I tend to avoid Wal-Mart, but mostly because the greeters creep me out.
Zellers, however, was for a long time dreary, dingy, pathetic, and had crappy stuff.
Wal-Mart artificially rigs the market by extorting its overseas vendors into exclusive contracts at a price determined by Wal-Mart; the vendor has to do whatever it takes to meet that price, or they may find themselves without a buyer at all. This one company is lowering the average wage scales in Asian countries through anticompetitive abuses of its buying power.
And, they sell cheap crap in ugly, noisy stores.
They could always sell to someone else. Wal-mart isn’t the only buyer. (Where do Sears, Target, Zellers, etc. get their goods?)
It’s a business decision they make if they feel the volume Wal-mart will buy from them justifies a lower price. They are free to not make that deal.
Simply offering to buy a huge volume is not extortion. It’s standard business practice to get a lower price when you buy more. The supplier decides what price they will agree to.
I’ve heard enough about dishonest business practices on Walmart’s part (e.g. paying the building contractors far less then promised after they build a new store—admittedly, I have no cite for any such claim) to make me less than enthusiastic about shopping there. But sometimes, gosh darn it, I want or need stuff that’s cheaper there than anywhere else.
I don’t have a particular opinion on them but I very rarely shop there for the same reason. The ones that are convenient to me tend to be very dingy. The aisles tend to be narrow and the merchandise is often scattered.
I would rather go to Target whose stores tend to be very clean with large aisles. The merchandise at Target often seems to be of a higher quality.
I don’t get the “cheap product” argument. The Band-Aids I buy there seem to be the same as anywhere else…the food (except for the Sam’s Choice brand, I guess) isn’t generic off-brand. I buy a load of toys as a collector, and the Star Wars figures seem to be the same as the ones at Toys R Us, just cheaper, more plentiful, and more reliably stocked.
I don’t see the dinginess and uncleanliness, either, but I can fully concede that’s a personal preference among people.
I have a coworker who won’t go into Wal-Mart because it smells funny. I don’t know what the hell she’s talking about.
I’d like to see a response to the workers-are-treated-badly rebuttal. I’ve heard for ages that they do, and I admit taking it for granted that it was probably true, but after watching Penn and Teller back Wal-Mart on their show, and seeing the Atlantic Monthly article, I’m not buying it at face value anymore.
this trivializes what is a much more complex situation. It’s not merely that WalMart buys in large lots to get cheap prices. They’ve been acused of demanding changes in the way their suppliers run their own companies, and the prices they charge. It’s been investigated by a number of places, including 60 Minutes. And Wal Mart’s unique position as a huge buyer places it in a special class of buyer that it’s not all easy to brush off by saying “you can sell to someone else”.
See here for a start:
http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/77/walmart.html?page=0%2C1
You do realize that there has never been an Adults Only-rated console game (on purpose, so don’t go saying San Andreas) and that the handful of PC ones there have been aren’t released in box form right?
You’re also aware that 99.999999999999999999999999999999999999999999(you get my drift)% of all movies released in a given year are rated R or under right?
Faulting Wal-Mart for the practices of two whole industries is just lame.
Ok, this particular site…it’s ridiculous. Frong page has a giant headline on “Dangerous Toys at Wal-Mart”. Clicking on it reveals such atrocities as:
“Nord placed the bulk of the blame for unsafe toys on manufacturers, but retailers like Wal-Mart and Toys ‘R’ Us play a major role in the problem.”
"Outrage surrounding new reports on the safety of plastic used to make some baby bottles has parents angry at retailers like Wal-Mart. "
“Do retailers like Wal-Mart have any responsibility to ensure the quality of the goods they sell?”
Searching around, I see complaints that Wal-Mart doesn’t accept returns unless they absolutely have to, and that Wal-Mart takes any and all returns without checking, so bad merchandise gets placed on the shelf.
