Music/Events/Other

***** WALMART ANOTHER CRAP COMPANY *****

Posted on September 25th, 2012 · Music/Events/Other

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***** WALMART ANOTHER CRAP COMPANY *****

About two weeks ago, Mrs. Jeff Eats needed to buy a new 2-slice toaster.

Mrs. Jeff Eats went to Town Center at Boca Raton and bought a toaster from Macy’s which was on sale for $39.95.

That evening, Mrs. Jeff Eats checked Walmart’s website and found the exact same toaster listed at $13.95. Mrs. Jeff Eats also checked the website and confirmed that the toaster was available at the Walmart Supercenter, 16205 South Military Trail, Delray Beach, Florida 33484.

The next morning, Mrs. Jeff Eats returned the toaster to Macy’s and went to the Walmart Supercenter where she learned that the 2 slice toaster wasn’t carried by the store despite the website “saying” that it was.

The following day, Jeff Eats wrote an e-mail and called Walmart’s complaint-line advising Walmart of the incident.

A few days later, Jeff Eats received a call from the Walmart Supercenter’s manager who advised that Jeff Eats and Mrs. Jeff Eats should come to the store at our convenience and pickout “any” toaster that we liked and that even if it was more expensive we would only be charged $13.95.

Three days later, Jeff Eats and Mrs Jeff Eats went to the Walmart Supercenter. Jeff Eats picked out a 4 slice toaster from the display priced at $39.95 but was advised by a sales associate that Walmart was out-of-stock. Jeff Eats personally advised the manager, who called Jeff Eats later that day and advised that the item was on back-order, but that he would scout around other stores and see if he could find one for Jeff Eats. Jeff Eats asked him, as to why Walmart would keep a “sample” on display if an item was on back-order? The manager really had no answer. He later called and left a message that one had been found.

Yesterday morning, Jeff Eats received a call from a woman who said that she was the manager’s assistant and advised that either “today” or tomorrow Walmart would deliver free of charge the toaster to Jeff Eats’ home and the total charge would be $10.18 because the manager had “given” Jeff Eats a further discount.. The woman was given directions to Jeff Eats’ home. The woman said she would have the delivery person call 30 minutes prior to the delivery.

No delivery call yesterday. No delivery call today.

About 70 minutes ago, Mrs. Jeff Eats bought a new 2 slice toaster at a local Target Store.

WALMART IS A CRAP COMPANY.

What do you guys think?
*****

Septmber 28, 2012 UPDATE

Received a call this morning from the Linton store’s GM who arranged and then personally delivered to Jeff Eats’ home a 4-slice toaster priced at $10.18.

So…what have we learned from this exercise…the little guy can “win” if he is persistent and doesn’t take “no” for an answer…and that Jeff Eats now has 2 toasters, a 2-slicer from Target and a 4-slicer from Walmart.
.

48 Comments to “***** WALMART ANOTHER CRAP COMPANY *****”

  1. DELO says...

    Jeff, I never shop at Walmart. The blinding white lighting is like an interrogation room.
    Stick with target and Costco.

  2. DEAN F. says...

    So, the $13.95 toaster then the $39.95 toaster was only going to cost $10.18. Real cool, Walmart could have said your cost was only going to be 5 cents, because they never delivered it anyway.
    Real crap company.

    • DONTSHOPTHERE says...

      Walmart is strictly 90% price and 10% customer service. If they dont have an item, its out of stock or soemthing that requires an employee to even think a drop, you are up sheets’ creek.

      • Jim Carson says...

        DONT, You hit the nail right on the head. Walmart’s decor is nothing. It has employees who are very low payed and couldnt give a rat’s ass about the customers. Throw in the fact that the employees know absolutely nothing about the merchandise and you got a store that the customer has to naviagte all on their own.

  3. Linda c says...

    Jeff
    You got to be nuts to shop at Walmart.
    Some prices are good but the store is very poorly layed out and the brightness is very annoying.

  4. jenna says...

