Wal-mart - Corporate Power Run Amuck?

[Moonlight_Graham]

supercanuk:

Just out of curiosity, would you find it depressing if all we had were Wal-Marts and big box stores? Do you or anyone else here find Mom and Pop stores valuable? Despite slightly higher prices would you rather help the little guy or just indifferent?

 

Yes i would find it depressing. I like Mom and Pop stores, but they have their pros & cons. Often little stores will only give you in-store credit when you return something, and they also close down frequently so sometimes your in-store credit becomes useless if not used right away.

 

Ideally i'd like to see a balance of big stores & small businesses. I think now it has tipped a bit too much the other way. Before Wal-Mart & Costco in Canada it was Kmart, Zellers, Sears, The Bay etc. Those stores didn't offer the insanely low prices, but still were good stores yet small business could still compete with them.

 

Monochrome Rainbow:

I find Walmart has terrible customer service. And other stores sell at comparable prices on certain items. The only difference is Walmart basically has everything you need in one spot and good prices, so you get one stop shopping.

 

Terrible customer service? I dunno. They have a 90-day return policy for almost all products. The cashier asks you if you found everything u were looking for when u go through the cash. Plus the security guard posed as a greeter is a nice touch. There's smaller stores that have much better service, but for as large & as busy as Wal-Mart is, it would be difficult to have much better service.

Edited April 12, 2007 by Moonlight_Graham

[Monochrome Rainbow]

supercanuk: No worries at all. And yeah, I'm really torn on the whole Wal-Mart thing that's kinda what I was tryin to say. I do empathize with the families in under developed nations that Wal-Mart takes advantage of (which is the main reason I do not shop there anymore) and I would really much rather have them change these policies than keep doing what their doing. I guess what I was saying is I hate what they do and am usually fairly vocal about it but I find myself very uncomfortable (to the point where I don't even talk about it around my girlfriend's sister or other people I know who only shop at Wal-Mart because they can't afford to go elsewhere) and even less passionate about my dissent for Wal-Mart when they are around me and mention that they have to pick something up from there.

 

Moonlight: I haven't been there in a year or so but all I've really seen there is supervisors chasing after kids trying to get them to actually do some work (I remember one time I witnessed a supervisor follow a teenager around and pick up clothes that the guy was just hanging in random places and laying them on racks over other clothes and whine about how he hated putting stuff away. It was disgusting.) and also whenever I would have to find something I'd search the entire section and then ask for help and I'd get, "I'm not sure where that is, try the section it's supposed to be in" or they'd take me to some aisle and tell me to "look around there". I also hate having to interrupt people from conversations with the friends to get service. They were always decent with returns (I think I've only ever made one there but there was no problems at all) and that was cool but from what I've seen of behaviour within the store from most employees it would have been enough to prompt me to stop shopping there had I not have stopped after watching The High Cost of Low Prices.

 

Maybe the store is just under poor management, I dunno. I've only really been to one store and it could even be a lot better now (like I said I haven't been there) but I did get one punk fired from a complaint so I'm kinda happy with that. I don't expect much from a department store in terms of service and I don't let a single experience of poor service influence my opinion of a business (unless it's extremely bad and there's no attempt of service recovery) but I at least expect their employees to treat it like something other than a playground or a place to hangout with friends.

[Moonlight_Graham]

u have a point there, sometimes the individuals working in the different departments aren't very helpful.

[bishopx]

It still goes back to what they truly are, a blight on every community they land in. They kill the small businesses, and turn the ousted owners into indentured servants.

 

Walmart is the Devil

[HoboFactory]

...

 

Terrible customer service? I dunno. They have a 90-day return policy for almost all products. The cashier asks you if you found everything u were looking for when u go through the cash. Plus the security guard posed as a greeter is a nice touch. There's smaller stores that have much better service, but for as large & as busy as Wal-Mart is, it would be difficult to have much better service.

Yes terrible customer service. A recent MSN-Zogby poll revealed that Wal-Mart was #7 on the list of the 10 companies whose service is most likely to be rated poor.

 

The results were:

 

Sprint 40%

Bank of America 30%

Comcast 30%

Time Warner Cable 29%

AT&T 26%

Citibank 24%

Wal-Mart 23%

Verizon 22%

Wells Fargo 21%

DirecTV 20%

 

http://articles.moneycentral.msn.com/Savin...ame.aspx?page=1