Evan Schuman's StorefrontBacktalk

On March 29, lawyers officially representing the class—that's merchants who have accepted Visa and MasterCard payments since 2004, which means virtually all retailers—complained to U.S. District Judge John Gleeson about the websites set up by the National Association of Convenience Stores (NACS) and the National Grocers Association. Such sites as MerchantsObject.com offer both arguments against the settlement and tools to let merchants automatically send opt-out letters to the court, so they won't be covered by the settlement.Read more...

The chain may eventually use that data to promote specific products aimed at EV drivers, said Brian Koontz, director of strategic corporate development for Ecotality, which runs the network of charging stations.Read more...

Johnson had already reversed many of his decisions that were the most unpopular with shoppers—including his elimination of sales, discount pricing (including "mark up to mark down") and coupons. And then there's Johnson's beloved shops-within-the-store concept—which isn't likely to be reversed, mainly because it was originally the brainchild of a former Sephora executive with a familiar name: Mike Ullman.Read more...

The precise methodology of the accused thief, Mark A. Douglas, is not clear, but he apparently created a list of Macy's account holders and then used various techniques to learn their Social Security numbers. Making the false identifications—with the real shopper's name and a picture of Douglas—seems to have been the easy part. Although sophicated cyberthief techniques could have been used to create that list of Macy's cardholders, it might also have been done as easily as standing near a Macy's cashier and listening.Read more...

Beyond personalization, there is a very practical reason to insist that companies get on the phone for these deliveries: to force shoppers to listen. On the Web, it's very easy to post all kinds of restrictions ("Must call by 1 p.m." or "We're not responsible for traffic jams or road closures") that shoppers won't read and they certainly won't internalize.Read more...

For the last couple of years, retailers have had this intense love-hate relationship with self-checkout. Chains have touted "customer service" as their reason both for yanking the self-checkout units out and for adding more of them. Higher theft rates have been reported in some stores and not others. Much of it is like any other retail IT deployment, influenced sharply by how much attention is paid to the deployment and how the customers in different neighborhoods — based on demographics — react to the machines. But the idea of requiring CRM to self-checkout is a new twist. Chains — and that's triply true for grocery — have always struggled getting shoppers to use their loyalty cards. To be fair, many of those difficulties have been self-inflicted.Read more...

One of the results of StorefrontBacktalk‘s being acquired back in December is that we are going to be expanding into coverage that goes beyond Retail IT into other areas of retail. The first example of this launched last week and is a daily newsletter and site called FierceRetail.

The site applies the same kind of perspective, analysis and bad jokes that StorefrontBacktalk has always delivered, but we can now explore issues way beyond IT. Consider our coverage of an unorthodox Apple patent, the reasoning behind the Sears Portrait shutdown, why Target’s Manatee mishap is a lot worse than it looked, Samsung’s real retail strategy, why Best Buy and Target’s Geek Squad alliance was doomed and stats showing Visa having all-but-cornered the debit market. It’s all free, of course. If you’d like to sign up, our latest thoughts will be in your Inbox early each morning.…

There are quite a few reasons for the lack of accuracy in these databases. First, loss prevention officers are not there to establish the truth as much as they are there to protect the store brand and the store itself. If no police charges are filed and an associate is simply fired, there can often be an attitude that there's no reason to take a chance once an accusation has been made. Conducting a true investigation is time-consuming, and although some LP officers—especially those with a law enforcement background—have the training to conduct one, few can justify the time.Read more...

When setting policies and when talking with shoppers after a breach, communicating the message that the retailer is the only victim may prove to be self-fulfilling, as you'll quite likely be an imminent victim of lost revenue and thrown-away loyalty. When a crime has been committed, attitude and empathy go a long way — and they are among the hardest things for many chains to deliver.Read more...

The ruling dealt with the narrow area of recreated music, once the original producer has stopped selling the initial song. But the court's decision is likely to be applied to many kinds of resale efforts, at least in terms of copyright restrictions. In other words, pay once and sell many may have some new retail hurdles.Read more...

The $1,500 necklace was indeed supposed to be marked down, but only to $479, not $47. Things like this happen online with annoying frequency. But in-store? This raises several questions: Macy's described the error as "a mistake [that] was made in a recent Macy's advertisement," according to Holly Thomas, a Macy's VP for national media relations. Was that mistake replicated in the pricing database, accessible through POS? If the wrong price existed only in the print ad, what happened with the checks-and-balances that are supposed to exist in-store? When an associate did a scan and saw $479, didn't a $47 ad activate any alarm bells? No one thought to check with a supervisor?Read more...

In an interesting small piece out of Washington, it was noted that U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts had been hit by a credit card breach. It happens. What made this piece interesting is that the Chief Justice was apparently overheard telling his Starbucks barista and his local D.C. barber about the breach, by way of explaining why he wasn’t using his usual credit card.

Our initial reaction was, “How times have changed. It wasn’t that long ago that coffee and haircut payments were almost always done in cash. It’s certainly interesting that he felt the need to explain and justify his greenback move.” But it could have been for other reasons. By the way, clearly, the Chief Justice doesn’t use a Starbucks card or Starbuck’s mobile app. (Just saying.) Could the judge of judges have been trying to let people know that data breaches are widespread and that no one is safe, that if the Chief Justice can

get hit, anyone can? Or maybe these were simply longtime associates and he would have felt the need to explain any change in behavior? (Seems the Chief Justice still has a little pull, as he told those colleagues that the suspect apparently attacked …

But let's turn it around: If a customer isn't a pure-play showroomer who really just wants to see whether that gadget looks cheesy or that blouse is the right color before buying on Amazon.com (NASDAQ:AMZN), what kind of in-store technology can help associates do a better job of helping customers find what they want—and convince customers that here and now is the right time and place to buy it?Read more...