    They are clueless. The store is always out of stock on everything. I thought it was just during the Season but no one monitors anything there. Tried to buy vitamins and they were totally out of many of them… Did you know that they used to have an express pay for your Rx system that just call in you Rx and its ready and put on your credit card and you just go to a special window and pick it up ? Anyway, everytime we ever went to do that some people in the regular line that refused to give their credit card to the pharmacy to get on this plan , would mumble and complain out loud to each other in the long line… One day I went to get my Rx and the line was no more. The pharmacy assistant said there was a big fight with two seniors out in the parking lot ..actually fist fighting and the police were called. Unbelievable. They should have put up some sort of sign that explained how the plan works so people would understand .. well they were an angry bunch let me tell you. So the time saving express plan is no more but only at that store. Well run I would say.

  5. VERNON H SMYTHE says...

    How Walmart became so huge is a mystery to me.
    No question it has many low prices. However, notice how Costco’s kicks Sam’s Club wherever they are matched up.
    Walmart stores look like crap.
    Over the years, Walmart has been involved in more scandals involving labor practices that just get swept under the rug. Over time scams, gender discrimination, pay offs to foreign governments.
    Target is so much of an operation that it isnt even funny.
    Jeff, big mistake doing business with Walmart.
    Internally on the store level its just a huge mismanaged operation.

  6. Larry Lehrman says...

    Jeff,
    I havent set foot in a Walmart in something like 10 years.
    When I did shop there it was a depressing environment with no imagination. No color.
    Ive been a Target customer for years and love shopping there.
    How in the world Walmart became so huge is the biggest joke.

  7. BOBBY G. says...

    Jeff Eats:
    That’s some story about the toaster.
    Just shows you, that from the manager down know one in that particular store has the foggiest idea how to treat a customer.
    When an item is on back order the sample on display should be removed.
    What is also scary is that the mgrs asst called you to arrange delivery and nothing ever happened.
    This person obviously doesnt know how to followup on things.
    Macy’s at least had the item in stock.
    Walmart had it for much less, but really didnt have it.
    Thats like the old story about a guy who says to his butcher how come your meat is $20 a lb when the butcher across the street has it for $4 lb and the butcher says to the guy then why didnt you buy it from the butcher across the street and the guy says because he’s all out.
    Walmart has always been a low end store.
    Stick with the Costco’s and Targets and you won’t have any headaches.

  8. Jeff,
    The Walmart on Linton in Delray is poorly setup, is dirty and is always out of stock on various items.
    I sure wouldnt want to own the Subway outlet that is stuck in this store. What a piss poor location.
    Anyone who buys fruits, vegetable and meats has to be out of their mind. I wouldnt trust this store for love or money to be selling fresh mdse.
    Your story is a great expose on a mismanaged company.
    If this happened to you, just imagine what’s really going on at that store and this chain.

  9. WALMART HATER says...

    Jeff,
    You really are a silly goose.
    Walmart is way too busy bribing Mexican officials and doesnt have time to get you your toaster. The delivery man is probably busy delivery envelopes of cash and just forgot about your toaster.
    Walmart is a bs company.
    By the way let’s not even discuss how they have consistently abused workers and cheated them out of salary.

  10. Jeff:
    Walmart is a company in decline.
    You do recall the GREETERS that use to be at the front when you came and went? Well those GREETERS are no more.
    Years ago I had a problem with Walmart. Sorry, I dont recall the particulars other than the fact that Walmart mailed me a $50 gift card for my troubles.
    A year or so ago, I had a problem returning something. You would have thought that I was 77 year old bank robber. It was that day that I stopped shopping at Walmart and joined Costco and drove to Targets.
    How do I know that those Greeters are gone, my next door neighbor was one of them and he was fired.
    Im originally from Brooklyn.
    As you have correctly pointed out in other columns, Winn Dixie is like the old A & P and Publix is like the old Waldbaum’s chain.
    Walmart is the A & P and Targets is the Waldbaums.
    Us oldtime Brooklyn folks know a better store and that’s why many of us dont go to Walmarts.

  11. Larry W says...

    Ever call Walmart;’s complaint line?
    It’s like talking to the wall.
    They have no power to correct anything and just yes you to death.
    This company doesnt give a rat’s ass about its customers.

