Is This Happing Near You

[Wayne Goodwin]

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-03-26/customers-flee-wal-mart-em...

Customers Flee Wal-Mart Empty Shelves for Target, Costco

[Shadowman]

Not here but I don't know if everyone would count all of these things the article describes as basics: "face cream, cold medicine, bandages, mouthwash, hangers, lamps and fabrics".  I do buy mouthwash there and they always seem to have a good supply. But nothing can go on forever. I remember when K-Mart first made the scene and now they are all but gone.

[P.A.]

I haven't been to a Walmart in 8 years and have no plans to go and that was an emergency out of two. I don't like the politics, treatment of workers, buying almost everything in China and many other things. The nearest Walmart to my house is about 3 miles but there is a Kmart and a Kroger closer than that and they get my business.

[ProblemAgain]

gee keep cutting the employees both in numbers and in wages and benefits so that the top tier gets ever more wealth and then wonder where your customers went....but it f'ing looks good on them since they are a detriment to a community to begin with. go read some studies. when a walmart enters an area they actually experience an economic negative impact. between shipping the profits out of the area, the shortsighted policies of local government that provide tax stipends to walmart and the driving out of other business entities, walmart makes an area less well off..(you can read that as poor)..in addition they cheerfully pass out bribes in places like mexico to bypass due process. in fact in mexico they passed out 24 million dollars in bribes but they can't pay decent wages..

[Shadowman]

We have the same system here except instead of bribes we call them campaign contributions. The nearest one to me is twenty miles but is built on what used to be a wetland. They don't use the word bribe for that either, they call it a mitigation fee. Allegedly the money then goes to build a fake wetland somewhere else (even though the science is not clear that one can even do that).

[ProblemAgain]

i kind of like the model i saw used here for a similar purpose...not by walmart but....a large landowner donated some acreage near the small regional airport for a park. at the time i was laughing about what the powers-that-be accepted as the value of the land but, silly me, i thought it was just a tax scam for a larger write-off. in point of fact the value they allowed the donation was about three times what it was worth...course it all made sense about 3 months later when the powers-that-be BOUGHT a ton of land from the same person in the same area and paid....3 times what it had been worth before their acceptance of the donated land gave them a new valuation to gauge the transaction...bet they all partied heavily at the country club after that deal....

[Lifesighs]

I don't shop at Walmart and choose not to, my niece worked at one for a while when she was in school while working at the register she cut her hand on one of those hard plastic packages, it was deep enough for stitches, her supervisor told her to put a bandage on it and keep working. My niece decided to quit instead because she witnessed many employees being treated badly and thought she didn't want to sign on to being a victim of her employer.

[Wayne Goodwin]

Well i haven't been to K-Mart in 10 to 12 years . Just not my store anymore . Only one left around here . We have over 30 Walmarts in a 30 mile radius of me . I have been to most of them . Have 3 in less than 10 miles . It doesn't mater to me of the reputation they have . I like their stores and majority of stuff i buy is from them . I like there return policy . Took a Coffee maker back this morning i had bought back in December . This time i bought a Bunn Coffee maker that was assembled in America with a 3 year Guarantee . The one i frequent regularly is stocked pretty good . I thing most Walmarts around here have Mexicans working for them . If i can save a dollar at Walmart then it's good for me . Can't buy clothes from them . Have to order online to get anything that fits ....

[blithe spirit]

As far I'm concerned, it couldn't happen to a shittier company. Wal Mart ended up being a blight to the small community I live in... higher crime rates...an abandoned shopping center when they built another store...they ended up costing us more as a community then they ever added. They have not been a good business neighbor.

The cheaper prices are at the expense of neighbors working there. I have found shoddy merchandise...high food spoilage...and I can find less expensive stuff at higher quality at other places.

[blithe spirit]

My Mom's family is from Arkansas, where Wal Mart started, and there are several a few of them who did well for themselves riding on the coattails of Sam Walton.  They worked at Wal Mart when they were issued stock as part of their retirement fund...and got medical benefits...and 32 hours was considered a full time wage...and the company managed to grow and expand all the while. I imagine that? Mismangement and greed are now business as usual...too bad!

[ProblemAgain]

geee just yesterday in a newscast it was intoned that walmart might not make a profit this year due to being investigated about the bribery incidences in mexico...and possibly india and a couple other countries...'due to the expense of the investigation'...methinks they are just setting up to cry poor when and if they have to pay any fines by whining they didn't make any money and ohh they'll have to lay off single mothers and babies will starve...(bet they still pay all the dividends to the waltons tho) and now this,...

Now Wal-Mart wants you to make its deliveries

The retailer mulls a plan to ask store customers to drop off online orders. Is it a way to compete with Amazon, or cut costs?

By Aimee Picchi 11 hours ago

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Retailing giant Wal-Mart (WMT +0.07%) is eyeing the "sharing economy," but that might mean unloading some of its costs onto customers. 

That's because it's considering a plan that would ask in-store customers to deliver packages for online buyers as it seeks to remain competitive with Internet retailer Amazon.com (AMZN +0.45%), according to a report from Reuters. 

The plan raises questions about Wal-Mart's motives, such as whether the company -- known for its tight controls on spending -- is seeking simply to defray delivery costs by unloading the burden on its customers. 

Wal-Mart said it would offer a discount for in-store customers if they agreed to drop off packages for online buyers while on their way home, according to the report. Joel Anderson, the chief executive of Walmart.com in the U.S., said the discount would cover the cost of gas. 