QR codes have always been deceptively easy to use, for anyone other than shoppers. Business Insider recently some of the worst QR code deployments it could find and it’s worth a look.

But the retail examples were particularly interesting, such as Subway putting them on employee shirts, which is a place that employees report no one even tries to scan. But our favorite, depicted here, is a sign on how to use QR codes. And to give the lesson? Yep, the shopper has to scan a QR code. …

"The world has changed dramatically in the last two decades and it may be that the physical presence test is outdated. An entity may now have a profound impact upon a foreign jurisdiction solely through its virtual projection via the Internet," the court said. "That question, however, would be for the United States Supreme Court to consider. We are bound, and adjudicate this controversy, under the binding precedents of that Court, the ultimate arbiter of the meaning of the Commerce Clause."Read more...

These merchants typically use the simplest SAQ, SAQ A. They also always (in Walt's experience) consider their Web server out of their PCI scope, because that server does not "store process, or transmit" cardholder data. Instead, the server redirects the user to a PCI-compliant third-party service provider that processes the card transaction for the merchant. The conclusion is understandable. An E-Commerce merchant's SAQ A addresses a very small subset of PCI DSS. It includes parts of only two requirements: physical security of backups and paper records that may contain cardholder data; and managing the PCI service provider. Processing is outsourced, and it is outsourced to a PCI-compliant service provider. What could be simpler? Oh, and we should add: What could be more wrong than that conclusion?Read more...

Manufacturers have long been using copyright law, which is intended to protect certain types of expression, to prevent this practice. The Supreme Court said no.Read more...

When Lands’ End sent out a 25-percent off E-mail promotion last week, there was a programming glitch that caused the page to simply not work. It happens. To rectify the situation, the apparel chain owned by Sears (NASDAQ:SHLD) sent a corrected version of the campaign out to shoppers, only this time the subject line said nothing more than “Oops. Here’s the working promotion.”

The message included no explanation about the non-working promotion, which caused no shortage of baffled shoppers. But was there a better way? On the one hand, had a shopper tried the earlier promotion and been frustrated, that subject line might very well prompt him or her to try again. And those already frustrated shoppers might have simply ignored a second message with the identical subject line. For recipients who had not noticed the earlier message, would the baffling message make them more or less inclined to open it? Customer service reps for Lands’ End said they were inundated with complaints about the first E-mail. But wouldn’t more of an explanation help assure shoppers that the link could be trusted?…

But the newly christened L Brands won't have that moniker for long. "The Company expects to announce a new permanent name for the Company in the months ahead," the Limited-to-L filing said. That suggests either something went very wrong with a new name the company planned to use or executives simply forgot about the name-change requirement until the deadline arrived—and then had to scramble to switch to a name nobody wanted.Read more...

Wait—isn't losing control of CRM data the biggest reason chains aren't wild about digital wallets in the first place? Wasn't everyone worried that Google might somehow share transaction data with a chain's competitors? Apparently, that fear was well-founded—just misplaced. It turns out the people who will do anything to grab CRM data are the card brands and issuers.Read more...

Given that its program would deliver expensive value in the form of free food and drink at its stores, the first priority of the rollout was to try and discourage fraud. And that involved some creative packaging and identification mechanisms. And a choice to exclude mobile from the launch.Read more...

The coffee chain's first-ever daily deal offered a $10 giftcard for $5. The site indicates that more than 100,000 people purchased the coupon, but—like every other crash—there's no way to know how many tried to purchase the coupon and couldn't. Without knowing that figure, it's hard to deal with the fundamental philosophical issue: Did the crash make the campaign do more harm than good? If 100,000 prospective shoppers saw the order, but 800,000 were frustrated by the crash and potentially alienated, the popular campaign isn't necessarily a good thing for Starbucks.Read more...

One result of this generational change is that Walt is being asked some of the same questions he was asked five or more years ago. The questions range from whether pre-authorization data is in scope (treat it like it is) to the feasibility of E-mailing card data (a seriously bad idea) to what constitutes effective network segmentation (think "air gap"). Fresh perspectives are always welcome, so the implications of this generational change for merchants and QSAs alike are generally positive. But with new compliance staff and assessors come fresh challenges and approaches that can impact every merchant and service provider. Read more...

Customer service is one of the hardest things to reliably, consistently, accurately and—here's the hardest one—meaningfully measure in retail. Other top customer service performers according to the survey are, in order: PetSmart, BJ's Wholesale, Walgreens, AutoZone and Home Depot. Weak performers include: JCPenney, Marshalls, Gamestop and 7-Eleven. (Note: JCPenney has the distinction of being the retailer that suffered the largest drop in customer service ratings from last year to this year. JCPenney dropped 6 percent. The biggest retail gain during the same period? Office Depot (NYSE:ODP), which boosted its score by 11 percent.) Read more...

eBay marks the second direct assault on Amazon Marketplace in as many weeks. The first came from Germany, where government officials are challenging Amazon's ability to force Marketplace merchants to always give Amazon their lowest prices. And a federal class-action lawsuit in the U.S. is saying that Amazon delays its payments to other merchants deliberately and for too long. None of these moves can slow Amazon's marketplace efforts much, but they don't have to. To the extent that it makes Amazon's third-party merchants itchy to look elsewhere—perhaps into the waiting arms of eBay or Walmart.com (NYSE:WMT)—then Amazon has reason to worry, because the advantages it gets from these merchants extend well beyond the revenue commissions.Read more...