If you have any questions, walk to your terminal, do a return w/o receipt, and watch the prompts. Believe me when i say, I hate it to.

In closing I would remind everyone, if you are so worried about identity theft, USE CASH!

If you are one of the masses who allowed Congress to pass the Patriot Act, twice, this is your own fault.

The Patriot Act sates clearly that all, and i do mean ALL, financial transactions require a complete match between photo verification, state issued verification and federal verification, hence the license and SS# match. You already gave us your SS# when you signed up for the card (for the credit check) and the state and feds already have it. This, my friend, is the law. Associates were trained on this as recently as this month, the cards are, or are supposed to be at the registers. If all we did was match your DL number, you would be much more likely to be defrauded, not less.

As for the signature pads, you are completely incorrect. Sales associates have no access to any of the information that guests enter. This even goes so far as to when there is a credit mistake, an address change or a correction, and the associate connects the customer to our central credit center by phone, the associate hands the phone to the guest so they can communicate directly. Simply put “WE DON’T WANT TO KNOW.”

When you open a card for example, it prompts you for both your date of birth and your SS#, but the pad is where you enter it, not on the paper application. I mean, how much more secure can it be?? Fingerprint maybe?

As for identity theft, that’s both insulting and rude. How dare you accuse an employee of that intent. We only have access to the DL info, and buddy, I dont know where you live, but here in Ohio, ALL of that information is available on-line and in person, since it’s public information, just like court records, property tax recoreds or voter registration. And eye color? Dude, thats just stupid.

Furthermore, most stores have cameras that fire up the moment anyone touches the terminal. So even if there was some attempt at fraud, we’d be the first to spot it.

Since you do not indicate if you used your Macys card for the purchase or if you presented it at the return, if the associate had to do a lookup, them’s the rules. You chose to ask for store credit, not a return. If you had asked for a return, all you would need to do would be swipe your card, bingo.

CRLs of course are only valid if you purchase the merchandise in the store

As for Jim who wrote “I don’t see why this specific cashier had a problem and pressed so many keys because all you have to do is hit the return key, put the last four of the employee’s SS#,” I don’t know what store you worked for, but our terminals have never asked for the associate to do anything besides log in like they always have with their associate ID and PIN, just like a typical sale. At our stores the prompts go like this:

Login
T2 for return
if there is a receipt, scan the receipt
if no receipt, the next prompt is payment method
Macy card
Bank Card
CRL
Cash
FedFill (which is bridal)
MOC…

If you used your Macy card, they can back that out by matching the bar code to your card. If you used your bank card, they can back that out the same way. Since the transaction was on-line, it’s one or the other, I have never understood that a MOC, gift card or EZ can be used for an on-line purchase, since we cant do it over the phone in the store for example, but i admit i could be incorrect about that

If we have to look up your account and do a match, its for your own protection.

Now, the associate gets a prompt upon completing the transaction asking you which form of credit you would like. EZ cards, credit cards or gift cards are easy, and they only require your signature for the return, we dont even need your card.

You however said you wanted store credit and thats a different story completely.

Why all the hub-bub? Well lets say this merchandise was stolen out of your mailbox and someone was trying to heist it. You say that all you wanted was store credit? Thats EXACTLY the way criminals hijack the stores. If the store cannot verify your identity, then the transaction becomes a send-check, which goes to the merchandise address, rather then that of the person in front of the associate at the desk.

In both your and the associates defense, since Hecht’s was a heritage May company store, there’s no telling what POS system they are/were stuck with. The “easy on-line return” policy is indeed a Macy policy, but the stores only updated after the Christmas holiday season. prior to that, it was a conveluted and Byzantine process, trust me.

May company (which i also worked for) had some pretty crappy back end systems, and the Macys is in fact only now updating the 850 stores to a company wide POS standard “Smart Terminals” and the stores with the oldest terminals will be updated first. Even so, this will not be complete until 2010 as stated in this month’s internal Macy magazine.

Finaly you state “Amazon will continue to gain on brick-and-mortar stores if retailers like Macy’s cannot take advantage of their local physical presence to make the shopping experience easier and more enjoyable.” Macy.com is one of the fastest growing on-line retailers, and is now in the top 10 in terms of business.

And be nice to the associates, OK? They don’t make up the rules, they only follow them. The associate is only following the prompts on the screen. Yes, on-line returns are a bit troublesome, but a bit less troublesome than you sound. And let’s keep this in proportion, this is retail, not NASA.

In closing I must state that this posting does not represent the Macy company in any way or intent, but my own opinion and experiences.

Making your return should have been as easy as scanning the barcode on the packing slip from your online order. And there was no reason for you to be asked for your Social Security Number.

We are continuing to work on improving our policies, systems and training to enhance the shopping experience and provide fast and efficient transactions.

The executive in charge of this area of our company would like to talk to you directly to explain what happened and to apologize. If you will email your contact information offline, I will have him call you at a time that is convenient to you.

Again, thanks for shopping Macy’s and please accept our apologies for the inconvenience and concern you were caused.

We appreciate you taking time to post your concerns.

Jim Sluzewski
Vice President - Corporate Communications & External Affairs
Federated Department Stores, Inc.
email: Jim.Sluzewski@fds.com

That’s a plausible explanation. However, the employee did not admit the mistake, even after we fully explained the situation and insisted that this simple return should not need a SSN. There was a second employ that watched everything and then a store manager. None of them said anything about a mistake. They instead insisted that this was “corporate” policy that they could do nothing about.

I imagine the associate heard it some thing like this
George’s wife- I bought these jeans online with a macy’s gift card and would like to return them.
Employee- Goes to do an exchange….hear macy’s and card in a sentance, and instead of no receipt return with CRL (the little bar code on the invoice) she opts for no receipt return, bought with macy’s card. Okay she didn’t hand me her macy’s card…so lookup account….Geroge’s wife I need your DL…okay now enter your ssn on the pin pad device as prompted by register.
That’s probably what happened. Sorry but mistakes are made.

Thank you for chiming in. I’m glad someone from Macy’s decided to respond.

I agree that it’s unlikely that the sales associate was being malicious in any way. However, she and her colleague was both combative when we refused to provide a SSN. They did not even recognize how their request was unreasonable.

I also agree with you that training needs to be improved dramatically. Identity theft issues should be a very high priority. Sales associates should be trained that it is never acceptable to ask for a SSN, especially for a basic item return with a receipt/invoice. Even if a sales associate does not intercept social security numbers, there is still a potential that stored data with SSN could fall into the wrong hands.

The one lesson that I did learn is that online retailers, like Amazon will continue to gain on brick-and-mortar stores if retailers like Macy’s cannot take advantage of their local physical presence to make the shopping experience easier and more enjoyable.

i’m very sorry that you had such a horrible experience and didn’t receive outstanding service.

-Jane