WAL-MART Smash!

[Renorei]

I just wish it was possible for local, mom-and-pop stores to coexist with Wal-mart. I love Wal-mart's deals on many items I buy, but I don't want for local places to be driven out of business (any more than they already have been...).

[cjkrythos]

"Another is friendlier customer service"
sooooo..... pot and prozac for the associates?

seriously folks, Im overjoyed with the news recently that the local Giant Eagle finally opened the doors to its new local store, and immediately began kicking the @$$ of the local hellmart. Wallmart was doing so bad, that around 70% of its customers immediately cancelled their prescriptions with walmart and transferred them to Giant Eagle AND walmart's store-wide sales went down a full 65% the day the new Giant Eagle opened. I also got fired, but it was worth it to sit back and watch the chaos ensue as the store began tearing itself apart trying to stay afloat. They are losing huge sales these days because they are slowly dismantling their sporting goods department IN THE MIDDLE OF HUNTING SEASON!!!! Its priceless to watch. Granted, yes, my financial status is totally screwed, but oddly enough, Im fairly satisfied with my current situation. Granted, yes, ill soon have to push for a new job, but hey, in the mean time... *gets out the popcorn*

That is freakin' awesome. I'm sorry you lost your job over it though.

meh, I made sure to tell everyone the worst case scenario of why I got fired. Wasnt the whole story, I did kinda do something stupid, but yeah, they overreacted way too much, and it was just an excuse to get rid of someone who gets paid too much. I made just under 10 an hour, so yeah, I was doing pretty well. But when I got fired, it pissed off a huge flux of people, including several managers, all of which who knew the whole story and figure that I still shouldnt have been fired. The rest of the people just went with what they were told(rumor mills are a b****, but in this case, it was great fun). I think I got a few people to even swear off shopping there for good, and im gonna find a way to discourage the hunters from shopping there for good, likely all ill have to do is announce that they wont get ammunition there any more, cus nobody works in that department who can order it.

On the note of shopping at walmart. Ive found that you get a better sense of satisfaction when you shop elsewhere. It not only gives you a sense of pride that you earned enough money to shop there and buy that particular item you wanted, but its also that the item will be more likely to last longer. Walmart has a history of lowering prices by lowering the required quality on their items. It does this by forcing the manufacturer to require less strict quality checks on their items. This means more broken or faulty products slip through, and into the public. So, you get more returned and/or broken items.

Worse yet, this has caused them to be super lenient on their return policy. Meaning, that anyone who buys something from walmart can return it a full year later if they claim to have lost their receipt and/or b**** long enough in the event that someone calls them on it. Worse yet, walmart sends the obviously broken object back to the manufacturer, who is then forced to pay walmart for the broken item, which might have broken under normal use for a year.

Instead of keeping track of customer purchases like many other stores do, they simply screw over the manufacturer, destroying a supplier and all the jobs that go with them by constantly forcing them to pay for walmart's lazyness. In the end, the company has to lay people off because its funneling too much money into the creation of items that break, then having to pay for the item a second time because it was used under the normal terms, and then walmart accepted it back without requiring a valid reciept or some proof that it was purchased recently.

THIS, is why I dont shop there. Shopping there does not support the business that made the product, you decrease the value of the dollar by shopping there, and if you shop someplace else, you can support the economy in full force, and encourage the possibility that you will get paid better by whoever you work for.

If you still find that its hard to get by, then clip coupons as often as possible. Its still legit and it still supports both the grocer and the manufacturer as well. Not to mention some stores double the value of the coupons you use, depending on the coupon's value. Walmart does not have any such discount available, AND they dont ever do buy one get one free opportunities, which sucks.

A good tip when coupon clipping is to get a buy one get one free coupon, then find a store that is offering the same item at a buy one get one free special. Buy it there, and you get both of the items for free(you got to pay taxes of course)

[Shadow Wulf]

One little strategy I discovered Walmart has is actually not lowering their prices on some of their products. I can give a few examples to back this up too. But it goes something like this; when a manufacturer makes a product over time the cost of making it drops, this is due to a number of reasons such as demand is not high enough or they just find ways to make it cheaper than how they previously made it. Now because of this, a lot of times manufactures sell their products to retail stores at a lower price to get them to buy more quantity of it, In return retail stores lower their price on the product to get more sales. Now I noticed several products that Walmart has that never ever lowers it's price, for example is many of their computer desks that are at least 2 years old, this $50 boom box which is 2 to 3 years old from when I got it for the same price. And the worst one yet, a 6 year old car CD stereo that is roughly the same price as it was back then, they might have discounted about $10-$15 during that period and that's it. This is one of Walmarts many strategy to make a lot of money. And Walmart get more discounts from manufactures than most other retail stores because of their buying power. You can be Y Supermarket and buy 500 shirts from X manufacturer for $10 each. But Walmart can buy 1000 shirts and pay for $7 each. At least at the store I work at they permanently lower prices on a bunch of their items at any given chance.

[Terastas]

There have even been a couple of cases where customers returned electronics boxes complaining that they were actually filled with rocks wrapped in Chinese newspapers. Usually it's the people that bought the items themselves who make the switch, but there was one case that made local headlines because a Wal-Mart employee actually returned the rock-filled box back to the shelf and resold it as new.

Yet one more reason why Project Impact isn't going to work. They aren't building new and improved stores -- they're building stores that are up to standard at best.

[Sebiale]

There was also that incident involving an item that held a USB full of porn, kid got ahold of it...

[JoshuaMadoc]

There was also that incident involving an item that held a USB full of p***, kid got ahold of it...

That just vaguely reminded me of Evony's invasive ad campaign of all things.

[Terastas]

There was also that incident involving an item that held a USB full of p***, kid got ahold of it...

I've seen stories like that too. One involved a cell phone with a picture of the former owner's girlfriend below the waist, another with a digital camcorder that was returned to the store with the owner's home porn still in it.

See, these are the incidents that Wal-Mart's "increased quality" is going to avoid. They say "better quality," we say "up to standard." Yet one more reason the very first stores Project Impact is going to force to close are their own.