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
