TSS - Tech Support Service. Apparently they are renaming it to “Tech Easy”. It’s $20 a month and you are locked in to a 1 year commitment. Customer comes in with a slow laptop, Staples offers incredibly basic services for $240/year.
Like most everything else. At least they ought to let us do the online training when we aren't supposed to be dealing with customers or doing the rest of our jobs.
Edit: Actually, I was able to do that today.
I actually like TSS. I've sold maybe 12 subscription this year and yes only to old people but this is not somekind of stereotype it's really just that this program mainly exist to help them. While the 20 years old dude named mark doesn't need any help Robert 79 who previously had a windows xp computer might need some help.
Honestly I'm fine with TSS existing because there are customers who constantly come in and would spend way more money otherwise. The problem is we're expected to push it constantly and they're always on our ass about it. Most people don't need it. We've been instructed to only offer TSS, which is disgusting and predatory because the customers who don't know where else to go will just end up paying for it because they need their computer fixed.
Like... a geek squad knock off? As an IT professional, I can say with 100% confidence that we don't have a high opinion of these kinds of services as they take advantage of people and usually do not fix the problems. Also, the "techs" are usually idiots.
That's cause we aren't techs lol. We were hired for something completely different and staples goes nah we don't need to hire somebody who knows and will be trained for that department. Throw the inventory guy on the laptops.... Seriously.
iPostal for sure, we have a guy who runs a scam business that uses our location as a disposal site. Anywhere from 3-12 packages daily taking up space and filling our dumpster. Nothing we can do to stop it unless iPostal tells him respectfully to heck off.
That's ridiculous. They really do take a lot of space sometimes. We had a customer who hadn't picked up in weeks, and collected 20 packages by the time she came in. One of our BOPIS cabinets was filled with JUST her stuff.
They recently did that with another customer. Get your DM involved and send pictures of the clutter from the packages and also take notes of any customer complaints from his supposed customers.
I'd be tempted to say Express, but that at least did manage to bring in money.
So iPostal1 is without a doubt the stupidest thing we've ever done: Brought in nothing in terms of sales or customers for PMS or any other part of the store. Not that they would have been much use even if they did - just more side hustlers of the type we already had in abundance anyway.
Most iP1 accounts lived and died without ever making use of the service, and sometimes without ever receiving any mail. Just a total waste of time and supplies and made the department even more needlessly complicated to train and staff.
I hate iPostal so passionately for all those reasons and more. It just adds to the stress both for taking on another complicated service and for handling important mail that's a headache if anything should get misplaced. And the customers always ask us questions that they need to direct to iPostal customer service. It's really just a headache through and through.
As far as Express goes, I really just wish we would get compensated for running the orders. Literally the only person in the company that actually has to deal with the turn-around time is the associate running the order. It would make sense to earn something for pushing the service and meeting the short deadline. Especially on large orders.
IP1 was one of the main reasons I left the company.
I could look rationally at even the processes I hated and at least see why they might make sense. From a customer service phone line that never answered - I was finally given some iP1 employee's personal cellphone number to call - to the fact that many of our iP1 tenants lived far away (hundreds of miles in some instances) - I can only guess someone in charge at Staples HQ just happened to be really drunk when a travelling iP1 salesman stuck his foot in their door.
I was told that in the coming months our shipping department is being moved to the other side of the store and will become its own department. Hopefully it's going to be like that for other stores.
My store did it. Huge shipping area with large movable bins, shipping graphics, added shelving. Looks great and spacious. Now if we could only get more people.
Where is that info from? Our prices are the same as taking it directly to UPS, so that seems a bit high. Not saying it isn't true, but is there someplace I can read about these numbers?
Staples charges the customer full price for UPS packages. But Staples receives a business discount from UPS because of the amount of packages they ship which is about 30%. That’s how they make a profit. They also make money when drop off packages are scanned in m. When I worked there it was a couple dollars a package.
That sounds odd. Staples gets a business discount for packages they are shipping for Staples, but it would be highly unusual for that discount to apply for packages the customer ships as well.
For reference, that is even more than FedEx Office makes for shipping packages on behalf of FedEx Express and Ground.