  12. Ron R. says...

    Jeff Eats, What do you expect from a corrupt company?
    HUFF POST
    OK, we now know that Walmart’s meteoric rise to Mexico’s biggest retailer and employer appears to have been fueled by a massive bribery scheme. We know that millions of dollars were apparently paid to “gestores,” fixers whose job was to ensure that local zoning and environmental laws didn’t slow the approval of new stores. We know that when a whistleblower brought the scandal to the attention of Walmart headquarters in Arkansas, the company’s general counsel and compliance officers called for a full-fledged investigation. And we know that company’s senior leadership allegedly not only refused to allow such an investigation but strategically and intentionally defanged the ability of its investigative units to pursue such problems in the future.

    As the New York Times investigation that brought all this light summarized, it found “credible evidence that bribery played a significant and persistent role in the Wal-Mart’s rapid growth in Mexico.”

    We know in short that Walmart’s much heralded commitment to ethical behavior has once again proven to be a pathetically flimsy shield against the driving imperative of its “grow at any cost” business model. And we can see that even when grow at any cost means “break the law” the company is not only willing to overlook, but actually to reward, success purchased at that price.

    We know all this, incidentally, even if it should turn out (almost tooth fairy implausibly) that every peso of the fees Walmart paid its fixers were stolen by those agents and none actually passed along as intended to bribe Mexican officials — because either way, whoever was paid off, Walmart knew that company funds had been used illegally, did nothing about it, and concealed the evidence from shareholders and law enforcement officials in both Mexico and the US.

    The scale of this potential bribery dwarfs the fears that have been expressed that Rupert Murdoch’s NewsCorp’s reliance on bribing the police and hacking cell-phones to obtain stories in Britain might entail violations of the US Corrupt Practices Act by its US operations. Based on the Times’ investigation, Walmart’s greatest recent business success, the explosive growth of Walmex, was overwhelmingly empowered by a strategy of rushing new locations through Mexico’s permitting processes so quickly that Walmart’s opponents could not compete — the entire enterprise was based not on better service or prices, but on obtaining, if necessary through illegal means, a monopoly.

    These revelations come on the heels of a series of previous scandals in which Walmart’s growth at any cost mandate led its leadership to abuse its workers, violate its ethical standard, and taken the company far too often out of the gray zone and into the black. It’s faced criminal charges for employing illegal workers, and outraged communities when it adopted the practice of locking its workers into some US stores overnight, so they could not even leave if they had medical needs. Recently workers at Walmart’s seafood processing facilities in Asia were subjected to human rights violations. Even in Mexico five years earlier, Walmart had been implicated in a massive scheme to avoid sales taxes, eventually paying $34.3 million in back taxes, but along the way refusing to take corrective action when the problem was flagged for its leaders. EXAMPLES EXAMPLES.

    What does this tell us? It’s not surprising to learn that local zoning processes in Mexico are corrupt, or that in any fast growing enterprise in that country the issue of how to avoid bribery while building a business is challenging. It’s not remarkable that Walmart, discovering its problem, felt threatened and tried to deal with the issue internally first.

    What is most telling about the Times investigation is that Walmart had on its staff capable and competent leadership which had dealt with these issues before. Walmart International’s general counsel, Maritz I. Munich, had spent 12 years in Mexico and Latin America as a lawyer for Procter & Gamble. Ronald Halter, one of the company’s special investigators, had 21 years of experience with the FBI. And these staff vigorously and persistently flagged for Walmart’s top leadership that the company had a serious problem, that the allegations of violations of US and Mexican law were credible, and that Walmart’s senior leadership in Mexico, including Walmex’s CEO Eduardo Castro-Wright, were potentially implicated.

    What happened? The professionals were ignored, the investigation was shut down. But instead of doing what many companies would have done, keeping the problems out of the public eye and away from the authorities while doing a thorough internal job of cleaning house, Walmart both covered up and rewarded its own rotten apples — including the most senior official implicated. Castro-Wright was promoted to his present role as Vice-Chairman — a reward for his success in growing Walmex so fast, using a monopoly building strategy which both past and present Walmart CEOs, Lee Scott and Michael Duke, knew had been based on extraordinarily dubious and probably illegal methods.

