Thread regarding Sears layoffs

Sounds like it could be predatory lending. If a company knowingly exends credit to someone who they know cannot pay for the customers information or some sort of payment is illegal in many states.

Well Fargo got in trouble for signing people up for accounts they did not know about. The real estate crisis of 2008 was almost the same in that they gave people credit at outrageous rates when they knew they could not afford it.

@czi your job is to sell product while giving the member a wow experience by offering them the total package, pa or spp, credit and syw. As a Sears associate, you must obtain your metrics and credit is part of your metrics. You can not offer credit to one member and not the other, you must offer to each member to be fair to each member. Why would you not want to offer them payment options? Maybe they really want that tractor but don't have all the money right now and financing or leasing would help them. In Every store today credit is a metric,a lot of money is made off credit

I got a job at a local sears store as a sears sale associate. now...........what they do is straight UNAMERICAN!!!. if i'm to sell credit to the people, lie to them, and try to get them basically a secondary insurance or warranty that nobody needs and is basically worthless i'd like more money for that kind of work. I though that I was going to help people, which I do........help them get the tool or a product that they ACTUALLY NEED, instead of asking them to open up a credit card...(((WE ARE SUPPOSE TO ASK EVERY SINGLE PERSON, AS A TINY GIRLFRIEND OF A MANAGER THAT I DONNO WHAT SHE DOES AT THE STORE SAID TO ME, IT'S PART OF UR JOB!!!..that is BS as I see it. I don't think it's even legal, I wonder how come nobody does anything about it, I want to ask for a job description in a paper form, but to tell u the truth i'm scared...........yes i'm scared that I will get fired if I go against the current of this bs atmosphere. every sunday there is an hour meeting that starts before the store opens up, to talk about that bs credit, spp and pa.......pa is PROTECTION AGREEMENT, and spp IS SEARS PROTECTION PLAN. I also don't have the balls to ask my department manager that if he got an extended warranty on his brand new car which I know he probably didn't. anyway.........I am seeking some advice plz, legal if possible, I need some ammunition if chit hits the fan if u know what I mean.

@xbg- yes. If we do an application for someone who already has the card, it just asks does the customer want to use their existing card. Or we can back out and apply for the other card if they don't have both already.

@2uvm Nope. Not at my store. Does it do that where you are?

@omz- if you try to get them to sign up for a card, doesn't the register tell you if they already have one?

No probably no Sears has.

I didnt think any Sears had 500 customers in total for a month

Good point @1lqc, I would like to see this too. 500 unique customers a month for her that don't have the Sears card and MasterCard. Even when I look at the stats for "opportunities" in my store no one has anywhere near 500. Meaning I assume that they haven't rung 500 customers.

I ignore the metrics posted publicly in the hub as much as possible though. I think it's invasive that everyone's personal business is public. Like online where you can read everyone's customer feedback and such. It's awful. Not inspirational.

I want to get a comfortable chair and visit the valley stream store to see how one person gets a thousand credit apps a month. There's no doubt something's screwy going on!

The worst is when someone doesn't have their physical card with them and they are told to reapply because their card is expired.

It's not. That's a lie and the trusting fall for it.

A customer has to insist on credit lookup. Turns into a fight.

What keeps me warm at night is the thought that many of these cardholders are going to default. Through fraud because in my store if you don't have an Id or social security number you can still apply. No problem.

Or through overextention since you are encouraged to inflate your income while decreasing your housing expense.

Citibank will be the loser but I suspect that they are behind the impossible numbers. Sears dances to it but it's Citibank playing the tune.

I do feel bad for the folks that don't know not to apply every time since all this hard pulls are going to be another thing from keeping them from rebuilding their credit.

I see all this too. Every time I work. It's illegal. Simple as that.

i can see why people do what they do when your told that if you do not get credit you will lose your job i can see why people do what they do to get credit

Turning a blind eye to questionable tactics for procuring credit apps has been a tradition with this company. It is almost perverse that management sings the praises of the people who engage in these wrongful practices while deriding people who follow good practices, but get fewer apps. One thing I have observed is that the bad actors may ride high for awhile, even years, but at some point they will take the fall. All it takes is the one customer that throws a royal tantrum. In order to save their hides, management will throw the offender under the bus and back it up twice while proclaiming that they had no idea that the offender was engaging in deceitful tactics.

Done every day at sears pushed by store manger and cac lead that does nothing.why is he here anyways! !! I think we are wells Fargo. .think store manager looking for a free Vegas trip.and what's rong with these district mangers that don't do suprise visits!! So they can see how lazy these appliances managers and softline and cac managers that just sit in office.when they get call that district managers coming they run to flor and make it look like they are working. Not fair to those of us that do all of work.I know at of people here getting tired of this.

I've witnessed several "high-performing" employees pull fast ones to get credit, such as entering in expired drivers licenses, telling customers to make up a number for annual income, twisting the discussion by saying it's a discount, lying about the hard pull effect on a credit score when asked by a customer, entering in information into the PIN pad for the customer, etc.