Look, Wal-Mart has problems, but that site, which blames things on “retailers like Wal-Mart” and contradicts itself based on what they’re supposed to hate is ridiculous…
I have a hundred-and-fifty dollar Wal*Mart gift card that I’ve been carrying around since my birthday in November.
It will probably stay in my wallet until I have a burning desire to have a twenty-litre tub of mayonaisse.
(Actually, it’s just too much of a pain-in-the-ass to go all the way out to the ass-end of no-where to use it. Wal*Mart’s attempts to set up shop any closer to Vancouver proper have consistently been met with enough protest to drive them away.)
It’s not easy to brush them off because, done right, you have the potential of making a lot of money by supplying them. It boils down to a business decision. Suppliers remain free to deal with them or not. Wal-mart may be the world’s biggest retailer but they aren’t the only one.
If Wal-mart disappeared tomorrow, most of the issues brought up in those links would remain. America would still have to deal with job losses from cheap overseas imports.
I have less of a problem with WalMart than I used to - they’re doing some very good things in regards to leading green initiatives, for instance - but I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve willingly gone into one in the last couple of years. It always feels vaguely like I’m in outtakes of Dawn of the Dead when I’m in there.
Good. I don’t feel like such a freak, anymore.
Sure, I don’t like the grimy stores or pushy customers and I’m highly suspicious of their labour practises although I don’t buy into the “OMG, slave labour!!!” hyperbole, but the main reason I hate the place is the smell.
Seriously, there’s a pervasive stench of what I can only describe as rubber and chemical adhesives hanging in the air that’s guaranteed to give me a headache if not trigger a full-blown migraine. I admit that I’m pretty sensitive to strong smells in general, though, and it’s definitely not limited to Walmart.
This article is a fairly good articlation of many of the business practices that people find most objectionable about Wal-Mart.
I’ve definitely seen a variation between the stores – the one on my route (by Midway for the Chi-dopers here) is generally pretty craptastic, long lines and there’s stuff everyone. But the parking lot stays full so I assume it’s working for them. The ones out by my mom in the Phoenix exurbs are positively glowing by comparison.
You’re brushing it off too easily. Rubbermaid got screwed over by Wal Mart because of Wal Mart’s pushing for absurdly low prices. Part of the problem is that Wal Mart isn’t merely asking for the best prices, but is taking the suppliers and pushing still harder, greatly accelerating the push of jobs and business overseas. If WalMart disappeared tomorrow, the problem wouldn’t go away, but its rate would probably decrease.
What did you think of the LATimes site, Arizona, or the Frontline piece?
True, but Walmart doesn’t seem to have a problem stocking the unrated editions of major studio films. Of course they only contain material excised from the theatrical version to avoid an NC-17 rating.
Oh, I know that Wal-Mart does things that, if not letter-of-the-law illegal are more than a little underhanded and smarmy…I just don’t think that sites like that other one are helping with the real problem.
Overall, I think a lot of it is sour grapes by companies that tried to play ball with Wal-mart and found out they weren’t in the same league. Wal-mart is very good at business. If you are too, you can make money as their supplier. That means knowing when to say no, even at the expense of short-term profits.
The Vlasic pickle guys, for example. It’s not Wal-mart’s fault they made a horrendous business decision. It appears they didn’t understand their own brand. If your market position is of a high-quality/high-price pickle why on earth would you agree to sell huge jars of the things at Wal-mart for 3 bucks?
They should have, and could have, said “no” to that. There are plenty of other places (like every grocery store in the whole freaking world) to sell pickles.
Not always. Lots of PG-13 movies have “Unrated” versions that would barely push them up to R. And still other “Unrated” versions are just the original R-rated movie with a few extra minutes tacked on to justify the “Unrated” tag.
Case in point, the recent “Unrated” version of American Gangster which contains an extra extended scene of Russell Crowe and Denzel Washington walking and talking.
“Unrated” is a buzzword used to sell more DVDs. No more, no less.
And this still doesn’t stop an NC-17 movie from releasing an “Unrated” version to get around Wal-Mart’s ban.