Haven't been inside a Walmart in almost 2 years, but we were needing some basics, so wife got online thinking she would order a few things for pickup. Walmart has 3 options....pickup IN store, pickup up OUTSIDE the store, and We send it to you free, 35 buck minimum order. So we opted for "let FEDEX do the hauling". One of the items we ordered was canned milk. Dozen cans (the limit) Buy in the store, 98 cents/can if you catch it on sale. 98 cents/can if you do the order online, pickup at the store. 60 cents/can if FEDEX brings it to your door. Several other items (flour, sugar, etc, same thing....cheaper if FEDEX delivers than if you go to the store, though not the near 40% like the canned milk.....but around 20% on a 100 buck order. Order on Friday, to be delivered by Monday....heck, that's as good as Amazon prime !. Monday, 2 boxes come....one with ONE can of milk and other items (but not everything....rest to come Wednesday now), and one box with 6 cans of milk and packaged shirt we did not order. The one can of milk had a 'best by' date out in fall of 2021. The 6 cans, 3 expired last December, 3 this past February, and I have no idea about the shirt. UPC code not even close to the milk. SO, I get online for a call with that every helpful, barely understandable, girl from India, who says they will replace the expired cans (expired canned milk tends to clump up very unattractively in the bottom of the can, no amount of shaking helps), AND will throw in a $25 gift card for my trouble. Say throw the old out (fed to dogs) and keep the shirt (they don't know why either) $4.20 worth of milk that they are gonna pay shipping on twice AND throw in 25 bucks. How they do that ? Wednesday, box shows up with the other 4 cans of the 12 can order, with the rest of the stuff that didn't come Monday. Thursday, 1 box shows up with 4 cans of milk, not 7. They are in date. Box 2 shows up with the other 3 cans. To recap: Milk was 40% less, and they ship. They shipped in 4 different boxes, I assume with four different shipping costs to actually get it right. AND give us 25 bucks off a future order. (about 25% of this order). I ask again, HOW do they do that ????? It's almost entertaining to deal with them.
Nothing new, multiple sources and less overhead for the stores. Today did pickup from HEB and had down on the pick list that no 1/2 gal Blue Bell, strange we got the Blue Bell anyway! Bad dates is a matter GIGO in their software tracking and poor training of the work force and IT Department.
Back when the covid stuff started we had a pickup order . My wife called them about a couple of wrong items. They couldn't find a record of the order. Just the payment they refunded the payment for the entire order $140 . I had them bring out a $20 gift card when they came to tell us they were running behind. When the covid stuff started Walmart blew Krogers and Meijer's away on curbside pickup here but, now that has flipped with Krogers being more accurate and professional
Walmart just tried a "point of the spear" operation here in Central Florida. They put in one-way gates inside the store so no one could go out the main exit right next to the main entry without funneling through one pf the checkout lanes, first. That also meant you had to go thru a checkout if you wanted to hit the restrooms or (non-functional) water fountains. And you had to go thru a checkout lane even if you bought nothing at all. The one-way gates had LOUD police sirens and blue cop-lights that went off if someone went through the wrong way. And they had toadies on station to redirect you right back the way you came and to a politically-correct checkout lane. Walmart apparently decided that their customers were cattle that they owned outright, and that they were jolly well going to walk when and where Walmart told them to. I cam within a very skinny hair of getting arrested in Walmart because I insisted on using a perfectly good (marked) exit. The immediate result was that Walmart lost almost 100% of my business and well over 100% of my good will. And that was probably the same for a large part of their consumer base. Months later, Mrs. Gorilla took me back to Walmart. That was two days ago, The gates, sirens, and blue bubble-gums were gone. The Nearly-Nazi gate guards were gone. They were probably off getting in their three hours a week shifting stock. Sales must have dropped like a rock. I'm willing to bet Walmart lost millions on that little fiasco. And even more in customer good will, which is something that does not grow back. At least, not for me. Did I mention that ALDI's has good stuff at great prices? There's one a block away from our Walmart. That's where we shop now. How a cheap, brutally efficient grocery chain is upending America's supermarkets
Wally world lost my years ago when they stopped selling ammo. Very few employees there with an IQ higher than their shoe size.
Between The Great Mart Of Walls and FedRetardEx, you are very lucky you received half what you ordered, and that it wasn't just dumped in your driveway.
