The Woolworths Thread (40 Viewers)

[BSammy]

Ditto to all the above. Did a 16.00-24.30 shift, left the place a mess, only had a 15 minute break and signed off 15 minutes late.

We gave one customer a $30 gift card because they ended up having to wait for over an hour before we finally fixed their account, the worst was another customer who had to leave his $500+ sale because after about an hour we had no luck with his card and he had to catch a plane or risk losing his mining job. (is it just me or does the 'any other card' option in the autorisation phone line lead to a no longer functional line.

I somehow found time to check corecomms and see it was nationwide, made me feel a little better that it wasn't just me going through this.

Just poured myself a litre of Gin and Tonic, I fucking deserve it after tonight.


I love all my staff, it was a terrible night and they all supported me well.




Do people here know how to phone up for an authorisation on the No Bank Do Manual thing? It took me ages to find our Merchant ID, but if it happens again, and they aren't with some small obscure bank, i am equipped to cope.

 

[Jolyon]

I was the same guys, I got told to call in my CSM while I was on the phone to IT for a good 2 hours (seems all stores were on the phone to IT), yes it was a major fault in our EFT systems and apparently they are now going to have to do a major reboot of everything. Our store lost a good 90,000 under our target because of it too.

 

[BSammy]

Ha we weren't on the phone to IT, I checked corecomms and it said it was nationwide. While calling the helpdesk(for something else) it said they were aware of the problem and had no eta, so i figured it wasn't worth wasting time with them, i wouldn't get through anyway.

It was possibly the worst shift I have done.

 

[nanakid12]

Yes, luckily us being a small store and all, it didn't create a massive headache. I certainly wouldn't have let a customer escape with a $30 voucher for something that we cannot control. 40 seconds, an inconvenience? Boo hoo.

Also, powlmao I think that the Initialising 191, 192, 193 are the different EFT lines? Im guessing it means its just trying to connect to them or something, but obviously being unsuccessful. We also had the pinpads just randomly not work, for example i got a variety of:

DELINED (with the following assortment of reasons)
BANK UNAVAILABLE
SYSTEM MALFUNCTION
TIMED OUT
COULD NOT CONNECT
ERROR
RETRY

We were having some minor issues with it earlier than 2:30pm, but that was just them being slow and all. Was it just Woolworths, or is it all retailers?

On an unrelated note, who else noticed the upgrade? I only did just yesterday, and what i noticed so far was the "BORROW FUNDS" under the NO SALE menu. Does this mean to switch money between registers if one is running low on change, even though this is technically against Mr. Woolworth's policy? Or is it for stuff like petty cash expenditures, etc.

I also noticed that we don't need to do EFT Settlements any more. Woo

 

[iMatthew]

On an unrelated note, who else noticed the upgrade? I only did just yesterday, and what i noticed so far was the "BORROW FUNDS" under the NO SALE menu. Does this mean to switch money between registers if one is running low on change, even though this is technically against Mr. Woolworth's policy? Or is it for stuff like petty cash expenditures, etc.

I also noticed that we don't need to do EFT Settlements any more. Woo

Yep, the "Borrow funds" button is just to record why the till has been opened. It gives it a little more of a reason as to why it was opened, instead of "Float in/out", "phone change" and "pick up".
Also, the screen is orange when rebooting a POS now, that's new too

 

[x.Exhaust.x]

Sigh, it's been a week now and I haven't received any reply from my local Woolworths yet... Patience is a virtue I guess.

 

[BSammy]

Yeah, I noticed the upgrade due to working 10pm til 6am while it happened, I passed most of the time messing about in the office, preparing the moneys for the morning.
The promotions show up different on the registers now. Not sure if it's annoying or not yet.

 

[nanakid12]

Also, the screen is orange when rebooting a POS now, that's new too

Indeed, we found out that fun fact yesterday. Quite exciting, isn't it? Luckily we didn't have to ring IT or anything, cause all the problems and busy-ness seemed to start as soon as the in-charge super went on her lunchbreak, and then all be magically tame as soon as she got back.

