Wal-Mart -- again

[RevDisk]

I do think Wal-mart is being short sighted. I stopped shopping there because the stores are dirty, a lot of the merch on the shelf is damaged, there's extremely few checkout lines and the pricing is not that great for the poor quality. From what I understand, Walmart is running into financial problems from what I understand.

I did hear they're pushing an initiative to bring some manufacturing back to the US. I'll believe it when I see it

[MechAg94]

Walmart has had some good prices on practice ammo.  Given the metion of bad quality merchandise sold to Walmart, that got me thinking.   

[KD5NRH]

I recall reading somewhere that some manufacturers produce products for Wal Mart that appear to be the same as their products in other stores, but have some corners cut to keep prices down.

Not that hard to prove; wander around WalMart and find a few good name brands of $10+ products you know you'll be able to find elsewhere, and note how many of the model numbers end with W or WM.  If you've got the spare cash, buy one of the WM models and the externally-identical-except-for-that one from another store, pull them apart and compare.

Also, I've found a lot of the electronics and such have zero manufacturer support for WM model numbers.  Often, the WM replaces some important model suffix, so it's at best a wild guess as to whether replacement parts will fit.

[AJ Dual]

Not that hard to prove; wander around WalMart and find a few good name brands of $10+ products you know you'll be able to find elsewhere, and note how many of the model numbers end with W or WM.  If you've got the spare cash, buy one of the WM models and the externally-identical-except-for-that one from another store, pull them apart and compare.

Also, I've found a lot of the electronics and such have zero manufacturer support for WM model numbers.  Often, the WM replaces some important model suffix, so it's at best a wild guess as to whether replacement parts will fit.

Sometimes it's just to help the stores avoid having to price match. All the big computer makers would do that when I worked at CompUSA as a college student back in the 90's. Acer, Packard Bell, Compaq... they'd all produce an identical Pentium100Mhz, 32mb RAM, 250mb HDD, and maybe, change the video card if it wasn't on-mobo chipset video, and then market one as the MX1500 at CompUSA, and the other as the XM5100 at Best Buy etc.

[Ron]

To be a wise capitalist consumer you must always keep caveat emptor in mind.

America is filled with capitalist dumb consumers.

[Ben]

I almost don't want to jump into a thread that seems to be as contentious as 9mm vs .45 threads.  

I generally just go to Walmart for things like oil and filters, cleaning supplies, and cheap clothes to wear for stuff where I'll ruin my clothes. I guess I'm bigoted, but one of the things I like least about the Walmarts I've gone to is the clientele. I have been to more Target-like Walmarts when traveling through Oregon, so that can be location specific, which brings me to:

One of the things I guess Walmart does well is show up in BFE USA where other big box stores will not go. One of my old coworkers was flying out of a BFE NAS back in the day, I forget where, but somewhere in flyover country. She said that one of the biggest things to happen while she was there (both for military personnel and local civilians) was a Walmart opening.

Apparently their Exchange sucked, and Walmart brought in goods they could otherwise not get at reasonable prices (this was well before Amazon went wild). Same for the locals. While Walmart likely killed some mom and pop stores, it brought in jobs to a depressed area and provided "big box" goods that would otherwise have been a 100 or so mile drive away.

I'm guessing there is more Walmart hate in cities that have Costcos, Targets, etc. than in rural areas with limited choices. Maybe if some of the "quality" big box places opened up in marginal population areas, there might be more of an argument for the evils of Walmart. Otherwise, other than Amazon now making it easy for people in BFE to get stuff at good prices, no other brick and mortar places ever seemed to want to take the chance on marginal profits.

[AJ Dual]

Walmart saves poor Americans billions of dollars a year.

But what about muh jerbs?

Emotive arguments aren't becoming of free market conservatives/libertarians who should be otherwise ideologically consistent.

[Ron]

I agree with Ben btw.

[KD5NRH]

Sometimes it's just to help the stores avoid having to price match. All the big computer makers would do that when I worked at CompUSA as a college student back in the 90's. Acer, Packard Bell, Compaq... they'd all produce an identical Pentium100Mhz, 32mb RAM, 250mb HDD, and maybe, change the video card if it wasn't on-mobo chipset video, and then market one as the MX1500 at CompUSA, and the other as the XM5100 at Best Buy etc.

Not necessarily; I recently had to do some work on an HP laptop from WalMart, and when I went to HP's site, searching for the -WM model didn't get any results.  Dropping the -WM turned up the same model number with a half dozen other suffixes.  On closer inspection, two were visually identical, but none of the specs matched, so it was actually a different submodel with smaller HDD, less RAM, crappy Broadcom wifi, etc. than any of the non-WalMart variants.

[brimic]

I'm guessing there is more Walmart hate in cities that have Costcos, Targets, etc. than in rural areas with limited choices. Maybe if some of the "quality" big box places opened up in marginal population areas, there might be more of an argument for the evils of Walmart. Otherwise, other than Amazon now making it easy for people in BFE to get stuff at good prices, no other brick and mortar places ever seemed to want to take the chance on marginal profits.