I've told management only to be told that the associates I'm complaining about have more credit apps than you do. Well no s--t Sherlock. They are breaking the rules to get the credit, don't you see! (But, of course, they don't want to "see" the "how"). So, I've given up and reasoned that they will eventually fall in their own graves because it seems like Sears is following in Wells Fargo's footsteps. This is probably happening in every store.

I follow the policy. I ask every customer. If they don't want it or cannot furnish valid ID or a Social Security number, I don't continue. Life goes on and I serve them with a smile, the old fashioned way.

This credit thing has gotten so out of hand that I've seen a few employees get apprehensive if the customer refuses credit (or Shop Your Way phone numbers or the PA). They suddenly become terse and standoffish.

I'm only at 70% in credit, which is poor in Sears' eyes, but at least I'm following the law. The law matters a hell of a lot more than metrics. As an upside, I've received good member feedbacks. A few of them mentioned that I wasn't pushy compared to some other associates they've dealt with on previous visits to the store.

Is it really that many people shopping at Sears? New York District?

The top CAC Lead mentioned in an earlier post always signed people up for two cards and to this day she still does it. That way she can give the customer 2 "discounts". In her heyday she signed up 900 to 1000 cards a month. Keep in mind also the DMs get a quarterly bonus if they achieve the credit goals. Now you know why everybody looks the other way.

Common practice at my store. They target older customer. Some of them actually will take the customers wallet from their and find the ss number . As a cashier I reported this and nothing was done. They just don't care.

Thanks, for the information. Good to know.

We were recently told that the rule about signing people up for 2 cards at a time was changed. We were told we CAN sign them up for both the same day.

When a customer apply for a Sears Mastercard, and they get approved, the Sears Associates can not get them to apply for the Regular Sears Card. They can come back the next day and apply for the Regular Sears Card. The corp office inform the Sears Associates about a year or more on the new changes. If they are not approved for one card, they can apply for the other card on the same day.

One of the top CAC Leads in the whole country is in our region. She would target certain customers, talk real fast, confuse them and offer them a "discount". When she was really on a roll she made more each month being paid $2 for each credit card than she did in wages. Her credit card check made her monthly Mercedes car payment. She would fill out the credit application for the customer, keep talking "discount" so the customer would complete the process, and throw away the disclosure so people would not see the high interest rate. Associates complained about it to management but it all fell on deaf ears. So much for the Federal Truth in Lending Act.

They actually sent out message saying they were aware this was happening and they wanted cashiers to stop doing it. The email went as far as to threaten termination if you were caught.

Maybe it was just for show. Maybe not. But a lot of the time cashiers do it for their own personal gain and to get the managers off their backs about credit.

I just shredded the Sears Card I've carried since 1982. What a great feeling.

The 5-3-2-1 is the most annoying thing ever, I work at a Little Caesars inside a Kmart and thankfully we can't hear much of the announcements unless our speaker phone volume is turned up. It's just another stab me in the ears 'commercial' that YES is screwing over the members.

@aof- are you saying customers can't sign up for both cards? Or that they can?

Sounds likely. My Kmart store did something similar years ago when I first started when they were really into the shop your way program. Managers encouraged employees to use fake names and numbers for SYW. Eventually corporate caught wind of it and all the managers were terminated and replaced with new ones in a week's time.

It is your job to ask each and every customer to apply for the Sears Card. We must explain everything to the customer, 1. We have 2 credit cards, 2. You will get dinged on your credit report, 3. You must ask, and tell them about every credit card that they apply for. If the customer signs up for the MC, and gets approved they can not sign up for the Regular Sears Card, if they apply for the MC, and do not get approved, then they can sign up for the regular SC. Sears Corporate has always told us about the law, all the training that they proved us with. Civil Rights Law of the 60's. Ask every customer to apply for the Sears, not sign up for the card. Do it the right way.

same thing happened to me at Macy's

If they are elderly then it's probably easy to confuse them I know a former CAC lead who basically said they did this with "fast talk" and didn't tell them it will affect their score. I also remember before the merge of MCAS and Cashiers Sears got in trouble for not telling people it would show up twice on their credit check or, the cashiers would sign the customers up for two cards when they thought they were only applying for one. We had a lot of complaints about this from this former CACs team, so if this continues I guess we will have another lawsuit about this eventually

This happens in my store constantly.

If you can get documented proof of this occurring, I'd imagine many news outlets might be interested. It sounds not unlike the very thing for which Wells Fargo got into a great deal of trouble, albeit in this company's case, on a much smaller and more pathetic scale.

The people that were being targeted were Hispanic and did t speak much English. They would enter their ss # for one application but the cashier would have them sign both agreements and process both through the system.there is a process they are doing and many associates know how todo it .

'forced them to get both the sears card and the MasterCard unbenoinced to the member'

Puhleeezze - you can;t FORCE someone to do something then turn around and say it was unknown to them - a reasonably intelligent person would just say F.O.