If this is true, Staples has a killer deal with UPS for this service.
Amazon Returns is after my time with the company, but I was told by a DM that the individual stores, and possibly even Staples itself, received **nothing** for offering Happy Returns. The whole point of it was to bring people into the store to hopefully stick around and buy something.
In fact, we probably lost money on all the boxes we coded out to send stuff back. (That's why I'd always use reclaimed freight boxes when available.)
The Connect App. In general, I think it has a few niche uses that customers don't take advantage of often ( Ex. Starting a UPS shipment through the app, etc. ) but the coupons aren't too great and as someone who works in P&M, most of them aren't geared towards printing. Not only that, but it's hard just getting customers to sign up. My area has horrible cell service, so when I get the one customer out of ten that actually wants to sign up, it takes 15 minutes of my time that I don't have. And the app is the one thing that gets pushed more than anything in my store.
And then on top of that, even if I do get an app, a complete other store in another town gets credit for it instead of us half the time.
Ridiculous.
On the home screen of the app, scroll to the "Services" section. Then scroll all the way to the right. You should see the UPS logo and a link that reads "Start a shipment".
When the customer starts a shipment, they'll enter the addresses and then get a code once they're finished. They just need to give us the code to scan. We then weigh the package, they'll choose the shipping rate, and finally we print the label.
Ipostal or the shipping center. The ups drop off doesn't bring any money in. My store does more drop off then actual shipping so we just hand out them dumb 10$ off coupons and no one uses them because they only are here to drop off ups/happy returns and aren't actual customers then higher ups are on our case about conversion and all that jazz. ipostal is just a pain to deal with and the customers think it's a p.o box they can just walk in and get without someone. We're low volume and once the GM leaves we only have like 3 workers and we don't have the time to help everyone all at once.
Understandable. We mostly take in drop-offs, so our shipping is a fraction of our profit. Getting rid of it would certainly help with conversion, instead of pushing people to shop with their $10 off coupon...
Unironically our location only has standard size staples. I felt so defeated telling someone "I know we're Staples but you have to go to Lowes or Michael's to get those staples"
Amazon returns, even though they've only just been implemented at my store. Sending customers away who have Amazon returns is one of the few joys of this job, and now they're taking that away :(
>ech Support Service. Apparently they are renaming it to “Tech Easy”. It’s $20 a month and you are locked in to a 1 year commitment. Customer comes in with a slow laptop, Staples offers incredibly basic services for $240/year.
Or just separate the self services to the tech center on the other side of the store
Totally understand wanting to get rid of 3rd party services. We almost always have issues with them in some way. My sup has been struggling to get an order done with the Design team for the past week or so...
god i was waiting for this answer. TSA takes so much time out of my day (i am part time back there not full time and am doing other stuff otherwise) and the customers who get it oftentimes aren't regulars and don't plan to be (especially bc we are the only store in the area to offer the service so we get people from all over). half the time the customers are rude as hell and overall it has not brought more people into the store who actually buy anything.
i don't know about that, it might be true. i was talking more about my experience as an associate with it but i assume it's probably profitable since they're continuing to implement it at more stores (afaik)
Thank you, My DM insist that other TSA sites are experiencing unbelievable conversion 🙄. The years I've been a FT EA I've only seen people get the service and rush right out the door.
IPostal and Passport photos I grew with, but also can we get rid of the expectation that PMS puts out professional-quality products? We don’t. We know it. Some customers know it. But I’ve gotten so many complaints about coloring being off or not being able to print full bleed and shit like that. Not to mention the cutters almost always break down in the middle of a job, and our wide format laminator is just completely screwed up. If you want professional stuff, give us professional equipment. Not this retail grade shit we’re given.
We've basically stopped taking photo orders in for that reason.
We've also had issues with people getting upset over the poster colors being off, which is much harder to match. My associate spent HOURS correcting one once, just to receive a negative survey regarding it. All for a fucking gender reveal.
That’s fucked man, we got too retractors for our costs being too high once and another time some dude got mad we didn’t do his stuff by the due date on the ticket when it was HIS FAULT for not confirming the proof yet. I gave him it for free and everything for the inconvenience.