Sigh, it's been a week now and I haven't received any reply from my local Woolworths yet... Patience is a virtue I guess.

No email back yet? It may just be our area that it happens, but they NEVER hire during December. Well maybe they do, but not often.

Good luck though.

Yeah, I noticed the upgrade due to working 10pm til 6am while it happened, I passed most of the time messing about in the office, preparing the moneys for the morning.
The promotions show up different on the registers now. Not sure if it's annoying or not yet.

Yes! I looked at that and saw it was also happening with cigarettes too... except they still scan at the same price. It used to be something like:

LONGBEACH 40PK - $21.99
TOTAL - $21.99

Now it says:

LONGBEACH 40PK - $22.75
PROMOTIONS -$0.76
TOTAL -$21.99

I thought they were doing it to make the customer think they were getting a special... but I suppose not?

EDIT: Could this be considered illegal at all, with cigarette specials not allowed to be advertised or whatever?

 

[bensneddon]

Ha we weren't on the phone to IT, I checked corecomms and it said it was nationwide. While calling the helpdesk(for something else) it said they were aware of the problem and had no eta, so i figured it wasn't worth wasting time with them, i wouldn't get through anyway.

It was possibly the worst shift I have done.

I loved how the CoreComm said "floor limits have been increased" but didn't say what the increases were...

Also fantastic how it came through like 4 hours after the outage began.

We also had issues with the "Spend $100 and Save $10" voucher that was in our states major newspaper. The offer deactivated in StoreLine about 15 minutes before all the EFT issues started, so I never got around to fixing it.

I noticed that multi buy promotions are printed differently on the receipt. The reduction used to appear straight after the relevant items, but it now appears at the bottom of the receipt.

 

[britto89]

OK. To answer the "What is WOW Reversal" question. To my knowledge it is basically the opposite to an EFT sale and is Woolworths putting money back into someones account rather than taking it. This happens to me quite often if customers pull out chipped credit cards slightly too soon. if the transaction has already been started and the money removed from the account then it uses a WOW Reversal to put the money back. As for what to tell the customers I always say that "Something has gone wrong mid transaction and as a result it has drawn from your account, then put the money back and then taken it out again." I also advise them that they will have 3 transactions appear on their statement. Two debits for the sale amount and one credit for the sale amount meaning that they haven't been ripped off.

As for the new store release i thought this was very interesting that it works for cigarettes as i thought that would be illegal too. i am also not a big fan of it though because in liquor it was handy to look on the screens and see the price of beer/spirit slabs without having to actually press the button. now you have to do a proper price check for them which wastes time if you are in the middle of a sale and have another customer asking.

 

[britto89]

I loved how the CoreComm said "floor limits have been increased" but didn't say what the increases were...

Also fantastic how it came through like 4 hours after the outage began.

We also had issues with the "Spend $100 and Save $10" voucher that was in our states major newspaper. The offer deactivated in StoreLine about 15 minutes before all the EFT issues started, so I never got around to fixing it.

I noticed that multi buy promotions are printed differently on the receipt. The reduction used to appear straight after the relevant items, but it now appears at the bottom of the receipt.

what do you mean by "floor limit"?

 

[nanakid12]

what do you mean by "floor limit"?

I have had that used to refer to the amount that can be refunded or something? I'm guessing its the amount of money the store can keep of the customers before it submits it to the banks for processing.

I've also heard it used when doing a bulk-gift card purchase. You call IT and then they raise the floor limit on a certain register for say, 15 minutes so you can put the colossal amount of gift cards that a customer wishes to buy through. But apart from that, I can't tell you much else I'm sorry.

 

[bensneddon]

what do you mean by "floor limit"?

The maximum amount that will be approved when EFT is offline, without needing an auth number:

$200 debit, $90 mastercard/visa, $400 diners, $150 amex, $0 Woolworths Giftcards/Woolworths issued credit cards.

I have had that used to refer to the amount that can be refunded or something? I'm guessing its the amount of money the store can keep of the customers before it submits it to the banks for processing.

