JC Penney Files For Chapter 11 Bankruptcy Protection

Predicting the demise of Sears & Kmart since 2017!
Super S
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Re: JC Penney Files For Chapter 11 Bankruptcy Protection

Post by Super S »

storewanderer wrote: November 22nd, 2020, 12:54 pm

I heard stories of Sears Stores actually refusing to sell appliances to customers if customers would not buy an extended warranty with the appliance. I never had them push that hard for the Shop Your Way program though.

At least in the case of Sears, when you entered your phone number you typed it into the pinpad. So you did not have to verbally announce it to the cashier like at JC Penney.
I have never heard that story about appliances, but have heard about instances where some employees would argue about the Craftsman lifetime warranty. Usually it was a matter of finding somebody else to help you though. I have found that the commission based stores are the ones that push warranties the most though...when buying appliances at Lowe's or Home Depot it was a simple "no" and moving on.

I have only made one large purchase at Sears which was a riding mower 15 years ago which I still use. Things have broken on it, but I did not buy an extended warranty and have been able to repair things myself. Sears did close their parts centers though and some parts now have to be obtained via mail order/online, but I have also been able to source some things elsewhere as many parts are common to different brands. The next mower I purchase will likely not be Craftsman, even though the brand is now sold at Lowe's.

Moving back to JCPenney, they need to update things if they are going to roll out a loyalty program. Verbally announcing your phone number is not protecting your privacy. I will write down a password for my bank accounts when dealing with tellers in person instead of saying it, because you never know who is listening or recording stuff these days. I am no fan of loyalty programs but they need to take steps to respect your privacy.
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Re: JC Penney Files For Chapter 11 Bankruptcy Protection

Post by BillyGr »

TW-Upstate NY wrote: November 22nd, 2020, 8:46 am
Super S wrote: November 22nd, 2020, 7:28 am This sounds like a few years ago when Sears was aggressively pushing the Shop Your Way program.
And that's worked out very well for them hasn't it :roll: I totally depend on caller ID for my home phone (guess I'm one of the few people left with a landline and my cell is a flip phone so that qualifies me to officially be a member of the stone age I guess) and if I don't recognize the name or the number, I do not pick it up. And never mind phone numbers, I once forgot my card at home for an unnamed local store and this particular store doesn't ask for phone numbers. Instead, they want to see your drivers license. I never gave too much thought to it but this discussion (and others like it on this board) have made me draw the conclusion that all of this info. collection is just a little too intrusive to suit me. I think we as consumers have to ask ourselves is it really worth it to save a few bucks on an item that we're probably only buying because we perceive it as a good deal if we have to give up something all of us should perceive as our greatest possession-our privacy?
Not the only one with the landline left :)

Hopefully they didn't chop up your license when using it... ;)

As far as I remember, when Kmart was still around Albany we always had a card to scan for the Shop Your Way, so the phone number thing wasn't an issue.

One other one that is a bit better - Rite Aid, if you use a phone # in place of the card and want to redeem their Bonus Cash will ask for a 4 digit pin# to do so, so that's a bit of protection (I wouldn't mind if someone else used the # and earned some rewards for me to use).
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Re: JC Penney Files For Chapter 11 Bankruptcy Protection

Post by klkla »

The service @storewanderer received was terrible, but to be honest not that different than what service has always been like there. They have never had a good service culture (at least in my life time). This experience was due to a poorly trained worker and unmotivated manager. Nothing new at JCP.
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Re: JC Penney Files For Chapter 11 Bankruptcy Protection

Post by buckguy »

I think you're casting too broad a sweep here. Stores used to have some expectations of customer service, even discounters. The problem is that the floor staffing has been cut over the last 20-30 years and there no longer are many career sales people around and probably not many experienced managers.

You need a certain level of full-time staffing with incentives to stick around so that they know the merchandise and can help people navigate the ever more complex ways customers have to operate in order to get a good price. The last time I went to Kohl's, buying a commodity item--probably a polo shirt, required buying 2 or 3 to get the sale price and then at the register there was the store card thing and soliciting for their credit card. A certain kind of bargain hunter would have everything planned out and would be proud of the bargain, but really getting what you need a decent price is so much simpler and the internet makes that easier than going to a store.

All the buyouts and bankruptcies leave these chains in a place where they can't adequately staff, can't get out of this treadmill of phony "sales" and can't really merchandise. I would hope that having mall developers buy JCP might help, but I doubt it, history doesn't provide much hope for optimism---Taubman owned upper middle brow Woodward & Lothrop and Wanamakers and it didn't do them any good, and the combo of Debartolo and Dillard ruined similarly upper middle brow Hornes's and Higbee's, with Dillard taking over Higbee's and truly running the into the ground.
klkla wrote: November 23rd, 2020, 1:32 pm The service @storewanderer received was terrible, but to be honest not that different than what service has always been like there. They have never had a good service culture (at least in my life time). This experience was due to a poorly trained worker and unmotivated manager. Nothing new at JCP.
TW-Upstate NY
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Re: JC Penney Files For Chapter 11 Bankruptcy Protection