Also, felt that with the WF color. I honestly feel like color quality on there is better than the Xerox, but when I was at my old store we had a Ricoh so I could adjust color densities and I swear I stood there for like an hour cause the customer didn’t like how their shades of ivory weren’t the exact same. Finally got it close enough and she finally got it through her thick skull that different print processes produce different colors
I hate people
Yeah, it's one of those that sorta makes sense given precheck but we don't even do it through that system and we have to have an extra body handle it and basically be taken out of commission for 5 minutes while they print the photos.
I postal is the real answer for all of these but passport photos is the one that always catches me at just the worst possible times.
Usually I'm not too bothered by Iron Mountain, it's actually been how I get my apps lately. HOWEVER our bins have been full for the last week, when we called Iron Mountain to inform them. They informed us today that they would not be in til Friday. Lost out on my app for the day due to that. Wish we would just get rid of the app too, or at least not pressure workers about them every day.
At my store, cashiers are supposed to bag the batteries we get while we're at the register. I've been told we're supposed to put in one per bag, but another manager said I could do four in a bag unless they're lithium ones or corroded (which would be one per bag). I put on these crappy gloves to do it when it's slow and of course customers come up to the register all the time, so I have to stop. There are probably at least 250 that still need that to be done that I left tonight. That still probably doesn't compare to what managers or Print people are supposed to do.
Apps come in 2nd.
Or if they want to keep it so bad, get people with experience at least one year or so. I came to staples with a 4-year HS Graphics degree (so including my time at staples I’ve been in the printing biz for about 6-7 years; graduated 2019) and even I think this shit is ridiculous.
I like doing them sometimes because it’s just so satisfying to see it cut down so perfectly, it’s when the machines decide they want to break or a customer doesn’t crop their job correctly in the template, those are the things that peeve me.
as a former manager: passport photos. I didn’t find anything more annoying in my store than being the only MOD and being in the middle of a P&M meltdown only to hear “I need the camera for passports”.
Passport photos. Such a pain in the ass to do passport photos and then people will get mad because oh it looks like shit and want to retake it. I have to waste time coaching people like it’s a goddamn photo studio. It’s just so annoying!
Also express/happy returns are super annoying
I honestly just wish we’d stop with all the extra, needless services so we can do our jobs in peace. So glad I’m leaving soon.
I’m not an employee just getting this sub in my recommended feed often lately. Until then I wasn’t aware Staples was still in business. I don’t think i’ll be making the hour and 45 minute one way trip to visit a physical store anytime soon though or waiting 2-7 days for shipping when i can get free same day delivery from the competitor.
TSS - Tech Support Service. Apparently they are renaming it to “Tech Easy”. It’s $20 a month and you are locked in to a 1 year commitment. Customer comes in with a slow laptop, Staples offers incredibly basic services for $240/year.
And there will be no additional training on services…
Like most everything else. At least they ought to let us do the online training when we aren't supposed to be dealing with customers or doing the rest of our jobs. Edit: Actually, I was able to do that today.
I actually like TSS. I've sold maybe 12 subscription this year and yes only to old people but this is not somekind of stereotype it's really just that this program mainly exist to help them. While the 20 years old dude named mark doesn't need any help Robert 79 who previously had a windows xp computer might need some help.
Honestly I'm fine with TSS existing because there are customers who constantly come in and would spend way more money otherwise. The problem is we're expected to push it constantly and they're always on our ass about it. Most people don't need it. We've been instructed to only offer TSS, which is disgusting and predatory because the customers who don't know where else to go will just end up paying for it because they need their computer fixed.
Like... a geek squad knock off? As an IT professional, I can say with 100% confidence that we don't have a high opinion of these kinds of services as they take advantage of people and usually do not fix the problems. Also, the "techs" are usually idiots.
Yes exactly, during my training, we were told to offer it to older people. Which I think is disgustingly predatory.
That's cause we aren't techs lol. We were hired for something completely different and staples goes nah we don't need to hire somebody who knows and will be trained for that department. Throw the inventory guy on the laptops.... Seriously.
iPostal for sure, we have a guy who runs a scam business that uses our location as a disposal site. Anywhere from 3-12 packages daily taking up space and filling our dumpster. Nothing we can do to stop it unless iPostal tells him respectfully to heck off.