    Walmmart’s business model — profit through growth, whatever the cost — has not served communities, its workers or, ultimately, its average shareholders, well. It makes less money per store than its chief US competitor, Costco, while paying its workers less and treating them poorly, locating its stories in sites which contribute to sprawl and pollution. It’s employee-shareholders this year filed a proxy resolution complaining that “recent decisions…may overemphasize sales growth even when that growth is resulting in declining rates of return … and does not …cover the costs of capital.” Its tactics to compel its suppliers to reduce their prices in turn requires them to be less good employers and neighbors, encourage safety, health and environmental abuses, and make a mockery of the ethical goals the company sets in its formal policies.

    But the business model is sacred — the company simply refuses to question it. When I became Executive Director of the Sierra Club Walmart reached out to me on a number of occasions to talk about its sustainability initiatives. I thought — and think — that these initiatives were important, significant and serious. The company has had mixed success in implementing them, but they are ambitious, so failures are not surprising. But when Walmart asked to meet, I always made it clear that I was only willing to have a conversation in which not only those activities which the company defined as “sustainability” would be discussed, but the entire implications of Walmart’s business model. I wanted to look at the environmental footprint not only of Walmart’s store floors, but of its locational choices; not just at the standards it set for its suppliers, but what its pricing did to environmental quality in their communities. No one from Walmart, apparently, felt qualified or empowered to have such a broad discussion. I suspected, and suspect more strongly after reading the Times story, this reluctance was because growth at any cost is holy writ in Bentonville, and holy writ is not something you sit down to debate with outsiders — even, when it appears to involve committing massive criminal violations of US and Mexican law.

    • Gino L says...

      AND the US GOVT will let Walmart get away with this Mexican bribery.
      INCREDIBLE!!!!

  13. PPG (Miami) says...

    when we shop, we dont even think about walmart in the equation. publix, targets, costco that’s our game.
    walmart is low end crap.

  14. Michael R. says...

    Jeff,
    Walmart and Target are two totally different operations.
    Walmart is a low end retailer.
    Target is a more upscale retailer.
    Just look at the people shopping in Walmart and compare them to those in Target.
    I’m not trying to be nasty or anything but Walmart is catering to a much lower economic group.
    Here’s just an opinion, but Walmart can get away with more crap because its clientele isnt as sophisticated or economically strong as those of other retailers.
    That’s just the truth and once again no insults intended.

  15. ED F. says...

    jeff, here’s a good article about how walmart has no customer service.

    Steve Denning,
    3/07/2012 @ 12:02PM |2,147 views

    Emulate Wal-Mart And Dare To Be Bad?

    5 comments, 5 called-out
    + Comment now

    A business that makes nothing but money is a poor kind of business.

    Henry Ford

    Have you ever wondered why you often get bad customer service these days? Have you wondered why annoying extra charges get slipped into your monthly bill? To find out, you might do worse than check out a recent article by Frances Frei, a world-renowned guru in service management and a Harvard teaching legend. and Anne Morriss, a leader in strategy, leadership and institutional change. It’s entitled, “To Offer Great Customer Service, Dare to Be Bad.” It suggests that the path to improving customer service is to “dare to be bad”.

    The authors, who have also written the recently published book, Uncommon Service: How to Win by Putting Customers at the Core of Your Business, offer this advice because:

    our capital and energy are limited resources, so to afford to excel at the things that matter most, you have to under-invest somewhere else. Our advice is simply to underperform rationally, in the areas your customers value least.

    The example given is Wal-Mart [WMT]:

    Take Wal-Mart. Wal-Mart customers want the lowest possible prices on the things they use every day. And Wal-Mart delivers, with reliably rock-bottom pricing and fantastic product variety. To afford it, the company under-delivers on other parts of the retail experience, such as sales support and ambience. You won’t find an army of helpful employees at your average Wal-Mart, and its decor isn’t likely to give you ideas for your home renovation. Yet Wal-Mart customers are delighted to make these tradeoffs.

    This pattern of “daring to be bad,” the authors say, “is the pattern among service leaders in every industry we’ve studied.”

    Now it’s true that this pattern is pervasive in large corporations today. But is “daring to be bad” a pattern be emulated?

    Wal-Mart is no longer the cheapest

    The example given by the article is telling because in Wal-Mart’s case, the fundamental premise is dead wrong. Wal-Mart no longer delivers reliably rock-bottom pricing.

