Classic short term vs long term problem. In the short term, sure, maybe you come back. In the long term, you start planning around trips to the nearest larger town because walmart never has what you need. Or you start ordering online. Or somebody gets pissed off and starts the company that eventually kills you (see Netflix vs Blockbuster and late fees).
We don’t love it, but we do shop for groceries at Walmart.
We prefer some of the other local supermarkets, but the price difference compared to Walmart is often ridiculously high. We are sort of on a limited budget, so it does make a difference to buy cheap.
I will admit there is no joy in going to Walmart - depressing environment, disgruntled workers, too few check outs and thus long lines. It is always a relief to get the hell out of there.
I’ve compared two Walmarts in town. One is in a very nice upscale part of town while the other is not. The upscale Walmart is much cleaner with wider aisles. In actual price comparisons, the upscale Walmart has cheaper prices for identical items than the other Walmart. In both cases the grocery prices are more than at the grocery store I regularly shop.
In both stores the Walmart employees seem to be more than few fries short of a happy meal.
I find more customers in the downscale neighborhood Walmart regularly wear the latest pajama fashions, year-round.
I can’t bring myself to enter their stores.
http://money.msn.com/now/post.aspx?post=7f873275-360c-4943-9714-806ae86ccfdd
And this was just for one store. Search: Walmart+bribes+Mexico and you will find out that this is common practice.
I have to shamefully admit that I go to Walmart. It has virtually everything you need under one roof. You can pretty much exclusively go only to a Walmart with a gas station and shop online and never go anywhere else. They can even fix your car, though I wouldn’t trust them with it.
I have noticed that the place doesn’t always have the cheapest prices : stuff that is on sale at Kroger is often a little cheaper. However, the average prices are lower. And your time has value : that once a week visit to Walmart costs less time and fuel than visiting a half dozen places otherwise.
Yes, it sucks inside. It feels crowded, it feels like the workers are being exploited, the lighting is terrible - but the parking lot is crammed in the daytime, and the store is never closed. Also, you can go to pretty much any Walmart and they are all the same - I generally know exactly where anything I might want is found.
The thing is, this unpleasant feeling I get going to Walmart is not enough to cause me to spend more money and fuel going elsewhere. I may feel bad, but I have an extra 10 bucks or whatever every week.
[quote=“Musicat, post:27, topic:679979”]
With all the hate seen in this thread, I wonder how they can stay in business?
Possible explanations:[ul][li]Dopers are not a typical cross section of the economy, but a minor sub-section* Dopers are hypocrites and shop at WalMart but don’t admit it[]Dopers are following the crowd. The alternative crowd. Y’know – the one WalMart doesn’t care about and doesn’t cater to[]Dopers who like WalMart are afraid to stand up because they’ll be shot down.[/ul][/li][/QUOTE]
A and D are the reasons. To answer the thread: I avoid Wal-Mart on principle.
To be fair, it is “common knowledge” that this is what you have to do if you want to do business in Mexico. None of those bribe amounts you mentioned are all that expensive compared to the investment of building a store. Frankly, the fees paid to local governments in the U.S. are probably similar in magnitude.
As for the bigger picture : Walmart is a natural consequence of the “race to the bottom” called capitalism.
The only thing I could see replacing Walmart would be a set of online stores with local fulfillment centers using robotics. The stores would give same day delivery. The robots and the fact that the stores all share the same warehouse might lower costs slightly over Walmart.
Our choices are KMart or WalMart. We don’t have too much of an issue with surly checkout people; they’ve mostly pleasant or at least neutral. But I tend to go to WalMart because they don’t pelt me with questions about joining their rewards club or opening a credit card or donating to this and that that way KMart does.
I will Walmart for certain items.
I can find my office supplies cheaper at Staples or Office Max. I use Sam’s* about once a month (soon we will have a Costco here for competition). I get great deals on groceries at my local Homeland and Sprouts. I shop Target, Walgreens, and CVS for personal and cleaning items. Photo stuff I buy online. Auto Zone, O’Reilly’s, Pep Boys for car stuff. I get coffee beans thru Amazon.com
The biggest reason I usually stay away from Walmart is just the pure hassle of being there. It’s a lousy shopping experience. But, for certain items, I’ll take their prices and put up with the crap.
I seem to remember, back in the 80s maybe, that I saw signs all over Walmart saying something like “We buy American, so you can too!” Was that Walmart?
*part of the same family, I know
Walmart is a good friend to many of the Appalachian Trail thru hikers, providing consistent resupply opportunities as much lower cost.
And that’s why I think I like them for house living too. They provide most everything needed. It may not be the highest quality, or best selection, but it is at one place, and where I live there are not many stores to start with (but 2 Walmarts go figure), and you may need to go in different directions to get to the needed stores. I also have had good luck with their customer service, they have a no hassle return policy which I appreciate.