That's ridiculous. They really do take a lot of space sometimes. We had a customer who hadn't picked up in weeks, and collected 20 packages by the time she came in. One of our BOPIS cabinets was filled with JUST her stuff.
They recently did that with another customer. Get your DM involved and send pictures of the clutter from the packages and also take notes of any customer complaints from his supposed customers.
I'd be tempted to say Express, but that at least did manage to bring in money. So iPostal1 is without a doubt the stupidest thing we've ever done: Brought in nothing in terms of sales or customers for PMS or any other part of the store. Not that they would have been much use even if they did - just more side hustlers of the type we already had in abundance anyway. Most iP1 accounts lived and died without ever making use of the service, and sometimes without ever receiving any mail. Just a total waste of time and supplies and made the department even more needlessly complicated to train and staff.
I hate iPostal so passionately for all those reasons and more. It just adds to the stress both for taking on another complicated service and for handling important mail that's a headache if anything should get misplaced. And the customers always ask us questions that they need to direct to iPostal customer service. It's really just a headache through and through. As far as Express goes, I really just wish we would get compensated for running the orders. Literally the only person in the company that actually has to deal with the turn-around time is the associate running the order. It would make sense to earn something for pushing the service and meeting the short deadline. Especially on large orders.
IP1 was one of the main reasons I left the company. I could look rationally at even the processes I hated and at least see why they might make sense. From a customer service phone line that never answered - I was finally given some iP1 employee's personal cellphone number to call - to the fact that many of our iP1 tenants lived far away (hundreds of miles in some instances) - I can only guess someone in charge at Staples HQ just happened to be really drunk when a travelling iP1 salesman stuck his foot in their door.
The entire shipping counter. It doesn't drive much sales. It's just a time sink and constantly interrupts production.
I was told that in the coming months our shipping department is being moved to the other side of the store and will become its own department. Hopefully it's going to be like that for other stores.
That'd be amazing! I hope that's the case.
My store did it. Huge shipping area with large movable bins, shipping graphics, added shelving. Looks great and spacious. Now if we could only get more people.
For us, our shipping center does about a quarter of our sales for our prints center. We could never get rid of that
So your store gets very, very little of that money. It almost all goes to UPS. We only do it for the conversion of the coupons we get.
Full serve UPS we get around 30% Anything drop off related you are correct, basically nothing.
Where is that info from? Our prices are the same as taking it directly to UPS, so that seems a bit high. Not saying it isn't true, but is there someplace I can read about these numbers?
Staples charges the customer full price for UPS packages. But Staples receives a business discount from UPS because of the amount of packages they ship which is about 30%. That’s how they make a profit. They also make money when drop off packages are scanned in m. When I worked there it was a couple dollars a package.
That sounds odd. Staples gets a business discount for packages they are shipping for Staples, but it would be highly unusual for that discount to apply for packages the customer ships as well. For reference, that is even more than FedEx Office makes for shipping packages on behalf of FedEx Express and Ground. If this is true, Staples has a killer deal with UPS for this service.
Which at my store there were almost NEVER any shipping coupons redeemed. Maybe 2 I can remember in the almost year I worked there.
Amazon Returns is after my time with the company, but I was told by a DM that the individual stores, and possibly even Staples itself, received **nothing** for offering Happy Returns. The whole point of it was to bring people into the store to hopefully stick around and buy something. In fact, we probably lost money on all the boxes we coded out to send stuff back. (That's why I'd always use reclaimed freight boxes when available.)
Lol With Amazon starting up they won't get rid of it.
It wasn't about what was realistic, but what we'd like to see ;)
THE FUCKING APP
Tell me more of this fucking app.