I've also heard it used when doing a bulk-gift card purchase. You call IT and then they raise the floor limit on a certain register for say, 15 minutes so you can put the colossal amount of gift cards that a customer wishes to buy through. But apart from that, I can't tell you much else I'm sorry.

Refund limits are different to floor limits.

Refund limits need to be increased for large refunds (over $500) and bulk gift card activations.

Always fun when people forget to raise refund limit before doing bulk activation...

 

[iMatthew]

So on Saturdy, this is why some credit cards would decline, because the transaction was above the offline floor limit?
The customer that was particularly annoyed spent a bit over $150 and she was paying by AMEX, we got "Bank Unavailable", same message as gift cards. That simply means it exceeded the floor limit?

So if we called I.T. and got our floor limit raised, it wouldn't have had any issues?
The REALLY weird thing is, we tried processing it again and it approved, I was like... "wtf?"

 

[Craven]

I don't want to do Christmas rosters.

 

[bensneddon]

So on Saturdy, this is why some credit cards would decline, because the transaction was above the offline floor limit?
The customer that was particularly annoyed spent a bit over $150 and she was paying by AMEX, we got "Bank Unavailable", same message as gift cards. That simply means it exceeded the floor limit?

So if we called I.T. and got our floor limit raised, it wouldn't have had any issues?
The REALLY weird thing is, we tried processing it again and it approved, I was like... "wtf?"

Correct - anything above the floor limits will decline, and manual EFTPOS procedure would need to be followed (imprinter machine, calling GFS for auth number etc)

At some points AMEX and Diners were not working at all for me though - not sure what that was about. Massive pain, as my store is in a high socio-economic demographic, so a lot of people use AMEX.

IT (or BTS as they are called now) can't raise the floor limits afaik. Floor limits are increased by GFS for all stores in the event of a prolonged EFT outage.

There were a lot of weird things happening on Saturday, so I think there was an element of luck (or misfortune) involved.

 

[iMatthew]

There were a lot of weird things happening on Saturday, so I think there was an element of luck (or misfortune) involved.

Agreed. It honestly seemed tempremental, if it wanted to work, it did, if it didn't want to work, it wouldn't. I can't explain how it declined the first time and then approved the second time if it was regarding the floor limit.

 

[x.Exhaust.x]

Got an interview tomorrow morning, lets see how it goes! Key advice is appreciated. (Since this thread is 848 pages long compared to the 74 pages of the Coles thread)

Edited: Didn't receive any call like Sirius mentioned in his post, only an email stating that I'll be interviewed by a member of the management team. Not even sure if it'll be a group interview as well, just need to rock up to the service desk and ask for someone... *Shrugs*.

 

[iMatthew]

Got an interview tomorrow morning, lets see how it goes! Key advice is appreciated. (Since this thread is 848 pages long compared to the 74 pages of the Coles thread)

Edited: Didn't receive any call like Sirius mentioned in his post, only an email stating that I'll be interviewed by a member of the management team. Not even sure if it'll be a group interview as well, just need to rock up to the service desk and ask for someone... *Shrugs*.

Looks like you will skip the group interview, that's a good thing.
It may be that your store just required a once off employee, because normally it is done all together (the group interview consists of candidates from a variety of different stores and roles in the area/region).

I never got any call when being recruited, it was all done via email (First email = group interview, second email = job offer after the second interview).
It depends on the circumstances, as described above, and also on your area or region HR I suppose.

 

[x.Exhaust.x]

Looks like you will skip the group interview, that's a good thing.
It may be that your store just required a once off employee, because normally it is done all together (the group interview consists of candidates from a variety of different stores and roles in the area/region).

I never got any call when being recruited, it was all done via email (First email = group interview, second email = job offer after the second interview).
It depends on the circumstances, as described above, and also on your area or region HR I suppose.

Wow, I have it easier than most of the candidates I suppose.

Yeah I'm pretty sure they've removed the calling system, and stick to their offers electronically now. Don't quote me on this.

Anything I need to know in particular for the one on one interview? It all seems alright, I guess. As long as my personality doesn't clash with hers lol.