Costco was a total CF today. I’m about to swear it off too.

Anonymous wrote:From my experience, sellers on Walmart seem sketchy. I received broken stuff and it was hard to return them. And I could not get anyone at Walmart to respond to my email complaints about the seller.

This has never happened at Amazon. At worst, you have to pay for return shipping for non-Amazon sellers. But couple of times, Amazon just credited my account for items under $10 and I did not have to return it. A world of difference between the two companies.

I never buy from outside sellers on Walmart but buy directly from them. They don't have fakes since they get it directly from the stores. However, for Amazon, even if it's sold by Amazon, there are a lot of fakes (they mix all of the same product of one item together so it comes from many different sources and suppliers).

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I don't get it.

h
They destroyed the small town in Iowa where my mother grew up. 20 family businesses went out of business. They replaced with minimum wage workers and sold things at a loss until they were the only game in town. They did this all over the US.

Snort; fly-over country.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I don't get it.

h
They destroyed the small town in Iowa where my mother grew up. 20 family businesses went out of business. They replaced with minimum wage workers and sold things at a loss until they were the only game in town. They did this all over the US.

This. Happened in the small town I lived in Georgia as well. Wal Mart ended up being the only option for almost everything but groceries.

Still shop there once in a while, but I'm trying to stay away from Walmart and from Amazon more as well.

Anonymous wrote:I don't get it.

h
They destroyed the small town in Iowa where my mother grew up. 20 family businesses went out of business. They replaced with minimum wage workers and sold things at a loss until they were the only game in town. They did this all over the US.

They are responsible for shutting down an enormous number of US manufacturing plants as they shifted their sourcing to China. Their stores are poorly serviced and their customer service in store is terrible. Finally, you can better prices at places like Aldi.

I hate Walmart, but it's cheaper than Target, so I shop there. That's life. I'm always going to shop where it's cheaper.

I like Walmart.

Anonymous wrote:I don't get it.

Their stores are usually junky and dingy. Their customers are, by and large, an absolute freak show. Their values and behavior as a company are sleazy.

Anonymous wrote:Why don't Amazon and Walmart pay living wages?
Why are we obligated to supplement slave wages by the most wealthy corporations in America?

You're not obligated to do so.

I do 99% of my shopping at my food co-op, the local mom 'n' pop IGA, the local coffee roaster and my local hardware store. If I need gifts we've got cute independent boutiques.

Why don't Amazon and Walmart pay living wages?
Why are we obligated to supplement slave wages by the most wealthy corporations in America?

Anonymous wrote:For me there are far too many people shopping at the same time. It gives me anxiety.

The only time I had a legitimate panic attack was shopping in a Trader Joes. I had to leave the full cart and leave the store.

Compared to that, my local Walmart has wide aisles and friendly workers and I tend to go very early in the morning (i.e. 6:00 am). Benefit of being retired.

For me there are far too many people shopping at the same time. It gives me anxiety.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:They treat their workers like crap - making them work extra unpaid hours and then not giving them health insurance because they ‘haven’t worked eniugh’. The pay is so low everyone needs food stamps or to hit the food bank.
The food they sell is largely processed junk. The merchandise is often cheap and there’s a lot of plastic junk sold that NO ONE NEEDS. Manufacturing that junk means pollution and slave labor in some other country .

What’s to buy there anyway? Shampoo maybe?

They also won’t give people fixed schedules so they aren’t able to get other jobs. So they’re stuck with 30 hours a week at Walmart which won’t give you more hours bc then they have to provide benefits but also unable to pick up another job elsewhere. They use very deceptive tactics for driving out competitors, operating a store at a loss until the competitors close than raising their prices back up to normal levels. They fire any employees that try to organize and in general are value destructive for communities driving out better paying jobs at competitors

I wanted to jump on the not shop at Walmart bandwagon and for a while I did but I am middle class in the DMV area so I can't afford to spurn Walmart.

But Walmart isn't just in large metro areas, it's in a lot of smaller places and those places don't have many other employment options so those variable schedules do not matter as much because there is often no other job to get.

Those mom and pop stores they replace? They employed a couple people for many years and kept the owners comfortable. The products were often more expensive and people had few options. Sadly, mom and pop stores didn't really work for the masses because they didn't provide employment or products people who needed them could afford.

Should Walmart provide higher wages? Probably. But they do hire a lot of very low skilled workers and the fact is that those jobs will never be high paying.

I usually try to keep my business very local, but just today I had two items I needed -

1) I need super-duper special snowflake Kotex thanks to perimenopause. They are literally twice as expensive on Amazon as they are at our local Walmart.
2) My husband likes to drink Powerade Zero - again, much more expensive on Amazon or in our local grocery store.