Are you giving HubPages a trial run?

If anyone has followed me for any length of time, they are aware that I also write for a site called HubPages, of which I have been a member for many years. I did take a few hiatuses from the site, as things changed here and there that I wasn't all that comfortable with.

But I always found myself eventually making my way back. 

I mean, consider that the money's better there than it has ever been here at BlogSpot. It is what it is. I don't write primarily for the money. I like doing it. But let's face it—you still have to keep the lights on.

But there does seem to be a bit of "trouble in paradise" at HubPages as it seems problems are beginning that might be the markings of the beginning of the end. They haven't stopped paying. No, that's not it. But the status page is broken, and they haven't updated it, for going on three months, as I write this.

There are questions looming about whether HubPages is now considering going kaput, a decision that would be made by the parent company that owns it, The Arena Group. We haven't heard anything official, but of course, we're not stupid and it's not like we can't see that the potential writing may be on the wall, here.

Naturally, I hope that's not the case. Like I said, I like the site.

I did write an article for the site shortly after the statuses got stuck called An Innocent Woman? The Belleville McDonald's Shooting Incident, and it did get accepted for publication and did also become a featured article, a designation that simply puts the article in a "high quality" status that the site gives more attention to regarding internal promotion.

So, despite the stuck status updates, at least that part is still working. Or, I should say, it was working then. I wrote that article two months ago a couple of weeks into the statuses being stuck.

Needless to say, because the status updates are still stuck, and there's been no real communication from the powers that be on what's going on, or whether it's really being worked on to unstick them, it has made me a bit reluctant to pour my heart and soul into anything to publish there.

Who wants their efforts to be all for naught, right?

But, there was something that I wanted to talk about that I felt was just more suitable to the HubPages format, and thought well, maybe I will be doing this for nothing, but I'm going to give it a whirl anyway, and see what happens.

Will the article get accepted? Will it become featured? Or is that now broken too? I suppose I will know soon enough. Perhaps you will too. 

Thing is, it generally takes about two days to get accepted, and another few days for the article to be "classified." I have my profile settings set to only show featured articles. So, if one were to visit my HubPages profile, if it is ultimately published, but more importantly, featured, which most of my articles are ultimately, then it will show up there.

I guess we will have to wait and see. Is it on my HubPages profile now, or does it forever live in limbo? 

I suppose at the end of the day, whatever happens, it will tell me more than I know now about at least the status of the site and how they are handling future articles that appear there. It will also tell me if I need to begin to set the wheels in motion to find a new home for my work.

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©2025 Jim Bauer

Walmart, Can You Ever Get it Right?

It forever pains me to have to complain about Walmart customer service since I have long been a shareholder and customer of their stores, and most of the time, take Walmart with a grain of salt and still shop there anyway.

I think that's probably true for most of us. We shop there because, hey...the prices, right? But is that enough for the company to really sustain itself over the long haul? I mean, at some point isn't someone else going to come along? Another brilliant mind like Sam Walton was, for example, to come along and take the retail world by storm and firmly plant themselves as the new retail leader and knock everyone else out of their way?

What does it take, after all to build a great business that succeeds against the competition? Simply to find a problem and offer a solution, and Walmart seems to present enough problems, most of which aren't really all that hard to solve, to make way for someone to do just that.

Take today. My wife and I were shopping at the Belleville Walmart at Green Mount Commons and saw that avocados were priced at 50 cents. A bargain, if you ask me. So, we bought four of them. Just a few weeks ago they were 60 cents, and so we thought, "The deal just got better."

Lo and behold, when our order was rung up, the avocados came out to be 70 cents each. Not the advertised 50 cents.

I wasn't all that concerned about the 20 cents. 70 cents is still a fair deal. I went over to customer service and told the girl working behind the customer service desk, Saria, that their sign was wrong. I did not ask for a discount or even a refund. I simply wanted them to know about the error so they could fix the sign.

Saria seemed very off put and annoyed by me taking time out of her day to do her customer service job and pretty much blew me off with a snide, "I will let someone know," before huffing and walking away.

Normally, I'd have left it at that. Okay, fine. I did my part. It's up to the other customers to check their receipts and pose their own questions about what they were charged. But her attitude prompted me to go back to the avocado bin and snap a picture of the sign to bring back and show her.

I went back and another girl was about to assist me when Saria turned, and I simply directed her to my phone to make it clear the sign was wrong. "I told the team lead about it," she said, not in a nice way, rolled her eyes, and walked away.

I have no idea if the sign was changed. I tried to call my Walmart store an hour or so later to speak with a manager just to make him or her aware and make sure the sign was fixed. I'm not a Karen. Not even a Darren. I just felt Saria was not taking the matter seriously and felt I was simply looking out for other customers who might load up on avocados 20 cents more than the sign said they were.

But of course, getting hold of customer service proved to be impossible. After 100 rings I gave up, only to ring through to the pharmacy on a second round, and was told they cannot transfer calls from there, and good luck getting hold of customer service.

They can't get hold of them either and all the phone does is ring and ring and ring.

Too often, it's the customer service area that is lacking at Walmart, and it seems like such an easy problem to fix, it makes you wonder why they don't? How long are customers going to give Walmart business just because, and is that really a long-term business strategy? Again, as a shareholder, this concerns me. Why make it so easy for another Sam Walton to come along and make a better Walmart? Worse, when the economy improves, and it will, there may be many customers willing to pay a premium price for better service. 

Oh well. Like I said, it wasn't that big of a deal to me that the avocados were more than advertised. What was a big deal to me was the response.

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©2025 Jim Bauer