Because I know that the Staples people read this, I thought I'd post that the frequent network failures in stores are inexcusable and are costing this company a fortune in lost sales, diminished morale and very angry customers. Today stores again lost the ability to process credit and debit card transactions (among other things) for a third time in less than two weeks. Aside from being ridiculous on many levels, there just seems to be zero accountability as it pertains to reliable in store systems. Why is this accepted? What kind of company treats customers and associates like this? Please fix these constant problems and maybe consider thanking the stores for constantly having to manage these problems and apologize to all of the customers for the company's inability to manage it's IT systems. Stores don't get a pass and are held accountable. Why does IT and store operations get to be so inept and everyone just looks the other way? It's amazing that Staples just continues to drive retail into the ground and nobody seems to care.
8 replies (most recent on top)
NOT FIXING THIS CRITICAL ISSUE... It's a clear signal folks. Need I say more?
"You guys that are still there are so screwed!"
Undoubtedly....it will just continue to get worse. They will not put any money into fixing this old clunker. They will simply jerry-rig issues and not care about the associates they put the burden on and the customers they piss off.
Maybe...just maybe ....when they get to the point of closing enough stores and opening or reflowing stores into the showcase store they are proposing they will look into reliable POS/Networking.
I would compare Staples to a third world country on this issue, expect some third world countries actually have better network and POS infrastructures than Staples specifically and the USA in general.
What do you expect from a company that outsources IT and buys systems software "off the shelf"?
Hello, this is Apu, how I can I assist you? Oh, I can't help, I escalate to tier 2.....three hours later still waiting for tier 2....You guys that are still there are so screwed!
This was a problem two years ago when I was a GM. They either, one.....did not pay the bill, two.....are too ignorant to realize the burden put on the customer and associate, or three and most likely.......don't care, likely laugh about it and NO ONE IS HELD ACCOUNTABLE. I owned a company if this happened in my business and I knew the person responsible, they would be fired and ALL ASSOCIATES would know. Face it folks this company border lines a Looney Tunes cartoon, all that is missing is for Porky Pig to pop out and say "That's All Folks!". The pop out is not far away!!!!!!!!!!!!!
When there are POS and network outages for hours at time the DMs should be forced to go out to stores and help.
It's bad, REAL bad. Morale is at an all-time low and getting worse. Constant threats about hitting goals yet we can't even have operating registers/networks? Stick a fork in it.
I've always heard all sorts of car analogies before but this one is spot on. There's no point in fixing this old, broken rust bucket.
LOL.... It's kind of like finding out something is wrong with a car you are planning on getting rid of anyway, but you can't afford a new car. Like a bad starter....so it works randomly and makes you late for work, etc. With everything else wrong with the car, is it worth fixing the starter?
We see network outages at Staples more often because we are there far more often. When I go shopping on my own time I don't think I have ever had an issue preventing use of my credit card or check or giftcard, at any retailer. I am so sick of calling IS support and getting Indians, They need to upgrade both the hardware and the staffing of the IS dept if they really want it fixed.
Framingham simply doesn't care.... fixing the network will come out of exec bonuses, and that Can't happen.