I love Aldi I buy most of our canned goods there and that is A LOT not uncommon for us to walk out with 30-40 cases of various beans/mackrel/black olives/ canned pasta and their cheap frozen pizzas And one can never have too many cases of smoked oysters. That is typically a once every 2 1/2 - 3 Month excursion though. Have 3 on the fringes of what I call the operational zone at 50-55 miles out. Have 2 small town walmarts at 25 miles out and 1 very small town grocery store at 5 miles. For the BIG shopping I use Distributor over in Evansville for both the business and personal, can have the sales rep stop by and put the really big orders together and their truck deliver it free on orders of $2000 or more. Nice to have their truck back up to the warehouse and tail gate the load for me to check off the list and wheel in to the general area of where things will go. Smaller orders under $2000 I take my box truck with a couple of big chest freezers and have most of it ready for pick up at their dock via the sales rep. Benefit of going to them is shopping their facility is there are very often deals to be had. Like 400 pounds of sirloin tip roast for $1.88 per pound and 5 cases of 4 gallon jugs of A-1 Steak sauce that worked out to $2.75 per gallon and ten 5 gallon buckets of dill pickle spears for $8 per bucket.... Hey we go through A LOT A-1 and Dill Pickle spears in the food trailers They are primarily a wholesale food service outfit but also have a store front and in house butcher shop. On the bulk wholesale side they beat SAMs out on price by 30%-40% pretty much across the board and they carry a good selection of Restaurant equipment as a bonus. On the Retail side maybe 5% below Sams to right there with Sams. The threshold for hitting their whole sale prices is pretty high with $2,000 being the low bar or a collective $24,000 per year. I typically drop in the $40,000 per year range with them around $30,000 + or - for my own and the business stuff and another $10,000 from friends and family throwing their shopping list into the mix when I makes a order for delivery or make a run over there. A lot of areas have a whole sale distributor in striking range that will sell to the public but is really not worth it unless you are buying the volume to trigger the deep wholesale pricing. Ideal for folks that are not running a food business to get together and create a buyers club or group that will collectively hit the wholesale thresholds. LOL I brought back 2000 pounds of jumbo shrimp that I got 65% off on. Last year and sold them to friends and family at 45% off of my price and that paid for the fuel and time for making the trip with a bit of profit left over...... And still left me 400 pounds of big shrimp to run Grilled Shrimp Skewers through the food trailers. Biggest thing I bring back for friends shopping list are the whole prime ribs, cases of catfish fiddler and fillets, pollock, Snow Crab Legs, Cases of various #10 can stuff, and 50 and 100 pound bags of potatoes and onions and when I make a run I do add 7% to their order to help with the fuel cost and they are all good with that understand. Hey if their collective list come to $1000 that is $70 in fuel I don't have to take out of my pocket LOL. Anyway something to consider if you have a distributor in a 100-150 mile range that will sell wholesale to a buyer club or the general public. As a general rule the more you spend the better your wholesale deals are. Wish I was the size where I was spending $100,000+ per year with them and getting the best wholesale prices But not going to complain about getting DEEP discounts now and then on surplus whole sirloins and tip that I can drag back and grind into lean burger and sell as cooked burgers at a fair retail price. $3.67 in profit on that plate with just the 1/2 pound burger. Does not sound like much until you sell 800 of them from $1.88 per pound sirloin. Throw in the Farm Style apple sauce made from apples from my orchard for $1.00 that is .90 cents profit and a small bag of chips that is break even. The Customer gets a $7.00 meal and I get a $4.57 profit per plate X 800 = $3,656 in profit from the Sirloin deal to be exact. If a customer is not happy, I have no problem giving their money back and throwing in a free meal voucher or giving them something else for free and marking it on the waste sheet for the tax write off. That is pretty much how Walmart does it on the .com just on a much grander scale. Low Overhead, minimal employees, and the HUGE Volume, HUGE whole buying power. If they are buying 1 million pounds of ground sirloin they are paying pennies on the dollar above bare bones production and shipping cost. Walmart and any of the big chains has massive volume buying power on everything and tap into the very rock bottom wholesale pricing. The Walmart Great Value and SAMs Members Mark store brands are even higher profit margins just like my apple sauce. I can't raise steers and have them processed for $1.88 per pound surplus wholesale sirloins! So when I can get a deal like that I fill the freezers on the truck up with as much as I can get Their 40% off of in store retail is most likely giving them 40%-45% profit margins which in turn gives them plenty of leeway to throw replacement product, shipping and a gift card in to make you have good thoughts about them and buy from them 100 more times. And as a bonus anything they send to the dumpsters out back is logged and written off on the taxes. And anything like the shipping, gift card and waste from the walmart.com deal is a tax write off.
And on a side note if the canned milk gets clumpy.... put it in a bowl and set the mixer to high and add table spoon of water and then beat it into submission
