice! With my pretty credit, I figure if Chase is pissing me off, then these guys are pissing off the world. And so is Target. This canary is squaking! So, like a guy (or gal) who treated you poorly, in a year or so, with enough customer attrition, banks will wake up and get to grovelling for all of us to come back. Do you go back to that bad significant other? Or do you finally realize you were happier single after all?

With enough of us fed up, banks will become a service driven industry! When we stop banking, when we stop buying, we change the world, and that is huge power.

Ages ago, Discover card did this very thing. I had great service for years, then *poof* they irritated me, would not listen and I closed the account. They were suddenly so aweful, I asked if they'd been bought out. Turns out they had. I waited a full decade to come back, after they got nice again. So far, they treat me like gold.

In any economy, customers are Number 1. They have to come first, they are 'the money'. If you rent, you ARE the customer. If you owe a mortgage, once again, you ARE the customer. If somebody else wants something FROM you, that makes you the customer. Any customer, any debtor should come first, for nothing more but common sense in business. Should we stop paying, for any reason, a business, a bank, feels that real fast! Frankly, if I were strapped for cash, which thank goodness I am not, (whew, survived yet another layoff round) I would first pay those nicest to me. I have always paid the nice people first. So, big business...BE NICE. :-)