Tuesday, September 1, 2015

Tuesday's Rant: Target's Inventory Issues

On Tuesdays I sometimes take the opportunity to rant about something I do not like about Target… because although I love ‘em to death, they ain’t perfect. My current issue with them is illustrated by this pic I snapped the other day in my local store. At best, the dairy inventory is spotty, and I've found this to also be the case in other areas of the food and beverage aisles. I also had trouble finding fresh juice the other day as well as Babybel cheese. And last weekend they were completely sold out of onion rings in the freezer section.

Consumerist even had a recent post about Target's inventory issues, with Target CEO Brian Cornell stating their stocking problems are "unacceptable", and declaring that the retailer’s “incredibly complex supply chain” is simply "outdated". Whatever the issue, Target needs to fix it, and soon. And it goes beyond inventory shortages; it's also about being consistent with what's in store and what's available online. Remember the blouse I blogged about yesterday? It's been in stores for weeks, yet still isn't available on Target's website (along with a whole slew of other new Fall merchandise).

7 comments:

Susan said...

We are moving from suburban southeastern Michigan to Washington, DC. Whoa.
Targets in the 'burbs are so much nicer than the DC stores. It's shocking. I'm accustomed to Targets that are perfectly organized and well stocked. The stores in the DC area look like they've been ransacked. Super disappointed.

Target Addict said...

That's interesting, Susan. Sorry to hear your new local stores are a disapointment!

Unknown said...

Target in Santa Clara has the same inventory issues constantly - so disappointing, not only groceries but household items too - on some days the entire shelves of cleaners and things are bare.
And don't even get me started on pricing - our Target apparently in a more upscale area (ha!), so our prices are higher than ones in neighboring store 2 miles away. And the prices at the register quite often ring $0.50+ more than the prices indicated on a shelf tag (milk, chocolate, frozen items etc). Ugh!

Elizabeth said...

Big issue!!! They were out of clorox clear free bleach for 5 months or so!! I also see other things that have been missing too.

Critifur said...

This made me laugh, Target always seemed like the most modern tech savvy "discount big box" store, so I am strangely always shocked when things go so wrong, and they blame it on being outdated.

It took me an entire day to order a pair of athletic shoes on the website. It has been about a year since I ordered anything from them. It was maddening. I would sign in then, go to the shoes, put them in my cart, the the cart was empty, then it would ask me to sign in again. I went back to the shoes and the site put it self in a loop, when I go to the shoe page, the site on it's own would go to the sign in page. I had to reboot my computer after clearing my cookies and history to get back on the site, and finally order the shoes. I can't believe after all these years and issues that Target still has such a screwed up website and shopping system.

Target Addict said...

Critfur: the ironic thing is that Target used to use the same backend web system as Amazon, and back then, everything worked smoothly. But a few years ago they decided to build their own e-commerce platform, and after all this time they still haven't worked the kinks out! Don't even get me started on trying to do a 'search' on Target.com. Their search engine is awful and turns up all kinds of random products in no way related to the search term!

Critifur said...

Oh, I remember the changeover well. They just didn't want to pay Amazon it seems.