    In an article in the Wall Street Journal, John Jannarone reports on a study which compared prices on a diverse basket of products: it found Wal-Mart is 19% more expensive than Amazon [AMZ]. Jannarone writes:

    “Wal-Mart is losing business to rivals of different shapes and sizes. Customer traffic at U.S. stores has declined for five straight quarters. Meanwhile, sales have surged at discounters like Dollar Tree and Family Dollar Stores [FDO]. A recent study by Wells Fargo [WFC] showed that those chains often charge less than Wal-Mart, though they carry a much smaller selection of items.”

    Today Wal-Mart is caught in the middle. If we want something quick, we go to a convenience store. If we want something cheap, we go to Amazon. Wal-Mart? Sorry. We don’t need you any more.

    The reality is that Wal-Mart’s business model in the US is broken. It is suffering a slow and agonizing death in the Amazon jungle. Instead of Wal-Mart thinking through which aspects of its customer service can be cut back, Wal-Mart, if it is to have a real future, needs to fundamentally re-think its business model with the customer at the center: what would it really take to delight its customers in today’s marketplace?

    Customer service is not an add-on

    The problem here is traditional 20th Century management thinking, in which customer service is merely an add-on to the existing business model. Instead of approaching the business from an outside-in perspective and asking how the firm can deliver more value to the customer, and then devoting the whole organization to delivering that, the thinking reflects an inside-out mindset: how can we make more money out of the shoppers who come to our stores. It’s reciting internally-driven “value propositions,” such as “everyday low prices,” without asking whether they are true or asking: is the customer really being delighted by what we do?

    Instead of starting from the question, how could we add more value and deliver it sooner, the mindset immediately focuses on how to make more money through greater efficiency of the given business model. It asks: how could cut back on some aspect of customer service so that we would reduce costs?

    Thus Wal-Mart decided many years ago that its competitive advantage is low price and variety, so now it can “dare to be bad” in other areas. One can imagine the management meetings within Wal-Mart deciding which aspects of customer service to cut back on, instead of spending time addressing the more fundamental questions of understanding why Wal-Mart’s basic business model is broken and what can be done to fix it.

    The article—and Wal-Mart—have yet to cross the Rubicon described in Ranjay Gulati’s book, Reorganize For Resilience, from an inside-out perspective (“Our customers take what we make”) to an outside-in perspective (“We want to understand what our customers’ problems are and find ways to solve them.”)

    An inside-out view of the customer

    The inside-out perspective infects every aspect of the article:

    Imagine you have a few of your best customers in front of you. What do they care about? Which parts of the service experience are important to them (low prices, quick response time, etc.)? Now list those service attributes in order of importance, from their perspective. To be sure you’re right, test the list with real, live customers.

    We are here in the 20th Century mindset, starting from inside the corporation. We stay inside the firm and imagine what the customer cares about, instead of getting out and living with customers to find out what they really care about. Then starting from our imagined picture of the customer, we list the attributes of customer service and rank them in importance from what we imagine the customer’s perspective, and then verifying whether the ranking is correct. The likely result is that we miss attributes in the customers’ world that we would have discovered if we had started there.

    The second problem is that customers themselves don’t know what delights them. So simply asking them will give many wrong answers. The third, and most serious, problem is that we miss disruptive innovation from an unexpected source that doesn’t even look like a real competitor, e.g. Amazon, or tiny convenience stores.

    In the article, 21st Century thinking in which you get inside the customer’s world and work backwards to how the firm could be more responsive to the customers problems and dreams is noticeable for its absence. The pervasive 20th Century inside-out mindset makes the firm less resilient and helps explain the rapidly accelerating death rate of the Fortune 500.

    The inside-out view of competitiveness

    According the article, customer service entails asking a series of questions.

    How do I compare to my competitors? According to the article, “Once you’re confident about what your customers want, put your current service offering in the context of your industry.” We are here in the world of relative customer satisfaction. By comparing the firm to “other firms in your industry”, the firm is likely to miss competition from firms outside the industry. Moreover, if other firms In the industry is mediocre, the question how the firm stacks up with competitors is less relevant to long-term success than asking the question in absolute terms: what would it really take to delight my customers?

    The risk is also that of missing disruptive innovation: Wal-Mart may not see Amazon or Dollar Tree as competitors because they are not “in the industry”. It may not see that these firms may be not only good enough for most people’s needs but also good enough to eventually put Wal-Mart out of business.