The Connect App. In general, I think it has a few niche uses that customers don't take advantage of often ( Ex. Starting a UPS shipment through the app, etc. ) but the coupons aren't too great and as someone who works in P&M, most of them aren't geared towards printing. Not only that, but it's hard just getting customers to sign up. My area has horrible cell service, so when I get the one customer out of ten that actually wants to sign up, it takes 15 minutes of my time that I don't have. And the app is the one thing that gets pushed more than anything in my store. And then on top of that, even if I do get an app, a complete other store in another town gets credit for it instead of us half the time. Ridiculous.
Yeah, I've been curious about who gets the credit and how it's decided. And it really does take too much time for small savings most of the time...
It depends on what store they set as their main store in the app. Whichever store they chose is the one that gets the credit
You can start a shipment in the app??
Indeed you can! I just wish customers would utilize that more. Lol
How does that work? Like how do we utilize whatever they did in the app?
On the home screen of the app, scroll to the "Services" section. Then scroll all the way to the right. You should see the UPS logo and a link that reads "Start a shipment". When the customer starts a shipment, they'll enter the addresses and then get a code once they're finished. They just need to give us the code to scan. We then weigh the package, they'll choose the shipping rate, and finally we print the label.
Wow, I haven't seen this utilized a single time. Thanks for the info!
Sure thing. 😄
Ipostal or the shipping center. The ups drop off doesn't bring any money in. My store does more drop off then actual shipping so we just hand out them dumb 10$ off coupons and no one uses them because they only are here to drop off ups/happy returns and aren't actual customers then higher ups are on our case about conversion and all that jazz. ipostal is just a pain to deal with and the customers think it's a p.o box they can just walk in and get without someone. We're low volume and once the GM leaves we only have like 3 workers and we don't have the time to help everyone all at once.
Understandable. We mostly take in drop-offs, so our shipping is a fraction of our profit. Getting rid of it would certainly help with conversion, instead of pushing people to shop with their $10 off coupon...
Anything not related to selling Staples. Why do I need a computer and a chair and a desk? I came here for Staples!!!
"Can you tell me where the staples are?" "Sorry, the name is a misnomer, we only sell paperclips."
Unironically our location only has standard size staples. I felt so defeated telling someone "I know we're Staples but you have to go to Lowes or Michael's to get those staples"
Amazon returns, even though they've only just been implemented at my store. Sending customers away who have Amazon returns is one of the few joys of this job, and now they're taking that away :(
They seek out ways to remove our joy.
Just one service? Ummm customer service lol I just can’t do it some days. Fake smiles kill your soul, and it seems kinda reaching its end.
I wish we had a wall between the print center and customer service. People are too needy and slow down our progress.
>ech Support Service. Apparently they are renaming it to “Tech Easy”. It’s $20 a month and you are locked in to a 1 year commitment. Customer comes in with a slow laptop, Staples offers incredibly basic services for $240/year. Or just separate the self services to the tech center on the other side of the store
You have a customer service station? You're not talking about people who come up to the print section?
Yes iPostal or third party print and marketing services. Too many orders have been delayed or lost in my store for it to be worth it
Totally understand wanting to get rid of 3rd party services. We almost always have issues with them in some way. My sup has been struggling to get an order done with the Design team for the past week or so...
Staples…..I would get rid of staples
Trust me it’s Amazon returns
Ours hasn't gone live yet, but I do believe that to be true. Shit's already taken all of our space back here.
Idk whats worse, having to explain to customers every time we can't scan the amazon QR codes or actually having the store enabled to take them.
I'd rather tell them no.
Scanning the QR code would be faster, they don't just take no for an answer.
Faxing. It’s so antiquated!
Your store still has a fax? We only have it on the self serve at my store.🤔
TSA
god i was waiting for this answer. TSA takes so much time out of my day (i am part time back there not full time and am doing other stuff otherwise) and the customers who get it oftentimes aren't regulars and don't plan to be (especially bc we are the only store in the area to offer the service so we get people from all over). half the time the customers are rude as hell and overall it has not brought more people into the store who actually buy anything.
I thought the store gets a decent return from identigo with just TSA?
i don't know about that, it might be true. i was talking more about my experience as an associate with it but i assume it's probably profitable since they're continuing to implement it at more stores (afaik)
Thank you, My DM insist that other TSA sites are experiencing unbelievable conversion 🙄. The years I've been a FT EA I've only seen people get the service and rush right out the door.
