Photo: RetailWire
It may not rise to the level of bad publicity that resulted when millions of customers had their personal information hacked in 2013, but the technical problems experienced at Target stores this weekend put the chain in the news for all the wrong reasons.
On Saturday, “an internal technology issue” caused long lines at Target stores and customers wasted no time going on social media sites to post their unhappiness with the situation. The outage, which Target said was not the result of a security issue, took registers down in stores across the country for a couple of hours before being resolved.
Upon discovering the problem, stores began positioning associates at entrances to inform customers of the situation. The checkout outage did not affect purchases made on Target.com and stores were able to fulfill orders placed online for store pickup.
Yesterday, due to a second technical glitch, Target’s stores were unable to process credit and debit card payments for about 90 minutes. This issue, Target reported, was set off by a problem at one of vendor NCR’s data centers. The chain said the issue was, once again, not security related.
“We know many guests had a frustrating shopping experience in our stores this weekend,” a Target spokesperson said. “For that, we are truly sorry. We never want to disappoint any guests and we’re working tirelessly to ensure these issues don’t happen again.”
A customer at a Target in Phoenix told The New York Times that people inconvenienced by the outage on Sunday were given $10 off their orders by the stores.
- Is Target still down? After long waits and store closings, nationwide register outage ends – USA Today
- Target says cash registers back online and customers can make purchases again after systems outage – CNBC
- Target customers report issues checking out for second day after weekend outage – CNBC
- Target Is Hit With Register Trouble Two Days in a Row – The New York Times
- Target's lousy weekend: Store has more technical problems it says were unrelated to Saturday's – CNN