When it comes to competing against Amazon, eBay or even Japan's Rakuten, one of the more challenging aspects is their third-party marketplaces, which give each a seemingly endless inventory at minimal risk. But the odds may be getting more even, as shoppers are starting to notice that some manufacturers are strictly enforcing their authorized reseller rules.
The immediate impact on shoppers is they may find that the expensive flat-screen TV, surround-sound speakers or refrigerator that looked like such a bargain on Amazon voids the warranty. The arguably-unrealistic expectation from consumer goods manufacturers—which sharply strengthens the hands of traditional e-tailers trying to fight against these third-party marketplaces—is that shoppers would not only notice the actual name of the merchant shipping the item, but would take the time to run that name on the manufacturer's site to see if they are truly an authorized reseller. Or they could just make the purchase from Target.com or Bestbuy.com and know for certain.
Consumers who have been fairly nonplussed by repeated reports of retail data breaches are expressing more worries about gift card frauds, fueled by retail lobbing groups.
This story in the California daily newspaper, The Fresno Bee details how at least one gift card exchange site, Otartel.com, “has disappeared completely.”…
Many of the initial media and analyst reviews of the device were less than favorable, pointing out things like an inability to flip through pages and the buttons obscuring some viewing areas. But in two very significant ways, Kindle is falling victim to the focus on specifics obscuring big-picture reality syndrome. Read more...
Is the human factor to blame? Managers "are going to have to build dependence on RFID. Instead of routing through styles of slacks, will they trust it? It's going to take a lot more than technology. People are going to have to change the way they work."Read more...
Getting to the bottom of these he said/she said exchanges—which is necessary to put these pieces of information into meaningful context—is made difficult because so much of the supporting material being referenced is still classified as confidential in the lawsuits surrounding the worst data breach in credit card history. Read more...
In the customer service area, one of the things that has gotten the most favorable attention has been click-to-call, with some of the larger merchants—including Amazon, BestBuy and LLBean—pushing the technology as a way to stop abandoned shopping carts, said Customer Respect Group President Terry Golesworthy. Read more...
Beyond the cost per-use, Soares said the trial continuously delivered a 100 percent accurate read-rate and delivered a "21 percent reduction in out-of-stocks for the items that were counted." The chain also saw "zero percent shrink" on the tagged items, which Soares said was especially noteworthy because the tagged items high-theft-targets such as MP3 players, laptops and desktop PCs. Read more...
Amazon also weighed into the alternative payment space, saying that it would make an equity investment in Bill Me Later. To varying degrees, this gives the three most powerful online companies a stake in each of the three top alternative payment players, with Google pushing its own Google Checkout, EBay banking on its PayPal service and Amazon owning a slice of Bill Me Later. Read more...
The move, which had been expected ever since U.S. District Court Judge William Young ruled that the case shouldn't be considered a class-action, will mean a different set of rules for the few financial entities that decide to pursue the case anew.Read more...
In a creative approach to address consumer search engine privacy concerns, Ask.com Tuesday unveiled a way for consumers to delete identifiable remnants from their searches.
The service—which the Web site has dubbed AskEraser—”deletes all future search queries and associated cookie information from Ask.com servers, including IP address, User ID, Session ID, and the complete text of their queries,” the company said. It’s an interesting move, but it’s unclear that it will much of an impact unless larger search engines such as Google and Yahoo adopt it.…
For all marketing and public relations professional throughout our audience looking to try and communicate to a retail audience, StorefrontBacktalk joined the Tech PR War Stories audiocast this week to discuss that very topic with David Strom and Paul Gillin. To listen to the discussion (it’s wrapped in just less than 10 minutes), please click here.…
"Occasionally, Marketing, Purchasing, Operations, or the Facilities Management group have researched a topic, vetted vendors, purchased product and only then considered that they might need IT assistance in order to provide whatever it is with a connection to the Internet," said the IT leader, who asked to remain anonymous. "Then, when IT takes a look at this new technology and tries to bring up all the issues that should have been considered (security, reliability, support, incompatibility with other systems in the store), IT gets labeled as being difficult to work with and not team players. It isn't a fair rap." Read more...
