While the media carries the occasional rumbling about Walmart management having problems, it seems like a walk inside any Walmart proves up the problem. Got a product you regularly buy? Take their house brand sodas – Sam's Cola for example. We swore off caffeine and sugar in our soda's long ago. "Sam" drew us in with their sugarless caffeine-less brand. The taste took a bit of an adjustment, but after a while, it kind of grew on us, and pretty soon, it was a favorite. That was a few years ago.
Fast forward to a couple of years ago, and on our Wally shopping trips, tucking a half-rack of the cola on the cart was routine. That is, until Diet Sam's Cola started playing hide and seek. There was not particular scheme to the matter – in some stores there'd be an "open hole" on the shelf where the stuff should be, in others not even a shelf tag. Stockers would shake their heads, didn't know where it was. And it wasn't just cola that became elusive. Cereals, meats, non-food items, every department seemed to have spot-shortages of items we'd normally buy.
Sadly, store goods aren't the only things that seemed to have vanished at Wally World. One of us spent 20 minutes just waiting for a clerk in the electronics department the other day in a store in Arizona. A stocker suggested we ask for help in the photo department – and seemed mystified when she couldn't find anyone in the photo department or electronics either. With high-end tech stuff just waiting to be sold, it seems management would want to have somebody on hand to see to it the money gets taken.
But management, it seems, has its own problems. Needing an adapter for our computers, we checked on-line on the walmart.com site first, and happily the adapter we needed was "in stock" 40 miles away. We drove the trip, walked in, and after finally finding help, handed over a print-out showing the item we needed. The young man hoofed off and returned a few minutes later, confirming the adapter we needed was indeed on the shelf, but at almost double the price shown on the Internet. We took the item up to the "service desk" and asked about the discrepency.
We were told bluntly, and with no warmth, that the price on adapter was the higher one, unless we ordered it for store pickup. Of course, we'd have to wait several days for the item to be shipped from the warehouse. When we pointed out that the item was "ready to day," we were told, "You can order it today, sure, but it will take several days to get here," and basically told, "Take it or leave it." A Walmart computer right by the desk proclaimed we could order it (and obtain it "today"), but when we tried to complete the order, Walmart had disabled the payment options. Had we not really needed the adapter then, we would have taken the option of "leaving it." Instead, we paid the double-the-price.
In the parking lot we encountered a friendly door-greeter who, while on his break, went out of his way to offer to take our cart back to the store. We told him how much we appreciated the help that the store employees had given us, and wished that management was as helpful. "Hate to say it, but your managers are just plain rude," we commented. He looked heavenward for a moment, then returned his gaze and said, "Yep. And they're the ones that are supposed to be teaching us what to do."
In a different Walmart store we visited, one of our party couldn't hike the store on foot, he needed one of those handy electric rider carts. While the disabled parking spaces outside the store were largely vacant, inside we couldn't find a single "operational" rider anywhere. Sure, several "dead ones," but nothing in working order. When we went to the "service desk," to inquire, we got anything but service.
A frankly crabby service desk attendant who later identified herself as the store manager brusquely waved off our inquiry. They had plenty of carts, and if we couldn't find one that worked, too bad. "The carts are just a convenience for the customer," she told us in dismissal.
Is that so? It seems that with other places to go, maybe shopping at Walmart is just a courtesy to Sam and company.
We'd love to hear your thinking on this one. Are we being a bit harsh? What are you finding out about Walmart in your travels? Drop us a line at russ "at" rvtravel.com.