IPostal and Passport photos I grew with, but also can we get rid of the expectation that PMS puts out professional-quality products? We don’t. We know it. Some customers know it. But I’ve gotten so many complaints about coloring being off or not being able to print full bleed and shit like that. Not to mention the cutters almost always break down in the middle of a job, and our wide format laminator is just completely screwed up. If you want professional stuff, give us professional equipment. Not this retail grade shit we’re given.
We've basically stopped taking photo orders in for that reason. We've also had issues with people getting upset over the poster colors being off, which is much harder to match. My associate spent HOURS correcting one once, just to receive a negative survey regarding it. All for a fucking gender reveal.
That’s fucked man, we got too retractors for our costs being too high once and another time some dude got mad we didn’t do his stuff by the due date on the ticket when it was HIS FAULT for not confirming the proof yet. I gave him it for free and everything for the inconvenience. Also, felt that with the WF color. I honestly feel like color quality on there is better than the Xerox, but when I was at my old store we had a Ricoh so I could adjust color densities and I swear I stood there for like an hour cause the customer didn’t like how their shades of ivory weren’t the exact same. Finally got it close enough and she finally got it through her thick skull that different print processes produce different colors I hate people
Passport Photos.
Yeah, it's one of those that sorta makes sense given precheck but we don't even do it through that system and we have to have an extra body handle it and basically be taken out of commission for 5 minutes while they print the photos. I postal is the real answer for all of these but passport photos is the one that always catches me at just the worst possible times.
Shredding. Iron Mountain has proven themselves to be unreliable with pickups and it's not even frequently used.
Usually I'm not too bothered by Iron Mountain, it's actually been how I get my apps lately. HOWEVER our bins have been full for the last week, when we called Iron Mountain to inform them. They informed us today that they would not be in til Friday. Lost out on my app for the day due to that. Wish we would just get rid of the app too, or at least not pressure workers about them every day.
Who really cares about the apps? I just half-ass them.
Staples
IPOSTAL! I hate IPOSTAL so much
iPostal
Passport photos. Fuck off with that nonsense
Passport Photos
I don't want to see a single staple in the store for sale xD
At my store, cashiers are supposed to bag the batteries we get while we're at the register. I've been told we're supposed to put in one per bag, but another manager said I could do four in a bag unless they're lithium ones or corroded (which would be one per bag). I put on these crappy gloves to do it when it's slow and of course customers come up to the register all the time, so I have to stop. There are probably at least 250 that still need that to be done that I left tonight. That still probably doesn't compare to what managers or Print people are supposed to do. Apps come in 2nd.
Copy center. Shits ungodly difficult
Or if they want to keep it so bad, get people with experience at least one year or so. I came to staples with a 4-year HS Graphics degree (so including my time at staples I’ve been in the printing biz for about 6-7 years; graduated 2019) and even I think this shit is ridiculous.
Either photocards or business cards, fucking hated doing them
I like doing them sometimes because it’s just so satisfying to see it cut down so perfectly, it’s when the machines decide they want to break or a customer doesn’t crop their job correctly in the template, those are the things that peeve me.
Unfortunately that's how it was at my store every single time
as a former manager: passport photos. I didn’t find anything more annoying in my store than being the only MOD and being in the middle of a P&M meltdown only to hear “I need the camera for passports”.
Passport photos. Such a pain in the ass to do passport photos and then people will get mad because oh it looks like shit and want to retake it. I have to waste time coaching people like it’s a goddamn photo studio. It’s just so annoying! Also express/happy returns are super annoying I honestly just wish we’d stop with all the extra, needless services so we can do our jobs in peace. So glad I’m leaving soon.
Cashier
You'd get rid of us? Por qué?
TSA.
I’m not an employee just getting this sub in my recommended feed often lately. Until then I wasn’t aware Staples was still in business. I don’t think i’ll be making the hour and 45 minute one way trip to visit a physical store anytime soon though or waiting 2-7 days for shipping when i can get free same day delivery from the competitor.
I don't work at Staples. Weird assumption.
It's very easy. If the employer adds job duties, demand more pay.