Leverage's vision is not radically different than other giftcard firms—such as PlasticJungle—but it's focus on the CRM aspect is. With a formula that will likely deliver about 40 percent of its giftcards directly from retailers with the remainder consumer to consumer exchange, Leverage plans on selling information about their consumers to retail and manufacturing advertisers, said Leverage CEO Mark Roberts. Read more...
"We are here to ask you to level the playing field between sellers that collect sales tax and those who cannot be required to collect the tax because they do business in the community on a virtual rather than physical basis," J.C. Penney Corporation Inc. Vice President and Associate General Counsel-Tax Wayne Zakrzewski said. Read more...
The PCI Security Standards Council has turned the chairperson role over to a Discover Financial executive.
Rob Tourt, vice president, Network Services at Discover Financial Services, will take over Jan. 1, replacing American Express’ Seana Pitt, who has served as chair since the council’s creation in September 2006. Per the Council’s bylaws, the chairperson is rotated annually from each of the five payment card brands that make up the Council’s Board of Directors: American Express, Discover, JCB, MasterCard and Visa. …
It’s certainly not unexpected that traffic is increasing to shopping comparison sites around the holiday season, according to the latest stats from Hitwise. But what is more intriguing is the Hitwise suggestion that younger consumers are abandoning the top comparison sites, to instead use much lesser-known sites.
“The composition of those visitors is changing markedly, becoming significantly older,” said an Internet Retailer story. “Hitwise finds that 51 percent of the visitors to those dozen sites were 45 and older, compared with 38 percent last year. Among web users 55 and older, the market share of the 12 top comparison shopping sites was up 56 percent, but it was down 27 percent among web users aged 25 to 34.” Does this suggest a change in consumer preference or merely that this segment is especially fickle? Or perhaps merely that they get bored much more quickly? …
This RetailWire story nicely sums up the action, but the essence is that Facebook tried sharing--without permission--customers' purchases with people on their friends list. Did Facebook cross the line? I'd rather say that they made this move inappropriately. The difference is that I do agree with Facebook that something very similar to this program could work, but it needs to be presented properly and at least start with more-than-ample opt-out options. Read more...
This is not merely a multimedia ad-displayer. It has the potential to interact with smartphones, smartcarts and contactless credit cards. So where are the retail IT leaders in all of this? Nowhere near, as IT isn't seriously involved with—and certainly not in charge of—most of the major retail digital signage deployments today. Right there, in a Unix shell, is what's wrong with corporate IT departments today.Read more...
The —which is not expected to be overturned, by either the appellate court or the judge himself—sets the many bank plaintiffs to fend for themselves.
But that was ordinary courtroom skill. The brilliant touch materialized about 16 hours later, on Friday morning, when Visa issued its TJX statement. Read more.Read more...
EX-10.1 2 b67665tjexv10w1.htm EX-10.1 SETTLEMENT AGREEMENT AMONG THE TJX COMPANIES, VISA U.S.A. INC. AND VISA INC. AND FIFTH THIRD BANK, DATED NOVEMBER 29, 2007.
EXHIBIT 10.1
SETTLEMENT AGREEMENT
Dated November 29, 2007
by and among
VISA U.S.A. INC.
and
VISA INC.
and
THE TJX COMPANIES, INC.
