I read recently that Walmart and K Mart and some other places were changing over to Fiscal Year 2000 recently. Has anyone heard anything on how they faired. I think it would be real interesting to know. But, I figure if they faired bad we would of already heard about it.

It kind of makes me wonder when people say there is going to be some early glitches on 1-1-99 and it is uneventful and then these places change over this past weekend and you here nothing...once again uneventful...I am beginning to wonder if the media has a better spin on this thing than we do.

Could someone please help me out. I am having one hell of a time deciding who to believe. As far as I can see though we are 0 for 2 in predicting the glitches so far.

-- PMM (grute22@yahoo.com), February 02, 1999

Answers

My linguistic intuition tells me this actually IS a troll. The key is the just-too-casual ungrammaticality of the phrase: we would of already heard ...

-- Blue Himalayan (bh@k2.y), February 02, 1999.

A snip from my letter to Jeff Porter, reporter for the Arkansas Democrat Gazette, who wrote

Computer date change likely to be uneventful

in yesterday's edition, seems to sum up my opinion on the "no news is good news suggestion." "...inherent to this whole Y2K thing is the liability issue.

AT&T and Lucent just had a $1 billion class action suit filed against them because of selling non-compliant phone systems

. Thus to expect honest forthright disclosure is, in my opinion, a bit naive.

-- Other Lisa (LisaWard2@aol.com), February 02, 1999.

No, PMM isn't a troll..........just metronoming and oscillating and yo-yo'ing like the rest of us; watching the data stream change character (per flint) and unable to reconcile conflicting evidence on his own. Either can we, or we wouldn't be here, would we?

-- Lisa (lisa@work.com), February 02, 1999.

If there are operational problems related with y2k, don't expect national chain stores to rush to the AP wire to announce it. To do so would guarantee stock devaluation - immediately. The approach now for all retail stores/chains etc is to keep things quite while any problems are "being fixed" and answer customer questions on a one-on-one basis.

Example: A prominent jewelry store owner confided in me that his credit card terminals were non-compliant. He instructed the clerks to key in a date that was not 2000 or over (credit card expiration date). Was the problem ever disclosed or discussed with the customer? NO. And it happened right in front of them. That has been 9 weeks ago and the clerks are still doing the same thing.

Besides being a lame "run around approach" to this y2k related problem, this practice is DECEPTIVE and INACCURATE. We are supposed to have computer records that reflect 100% accurate data, correct? I wonder how many other "undisputable computer records" are actually fudges or fabrications. (telephone bills anyone?)

-- Mr_Kennedy (y2kPCfixes@motivatedseller.com), February 02, 1999.

OK, when a firm changes to a fiscal year that includes the rollover, there can be errors.

It's unlikely that the errors would cause crashes, so because Wally World went to fiscal year 2000 yesterday and there weren't screams today means nothing.

The most likely occurance is a series of transactions involving corrupted data. Some of the errors may not be caught for weeks or even months. A little bit here, a little bit there, nothing spectacular.

Don't expect an announcement, "Wal-Mart Turns Toes Up." Don't expect any announcement. Maybe the indication you get that there was a major problem will be a line item in a SEC 10-Q filing in 6 or 9 months, indicating that a computer error resulted in a $160 billion loss, and that the company is bankrupt. Don't even hope for that one. You'll probably only see the effects buried in the financial statements.

If they catch everything in time they'll make it. If there are too many errors, and they go on too long, they're toast. As I said, nothing spectacular, just a slow, downhill slide as they hemorage money.

-- De (dealton@concentric.net), February 02, 1999.

Don't expect any news in the aftermath of February 1, 1999. Same for April 1, 1999. Why? Problems in systems that do accounting are not the same as problems in systems that produce and distribute.

It shouldn't be hard for a corporation whose fiscal year 2000 begins on February 1, 1999 to change the end date of FY 2000 from January 31, 2000 to December 31, 1999. It's a quick band-aid for the problem. Some states used this technique in their unemployment insurance systems to keep them running beginning January 1, 1999.

Here's a quote from an article by PNG on the (non)-significance of April:

http://www2.gol.com/users/png/fy_rollover.html

Fiscal years have little to do with company or country operations. Producing products, providing services and distributing them are the elements that create commerce. Looking ahead in projections and deciding where and when you are going to post the results is keeping score ... not producing, providing or distributing.

-- Kevin (mixesmusic@worldnet.att.net), February 02, 1999.

Here's a big list of Y2K failures since January 1:

http://www.greenspun.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg.tcl?msg_id=000RSP

"List of Y2K failures - Here is proof"

-- Kevin (mixesmusic@worldnet.att.net), February 02, 1999.

Would it matter?

Remember, even the optimists predicting Y2K scenarios actually expect 80%-85% of the major companies to make it. You've listed two of the fortune 500 that "might" have turned over to a new fiscal year - if true, I congratulate their success. it doesn't mean they will have anything to sell next year - Walmart imports 25 - 35% of their goods from China and the Far East - nor does it imply that they physically will able to sell things next year this time. (No power, no lights, no shipping, no inventory, no trucks getting loaded because the electrical forklifts have no power, the automatic warehouse trollies and lift cranes have no power, no instructions, and no controllers, etc.)

So, there is no information here (yet) to show me that I have anything to be optimistic about - even if the fiscal year rumor is true. I can be convinced - but have seen nothing to convice me.

-- Robert A. Cook, PE (Kennesaw, GA) (cook.r@csaatl.com), February 02, 1999.