What about the smaller shops? There were not many to begin with and both Walmarts in my area didn’t seem to close any of them, I’m not saying they are not hurting, but they are all still there. The only one that is really effected is both Walmarts opened up to a Price Chopper supermarket, both those supermarkets are still operating but apparently they are being hurt, less people in their parking lot. However this actually is not just Walmart, but Hannifords (another supermarket chain) has taken to opening up new stores in my area but also in less populated areas, so that too is drawing away from Price Chopper. So while I used to travel 20-25 minutes to Price Chopper, I now will travel 5 minutes to Haniford or 20-25 minutes to Walmart, or sometimes to Price Chapper as well.
As for more speciality stores, such as sporting goods stores, that still is 30,40 or 60 minutes away, sometimes Walmart can fill in the gaps, sometimes it can’t. Sometimes it is worth buying something at Walmart with the intent it is temporary till I can get to the other stores further away.
And then there is the internet…
I love Wal-Mart. It’s where I buy stuff I can’t get on Amazon.
I’m broke. So I shop at WalMart. I’m broke because I’m an independent retailer in a terrible economy. I try not to buy things at Walmart that I can buy from an independent local shop. There is no independent local laundry detergent store.
Shopping there on weekends is absolutely awful. I am fortunate in that I don’t need to be at work until 10:00am so my favorite time to go to Walmart is at around 8:00am on a week day. There are very few other shoppers. The trade off is that there are rarely more than two registers open at that hour.
They are cheaper for many things but not all things. I am the kind of broke that caused me to make a price book and keep track of the items I buy most and what they cost at Walmart, Target and my favorite grocery store. I’m also fortunate in that all three of those places are close to each other and to my home. I’m not eating up any savings on goods by using extra gas to get them.
I got no problem with the Mart. They got what I need and the prices are good.
I personally know someone who works there and they say its not bad. They have health benefits for the first time in their life.
I LOVE WalMart. Not a blamed thing wrong with it.
I don’t care what they do to competitors, since competing mom-and-pop stores close at 5 in the evening, and charge me out the ass for everything, and would tell me to get it in another town 40 miles away if I didn’t like something, or they didn’t like my looks, had there been no WM. I’m not interested in other people’s financial problems, any more than they are interested in mine.
I also don’t have to wait for Zeb or Martha to finish their ‘treed coon’ stories with Norvel to pay for my purchases. I can go to the Self Service lane. I ain’t there to be pals with nobody. I want to get my stuff quickly and cheaply.
Refunds are almost legendary for their ease.
WalMart has always done right by me.
My opinion, they’re a store. Same as Target, K-Mart, Meijers, whoever. Haters gonna hate, but most of the hate is drummed up unfairly by union supporters pissed off that Walmart won’t suck their dick.
Based on what I always hear, I thought that maybe Walmart had declined as it had been so long since I’d been there. But when I went not to long ago, it was actually a little bit better. I think you guys who talk about the store itself being of low quality must have really bad Walmarts. If anything, it was in better shape than other stores I’d been in.
two reasons I hate Walmart:
1- they play country music constantly
2- they only carry one kind of Tabasco sauce and its the tiny bottle.
I haven’t set foot in a Wal-Mart in well over 10 years and have never set foot in one more than a handful of times in my life. Totally aside from their reprehensible labor and competition-strangling practices (which killed my uncle’s independent optical shop a few years back, in the end forcing him to work for them for crappy pay and shitty hours, because who else is going to hire a 70-year-old optician?), they are poorly organized, poorly stocked, messy, don’t carry most of the stuff I might actually ever want to buy, and the whole experience is generally so exasperating I thing they might actually have to pay me to get me to shop there.
I hope I’m never so poor that I feel like they’re my only realistic option, and luckily I live somewhere with lots and lots of other options.
If Amazon doesn’t sell it, I don’t want it. I loathe Walmart. The air is dingy and the shelves are too tall for me to reach anything. Also, they don’t deliver my products via the cute UPS Man (Our UPS man is a dead ringer for Jamie Hyneman swoon)
That’s one of the problems with those big places, you can’t just run in and out and get something. We only go there when we have to. I never liked the vibe of the place, because I feel it is masking some very unhappy employees who would prefer to work someplace else. As a company, too many things bother me about them. But they don’t have the market cornered in anything we really need, because there is a lot of competition and we don’t think of Wal*Mart first when we need something. The other part about them I don’t like as a consumer is that I’m not really sure if their prices are that much better on everything. Also their inventory can be hit or miss. I totally dread calling on the phone to one of them asking a question if they have something in stock, it’s a royal pain.
Oh, I did use their service to order something and have it picked up in the store, which I will never do again. It was a terribly slow line and spent like 15 minutes with these people in front of us who were picking something up for someone else and didn’t have the paid receipt. So they all took out their cell phones and tried to reach their buyer friend on the cell phone which was an amazing waste of time because in the end they refused to release the product to these people cause as the sign states you need a paid receipt from online. But the employees didn’t tell the people, “Sorry, can’t do this without the paper work…” and then go to the next person.