The cities hate Walmart because Walmart isn't unionized- it's all about politics.

[HeroHog]

Not necessarily; I recently had to do some work on an HP laptop from WalMart, and when I went to HP's site, searching for the -WM model didn't get any results.  Dropping the -WM turned up the same model number with a half dozen other suffixes.  On closer inspection, two were visually identical, but none of the specs matched, so it was actually a different submodel with smaller HDD, less RAM, crappy Broadcom wifi, etc. than any of the non-WalMart variants.

You will probably also find that driver's and such are only available through WM "support" as well.

[HeroHog]

My dad absolutely HATED Sears because of the many companies they Wal-Mart'ed to death and then bought once they went under. WM, KM, Sears, Dick's, the whole lot of them force their vendors to make models/colors/features that are exclusive to their stores and built to the price point they demand or you don't do business with them.

[KD5NRH]

I'm guessing there is more Walmart hate in cities that have Costcos, Targets, etc. than in rural areas with limited choices. Maybe if some of the "quality" big box places opened up in marginal population areas, there might be more of an argument for the evils of Walmart. Otherwise, other than Amazon now making it easy for people in BFE to get stuff at good prices, no other brick and mortar places ever seemed to want to take the chance on marginal profits.

Not necessarily; the hate is still there, but the alternatives are worse.  For example, I'm in a college town of 18,000 permanent residents and 7-9,000 students.  Add in another 15-20,000 county residents outside the city limits, but closer to here than any other city big enough to have a WalMart or HEB.  The nearest Home Depot and Lowe's are 35 miles away.  The nearest Target and Costco are 65 miles away.  Within 30 miles, there's one large grocery store, (HEB) a Big Lots and a couple of Dollar Generals.  While there are quite a few specialty stores, one can pick up an assortment of items at WalMart in half an hour that would take a full day of making the rounds of the hardware, sewing, clothing, entertainment, farm supply, etc. stores.  Other items are just plain hard to come by anywhere within an hour's drive other than at WalMart, like camping gear or a vacuum cleaner.

Plenty of us do keep running lists for whenever we're going to be going to DFW/Austin/Abilene, but a lot of things can't really wait.

[Perd Hapley]

Within 30 miles, there's one large grocery store, (HEB) a Big Lots and a couple of Dollar Generals. 

The correct plural form is "Dollars General."

[Fly320s]

Where the heck are you that DFW, Austin, and Abilene are the close big cities?

Stephenville?

Granbury has a Lowe's.

[seeker_two]

If Wal-Mart won't deal, I'll bet that Dollar General, Target, Family Dollar, etc. Will be happy to scoop up the competition....

[Scout26]

But again, like all retailers they are trying to hit certain price points.   Which is why there are Hyundai's and Lamborghini's.  You get what you pay for.

I grocery shop at Aldi for most of our basic food items.  But I also go to the nearby Marino's because Aldi doesn't carry Rye or Pumpernickel breads nor do they have a deli counter with over 100 different meat and cheeses that I can get sliced to order for our Lunches.  Aldi will generally have 1-3 kinds of apples.  Marino's will have 8-10.

Same with Wal-mart.  School notebooks and pencils, yep same as Staples, yet cheaper.  Same cleaning supplies as the local Jewel, but roughly 10-20% cheaper.    Would I buy a TV or other high end item from Wal-mart?  Probably not.  But for the everyday mundane stuff like cleaning supplies.  You betcha.

And don't worry.  Just like Sears, Montgomery Wards, K-Mart and many, many other retailers, there's someone out there developing and building the next big thing (Amazon perhaps) that knock Wal-Mart off their pedestal and we will start complaining about how "they' are wrecking the economy and "ruining" the job market.

You don't have to sell your products through Wal-mart. Plenty of companies don't, but then don't bitch about a) How expensive item X is, and b) why you can't find it in your local W-M.   

[KD5NRH]

Where the heck are you that DFW, Austin, and Abilene are the close big cities?

Stephenville?

Exactly.

Granbury has a Lowe's.

And a Home Depot.  But 35 miles isn't always practical.  More practical than paying the Ace prices, but that's not saying much.

[KD5NRH]

You don't have to sell your products through Wal-mart. Plenty of companies don't, but then don't bitch about a) How expensive item X is, and b) why you can't find it in your local W-M.

That's just the thing; when a major, high demand brand ditches WalMart and goes with, for example, Target instead, it would give Target the foothold they need in areas like this with an "anchor item" that people have to go to them for.  Once they're in the door, it comes down to how you compete with WM on the price, availability and convenience of other items.  If you can't get, say, Brita filters at WalMart, and you can at Target, you're going to Target anyway, so if you need a few cans of Fancy Feast that both stores carry, you're probably not going to WM too unless there's something else you can't get at Target.