Post by TW-Upstate NY »

Look at Sears for example. People spent their entire working lives in one store and one dept. and made a darn good living doing it and then could look forward to a decent retirement as well. And their demise has been well documented right here on this board. It's just all part of the "dumbing down" of America.
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Re: JC Penney Files For Chapter 11 Bankruptcy Protection

Post by klkla »

buckguy wrote: November 24th, 2020, 5:00 am I think you're casting too broad a sweep here. Stores used to have some expectations of customer service, even discounters. The problem is that the floor staffing has been cut over the last 20-30 years and there no longer are many career sales people around and probably not many experienced managers.
My experience with JCP would definitely fall into that timeline. The first time I was ever in one of their stores was in the mid 1980's and the store was disorganized and dirty. The employees spent most of their time talking among themselves about personal matters and when they were actually working they were very slow. I've only been in a JCP five to ten times since than and it didn't seem like anything had changed.
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Re: JC Penney Files For Chapter 11 Bankruptcy Protection

Post by BillyGr »

TW-Upstate NY wrote: November 24th, 2020, 9:19 am Look at Sears for example. People spent their entire working lives in one store and one dept. and made a darn good living doing it and then could look forward to a decent retirement as well. And their demise has been well documented right here on this board. It's just all part of the "dumbing down" of America.
And some of those who didn't do that moved up through the company, such that those in the upper levels were people that started out working in the stores, which helped them understand how things that were done on at those higher levels would impact the workers back in the stores.
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Re: JC Penney Files For Chapter 11 Bankruptcy Protection

Post by rwsandiego »

klkla wrote: November 24th, 2020, 9:47 am
buckguy wrote: November 24th, 2020, 5:00 am I think you're casting too broad a sweep here. Stores used to have some expectations of customer service, even discounters. The problem is that the floor staffing has been cut over the last 20-30 years and there no longer are many career sales people around and probably not many experienced managers.
My experience with JCP would definitely fall into that timeline. The first time I was ever in one of their stores was in the mid 1980's and the store was disorganized and dirty. The employees spent most of their time talking among themselves about personal matters and when they were actually working they were very slow. I've only been in a JCP five to ten times since than and it didn't seem like anything had changed.
Until the late 1980's, my experience at JCP was limited to their Woodfield and Brickyard stores in Schaumburg, IL and Chicago respectively. Woodfield was a showpiece. Excellent service, well-maintained and organized, and well-decorated. Brickyard was not quite as nice, but was a decent store in its early days. When I started shopping at other locations I was shocked by how different they were. The Woodfield store was every bit as nice as a Carson, Pirie, Scott (one step down from Marshall Field's or Bullock's) but their other stores looked like bargain basements. I don't think I shopped at one between 1995 and 2010. Their Fashion Valley store in San Diego was quite nice in the early 2010's, but it quickly deteriorated. Last time I was in a Penney's here in Phoenix I could not get out fast enough.
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Re: JC Penney Files For Chapter 11 Bankruptcy Protection

Post by buckguy »

I'd forgotten about Brickyard--I went there a couple times when I lived in Chicago. It probably would have been a typical middle of the road store.

I go to Cleveland periodically for family reasons and the stores I've known best were Richmond Mall (now closed, the store outlasted much of the rest of the mall) and Great Lakes Mall, which both date to the 60s. Richmond was untouched for years and even had the funky P logo into the 2000s. Despite being a museum piece (probably untouched since the time they eliminated hard lines)it actually was well kept and stocked until a couple years before it closed, but the number of sales people continually dwindled. Great Lakes Mall was a late dry goods store that became an early full-line department store. It was pretty untouched through the 80s. I think it received a big remodel with the mall in the late 90s and it became very cluttered--they try to put as much on the main floor as possible, while the second floor (mostly home and odd things like sporting goods) is spread out, but again the staffing has continually dwindled and the displays are a mixed bag--they've redone some areas like shoes which are more like a self-serve store now, but not very professionally done.
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Re: JC Penney Files For Chapter 11 Bankruptcy Protection

Post by storewanderer »

buckguy wrote: November 25th, 2020, 6:32 am they try to put as much on the main floor as possible, while the second floor (mostly home and odd things like sporting goods) is spread out
This is exactly how they handled the store in Reno as well. It is like they want to squeeze as much product as possible onto the first floor but the way the store was built simply does not promote that. Add to it that they screwed their space up further by adding Sephoa into a middle space which completely hindered traffic flow, line of sight on the sales floor, and line of sight to the main exterior entry, and it only made matters worse. But it was just another thing. There is other space waste on the first floor due to the physical design of the building with restrooms (the men's being a single use gas station quality bathroom), a hair salon, an un-used catalog department, a portrait studio that may or may not be in use anymore, and what looks like a pretty large back room.

Even Sears designed its stores better than this. They put those "space waste" items that do not generate sales like restrooms, portrait studios, etc. on the second floor well away from usual traffic flow. Sears did usually have a large back room on the first floor but it was usually well hidden and not obviously obstructing a chunk of the sales floor.
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