But drivers, private or commercial, also incur other costs, such as insurance, maintenance, registrations and licenses.

http://money.msn.com/now/post.aspx?post=51a59563-9212-4b0c-81ba-67a...

so great idea....who's liable if you're in an accident 'delivering for walmart' on your way to x or y...cheap bastards

[Wayne Goodwin]

I bet the shop lifters would love to deliver for them ....

[frenchy]

well i have a love hate relationship with them .. commin from the great ny metro area i had no idea who walmart was till i moved to florida .. i mean i had heard of them but i never shopped in one .. in the early 70's i worked for e.j korvettes which was pretty much a sears clone type of store .. i'm not sure how far and wide they were before they went tits up but i'd say they were pretty big in the northeast .. and they seemed to be doin pretty good but it seems that retail goes in waves .. for quite some time sears was at the top of the heap with probably j.c. penny second  .. and probably not even a close second .. and behind them was k mart .. and in the early 80's k mart passed j.c. penny and then sears too .. why ? because k mart was a discount retailer and they were usually stand alone stores whereas sears and j.c. penny were big mall anchors and had a higher overhead which equalled higher prices .. so k mart did ok for a time .. but walmart was in the wings and their motto after every company meeting was lets get k mart ..and little by little they made inroads and somehow dethroned them and became the largest retailer .. i'm not sure exactly when that happened but it might have been when they decided to include food as half of their stores and turned all their stores into super walmarts .. when i first came to florida at the end of the 80's all the walmarts were just regular walmarts and not all that much different than k marts .. i'd say they really turned the tide around 96 or so with the addition of the super walmarts .. down here in lee county i think we have 5 super walmarts and a sams club.. i saw a lot of changes tho in the supermarket trade after they started sellin food .. my first thought when i heard they were gonna do that was who do they think they are ?? winn dixie has been sellin food for probably 50 years do they really think they're gonna come in here like some swingin dick and just knock them outta the box ?? boy was i wrong .. of the half dozen or so winn dixies there were closeby me only one is left .. albertson has left the area and maybe the state of florida completely ..i'm not positive about that . i know there's none in lee or collier or charlotte county .. and alberstsons was probably the closest thing we ever had to a supermarket chain that went coast to coast all over the country .. so its not like they were rookies at distribution over wide area's . we had kash and karry .. also gone .. and food lion too .. gone .. altho both of them have morphed into sweeetbay in florida and they're just holdin their own barely .. of course food lion screwed themselves with that undercover fiasco they got themselves into with abc news.. if you ever wanna study what not to do if you get caught fuckin up study that .. they were the poster child for stupidity and deserve what they got altho in a way i felt kinda sorry for them cause they had good prices and for the most part were not a bad store .. and we have publix .. probably the best store of the bunch and they're still doin well but they are the most expensive store of all but you get what you pay for .. oh yeah u save went under too .. so why did walmart do so well ?? simple .. price .. its hard to beat them on price .. and they are pretty much a coast to coast supermarket so they can demand a price from their vendors and they either meet it or they get someone else who will .. and they have vendors lined up knee deep tryin to get shelf space in walmart . trippin over each other to get in .. but they ain't figurein how much it will cost em . its like the 2 polocks sellin watermelons .. they went out and rented a truck and bought a shitload of em for 1 dollar each and set up a stand sellin watermellons for a dollar each ..at the end of the day one polock says to the other polock ya know we're really bustin our ass here and we ain't makin any money .. and the second polock says se, i told you we shoulda got a bigger truck .. and a lot of vendors actually go under after gettin into walmart cause they figure out too late that more volume don't always mean more money if you set your price too low .. and me ?/ i'l take advantage of it till they do go under .. as far as their stockouts go i'm not surprised at all .. i used to go to walmart once a month and usually later on cause it was less crowded at nite ( i hate crowds ) and the guys who stocked the shelves all worked nites .. so the later you went the better your chances were of gettin what it was you went for .. sometimes i'd go at 3am or 4am or even 5am .. but one of the things i noticed was i never saw the same people twice in a row except for 2 or 3 .. either they were firein em or they were quittin but they didn't seem to last .. it was an astounding turnover rate for such a big company .. almost too hard to believe .. now my girlfriend usually stops there on her way home from work so i don't go at nite hardly at all . and lottsa times they don't have what she went in for .. but because its on her way home and she's the patient type she'll just go back tomorrow ..or the next day .. i think publix had about the best bakery of any supermarket and when walmart first opened theirs they were absolutely terrible .. but somethin hapened and they got so much better .. at least the one by me did .. i'm sure your mileage may vary with the one by you but the last month or so their slicer broke so you couldn't get any sliced bread and everyday my girlfriend would stop in for bread and no slicer .. i mean come on .. well they finally did .. but it took em over a month ..there are some things i won't buy at walmart .. meat is one of them . they have no butcher in the back .. they have it all shipped in prepackaged so i'll still go to winn dixie or sweetbutt..and lately while i'm not a vegetarian nor do i plan to ever plan to be one i am eatin a lot less meat than i used to .. and i buy all my produce at the local produce market so they don't get any money from me for that either .. but where they do really kick the shit out of their competition is on their great value brands .. and most of them are just name brands that have been relabeled great value or sams choice or for dog food ole roy .. so i could buy a big bag of gravy train for 25 bucks or get the ole roy which is exactly the same thing for about 18 .. and its usually a little more in the bag too .. its not like my dogs know the difference .. so i'll admit i have this love hate relationship with walmart .. i love that they can usually have a good price on some of the items i'd buy often .. but i hate how they treat their employees and how they do business .. so i still shop at winn dixie every month too ..