Target Stock Dips Following Weekend Register Outages
MINNEAPOLIS (WCCO) -- Target's stock was down about 1 percent as of late Monday morning, following a rough weekend of outages in its stores.
Store registers were down for two hours on Saturday, and then again for about 90 minutes on Sunday. Saturday's outage left customers across the country waiting in line. Target says the outages Saturday and Sunday were not related.
The retailer says the Saturday outage was caused by an error made during regular system maintenance. Target blames Sunday's problems on NCR Corporation, which provides its registers.
George John is a professor Marketing at the U OF M Carlson school. He said,
"The good news for the company is that's going to blow over," said George John, a marketing professor at the University of Minnesota Carlson School. "The place where they can really stub their toe is if they don't manage it well -- do something for the people who were annoyed."
A check of Target's Facebook page shows, in many cases, individual stores did just that. Countless customer comments from around the country thank Target staffers for being helpful and, in some cases, even passing out $5 gift cards, drinks and snacks during the long wait. Customers we spoke with Monday are understanding.
"That is kind of the way it goes with technology, as awesome as it is you are going to have problems with computers," Target shopper Jillian Bryant said.
A potential concern for Target is that an apparent problem with just one part of their vast supply chain brought this Fortune 500 company's sales to a halt.
"It boggles the mind that all the thousands of stores Target has all went down together," John said. "You would think they would have some resilience built into the system."
Over the weekend, Target apologized to customers. On Monday, the company had no additional comments regarding the incidents. They also said in both cases this was not a breach and no personal customer information was compromised.
WCCO did reach out to NCR, the cash register corporation, and did not hear back.
