Target Paid Membership Program?

[SamSpade]

867-5309........

Ah yes, I could have tried that, no?

[ClownLoach]

867-5309........

Ah yes, I could have tried that, no?

Usually works if I'm traveling somewhere and visit a chain I'm not familiar with and they're difficult about the whole loyalty card bit, don't have a store card for out of towners etc. I'll just ask "what's the area code here" if I don't know it then put in the number...

[storewanderer]

I thought Target Circle offers are automatic now?

This does NOT appear to be the case. I just was looking at some items in their app, and had to explicitly clip an app offer for 20% off some random Good & Gather product, and this "offer" expires today.

Or did they already reverse course on that?

[storewanderer]

Also looking at manufacturer coupons primarily on drugstore products and you have to "APPLY" these offers via the app before checkout to use. That is not "AUTOMATIC" at all...

So it appears to work like this:

"DEAL" - "auto applied" - these look like the old sale prices from the past...

"COUPON" - you have to "APPLY" it which is the same as clipping it. This is NOT automatic in the slightest.

"BONUS" - which is what this 20% Good & Gather offer I am referring to above is - again you have to actually "APPLY" it in order to get it. Again this is NOT automatic in the slightest.

[storewanderer]

Target appears to be re-entering the live plant business; there are live plant displays in front of the Reno Target.

It is also forecasted to go to a low of 31 degrees in Reno tonight. Most other stores don't have many live plants yet; the grocery stores that typically throw a few racks outside don't have any yet. Oops. At least they are trying?

[Alpha8472]

Does Target lose money if the plants die?

I have seen some neglected plants at some retail stores that looked like the employees didn't water them.

[ClownLoach]

Also looking at manufacturer coupons primarily on drugstore products and you have to "APPLY" these offers via the app before checkout to use. That is not "AUTOMATIC" at all...

So it appears to work like this:

"DEAL" - "auto applied" - these look like the old sale prices from the past...

"COUPON" - you have to "APPLY" it which is the same as clipping it. This is NOT automatic in the slightest.

"BONUS" - which is what this 20% Good & Gather offer I am referring to above is - again you have to actually "APPLY" it in order to get it. Again this is NOT automatic in the slightest.

Agreed, although their biggest problem was that they would have signs in the store and you'd have to find a way to apply the offer. If it has a sign or tag in the store it's automatically applied now. That alone is a big improvement as it did not work well if at all before, I always would find a offer that didn't apply.

The others are personalized offers like they had before. Shouldn't be anything with a sign in the store. They never said those were going away.

[ClownLoach]

Target appears to be re-entering the live plant business; there are live plant displays in front of the Reno Target.

It is also forecasted to go to a low of 31 degrees in Reno tonight. Most other stores don't have many live plants yet; the grocery stores that typically throw a few racks outside don't have any yet. Oops. At least they are trying?

They probably don't have anyone left at the corporate office who remembers how much money they lost on plants before. They only had full build nurseries in 4 western states so they could not achieve economy of scale or force good margins versus if they were nationwide. Home Depot and Lowe's have decimated the nursery industry, and now they have horrible quality at horrible prices since they have a duopoly in many areas. There are still some chains left like Armstrong in SoCal but they have skewed to more premium quality plants that don't really compete with the other two. HD has pushed small cell 6 pack bedding packs where the plants and soil are half the size of normal so the plants are easily stunted and never grow to full size, while Lowe's has tried to eliminate the standard "6 pack" of bedding plants and replace everything with 4 inch rounds or squares so one plant costs half what Armstrong charges for a normal six pack. The two have become the most expensive options which is nuts.

However there are a lot of pay by scan vendors these days for plants who don't seem to care what they kill, they deliver fresh plants and haul away the old ones. They dump the soil and dead plants at their nursery, reuse the pots and so forth. The soil has to be churned a bit like compost. I see it all over as we have nursery vendors everywhere here. Of course the pay by scan vendors are not going to give away inventory for decoration to be killed forever either, if they don't make money they're not going to be supplying Target.

[storewanderer]

Lowes and Home Depot seem to have prices that are not very good from what I see... across the store. This is why I'll always try to buy these home items at Wal Mart or anywhere else first... prices are often 30%+ lower for the exact same item. And why I am annoyed Target has such a lousy mix in this category as they could provide additional competition. There still seems to be some level of competition going on the large ticket items like the appliances and such. But for the random items in the store, Home Depot/Lowes prices are... very high. As I noted in the Ace thread I've found lower prices for years at some Ace stores and I don't think this is Ace trying to be competitive on price, I think this is Ace taking its historical mark ups, and Home Depot/Lowes taking astronomically larger mark ups that the Ace operators aren't even thinking of taking...

[bayford]

Home Depot and Lowe's have decimated the nursery industry, and now they have horrible quality at horrible prices since they have a duopoly in many areas. There are still some chains left like Armstrong in SoCal but they have skewed to more premium quality plants that don't really compete with the other two. HD has pushed small cell 6 pack bedding packs where the plants and soil are half the size of normal so the plants are easily stunted and never grow to full size, while Lowe's has tried to eliminate the standard "6 pack" of bedding plants and replace everything with 4 inch rounds or squares so one plant costs half what Armstrong charges for a normal six pack. The two have become the most expensive options which is nuts.

That's not at all what I've experienced with Home Depot in the Upper Midwest. They still sell most of their bedding annuals in 8-packs of "normal" size, or at least there has been no shrinkage of the individual plant cells. Although the base price for an 8-pack has experienced inflation in the past few years, last year, IIRC, it was still a decent enough $3.78.

Of course, this is in Menards territory, where Home Depot and Lowe's are kept on their toes to compete. In previous years, Home Depot has even offered 11% off rebates of Home Depot purchases within Menards' territory, matching the highly-popular 11% mail-in rebate program Menards generally runs throughout the spring and summer. Home Depot still has their rebate website up (https://www.homedepotrebates11percent.com) but has yet to offer any this year even though Menards started up their rebates weeks ago.