and
FIFTH THIRD BANK
TABLE OF CONTENTS
1. DEFINITIONS; CERTAIN RULES OF CONSTRUCTION 1
1.1. Definitions 1
1.2. Certain Rules of Construction 5
2. ACCOUNTING STATEMENT 5
3. ALTERNATIVE RECOVERY OFFER 5
3.1. Terms of Communication 5
3.2. Alternative Recovery Amount 6
3.3. Maximum Payment Amounts 6
3.4. Alternative Recovery Acceptance Report 7
4. OBLIGATIONS OF FIFTH THIRD; DISTRIBUTION BY VISA 7
5. TJX INDEMNITY 8
6. FINES, INTERCHANGE FEE RATE ADJUSTMENT, ETC.; OTHER MATTERS 8
6.1. Fine Suspension and Interchange Fee Rate Adjustment 8
6.2. Visa Pilot Security Program 9
6.3. TJX Spokesperson Activities 9
6.4. Covenant Not To Sue 9
7. RELEASE; CONSUMMATION DATE 9
7.1. Release 9
7.2. Conditions to Consummation; Consummation Date 9
8. OPT-IN THRESHOLD CONDITION; TERMINATION, ETC 10
8.1. Opt-In Threshold Condition 10
8.2. Termination: 10
8.3. Effect of Termination 11
9. REPRESENTATIONS AND WARRANTIES 11
9.1. Representations and Warranties of Visa 11
9.2. Representations and Warranties of TJX 12
9.3. Representations and Warranties of Fifth Third 13
9.4. No Presumption 13
-i-
10. MISCELLANEOUS 13
10.1. Notices 13
10.2. Succession and Assignment; No Third-Party Beneficiary 15
10.3. Amendments and Waivers 15
10.4. Entire Agreement 15
10.5. Counterparts; Effectiveness 15
10.6. Non-Severability 15
10.7. Headings 16
10.8. Construction 16
10.9. Governing Law 16
10.10. Jurisdiction; Venue; Service of Process 16
10.11. Specific Performance 17
10.12. Waiver of Jury Trial 17
10.13. No Admission of Liability 17
10.14. Public Announcements 18
-ii-
EXHIBITS
Exhibit 3 — Form of Alternative Recovery Offer Communication, including Alternative Recovery Offer, with the following …
November 30, 2007 10:32 AM Eastern Time
Visa and TJX Agree to Provide U.S. Issuers up to $40.9 Million for Data Breach Claims
U.S. Visa Issuers Eligible to Participate in Speedy, Alternative Recovery Program
SAN FRANCISCO–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Visa Inc. announced today it has negotiated an agreement with The TJX Companies, Inc. (TJX) and its U.S. acquirer to offer an alternative recovery program to U.S. issuers that may have been affected by the retailer’s previously announced unauthorized computer intrusion(s). The retailer will pay up to $40.9 million to fund the program, which requires a certain level of participation by issuers for the offer to be finalized. Visa is supporting the program and presenting the optional offering to eligible issuers.
"We believe issuers will benefit greatly by participating in this program because it offers immediate recovery on their data breach claims," said Ellen Richey, head of global risk management for Visa Inc. "This agreement demonstrates the importance of retailers and the payment card industry working together to protect cardholder data. Additionally, it’s clear the impact of a data compromise harms all payment system stakeholders — merchants, banks and consumers alike. We hope one outcome of this resolution is recognition that a greater investment in security is good business."
The agreement, which is contingent upon acceptance by financial institutions representing 80 percent of the eligible U.S. Visa accounts affected by the data compromise, also includes mutual releases by TJX, its U.S. acquirer and Visa related to the retailer’s data compromise. All U.S. Visa card issuers that experienced counterfeit fraud losses on accounts that were used at TJX’s U.S. stores during certain time periods identified by Visa or that had operational expenses related to the accounts involved in the TJX breach and flagged by Visa will be eligible to receive some financial recovery this calendar …
In the report, Shawn Henry, an FBI agent specializing in high-tech crimes, showed an undercover agent making a buy of some credit-card information, including address, Social Security number, ATM PIN and mother's maiden name. Given that the piece is focused on retail data security problems, it's logical to infer that the data shown was grabbed from a retailer's database. But no retailer retains that level of detail, meaning the information would have almost certainly come from a bank, not a retailer. Read more...
A good example of that confusion cropped up this week when VanDyke Software released the results of its IT Security Survey of 350 IT managers and network administrators. Among its findings: "33 percent said they were compliant and 48 percent said they were very compliant." Not a good sign. Read more...
Intel’s out there trying to find some IT folk “doing extraordinary things with computers” to be used on a new Intel Web site. (Yes, there’s apparently money involved, too.)
One of the Intel searchers described the target usage thus: “It could involve art, design, sustainability, environmental, technology-integrated-into-lifestyle. The only requirement is that is have a high ‘Wow’ factor, above and beyond being of general interest. Something innovative, extraordinary to look at, a radical departure from what’s gone before.” Anyone interested, please contact me at eschuman@storefrontbacktalk.com and I’ll connect you with the searcher.…
Cards issued by European banks when used online cross border don't usually support AVS checks. So, when a European card is used with a billing address that's in the US, an ecom merchant wouldn't necessarily know that the shipping zip code doesn't match the billing code.
-Marc