    What will it take to excel? One might have thought that such a question would be an invitation to genuine excellence, in which new ways of delighting the customer could be explored. On the contrary, the article re-interprets the question in terms of relative excellence: “Performance is a relative concept.” This in turn immediately leads to issues of cutting back on costs and service: “what would your customers be willing to give up for the things they really want?” In other words, we are in the 20th Century mindset of traditional management trade-offs. Instead of thinking like Toyota, how do we get both high quality and low price, the first impulse is to think: what can we cut?

    How else could I fund excellence? The authors suggest two ways of “funding excellence”: charging extra or cutting back costs in the back office. The idea of finding new ways to add value at the same price is not in the picture.

    Is it any surprise to discover that Wal-Mart is charging customers a $3 monthly fee for using its debit card? So far Wal-Mart is seemingly “getting away with it.” Unlike the massive outrage that greeted Bank of America’s introduction of a $5 debit card fee, Walmart has—so far—managed to escape widespread public anger. In 20th Century business terms, this is a brilliant victory. They are making money off their customers and no one is complaining. But in 21st Century business terms, the victory is hollow. The fact that there is—so far—no loud public outcry, doesn’t mean customers haven’t noticed. The “bad profits” that accrue from such practices are quietly eating away at customer loyalty and Wal-Mart’s long-term sustainability. It should come as no surprise that Wal-Mart’s US business is stagnating.

    Daring to be good

    If 20th Century business was about “daring to be bad,” then 21st Century business is about daring to be good. As Gary Hamel has written in his new book, What Matters Now, the language of 20th Century business is “sterile, uninspiring and relentless banal.” There is a “hole in the soul of business” and the only way to fix it is “to embrace the good, the true and the beautiful” (p. 38).

    The successful firms of the 21st Century are already doing exactly that. Instead of “maximizing shareholder value”—which even Jack Welch said was “the dumbest idea in the world“—firms like Apple [AAPL] are intent on finding new ways to delight their customers. They are, like Chip Conley, seeing how his firm, Joie De Vivre, can create customer joy. They are like Tony Tsieh seeing how Zappos can create customer happiness. They are like Marc Benioff at Salesforce [CRM] seeing how they can make their customers successful. They have recognized, like Roger Martin, that we are living in the age of customer capitalism and focused on adding more value to their customers. As Fred Reichheld suggests in The Ultimate Question 2.0, they measure customer delight in absolute terms, not merely in terms of whether they doing better than their mediocre competitors.

    The interesting thing about pursuing customer delight as a corporate goal is that it ultimately makes more money for the firm than trying to extract a larger share of the customer’s wallet. It is not just profitable. It is hugely profitable.

    An antidote to disruptive innovation

    Moreover a focus on delighting customers offers an antidote to the cancer that afflicts 20th Century businesses: disruptive innovation. As James Allworth has written in the HBR blog, the solution to disruptive innovation is continuous innovation. But continuous innovation is almost impossible to achieve when the goal of the firm is maximizing shareholder value.

    “Anyone familiar with Professor Christensen’s work,” he writes, “will quickly recognize the causal mechanism at the heart of the Innovator’s Dilemma: the pursuit of profit. The best professional managers — doing all the right things and following all the best advice — lead their companies all the way to the top of their markets in that pursuit… only to fall straight off the edge of a cliff after getting there….”

    Firms like Apple [AAPL] have been able to achieve continuous innovation and customer delight by setting aside maximizing shareholder value. Apple can do it because Apple hasn’t optimized its organization to maximize profit. Instead, it has made the creation of value for customers its priority.

    If the firm’s goal is, like Wal-Mart and most large businesses today, that of making money, then innovation is merely one option among others: “daring to be bad” will be a tempting but ultimately a bad choice. If the firm’s goal is delighting the customer, then innovation and choosing to be good become essential drivers of everything that happens in the organization.

    Why not dare to be good?

    Instead of daring to be bad, like 20th Century firms, why not dare to be good? It makes more money for the company. It makes customers happy. And it creates inspiring workplaces. What’s holding us back? Isn’t it time for all organizations to set aside their 20th Century mindsets and dare to be good, by managing in a radically new way so as to flourish in the emerging world of the 21st Century.

  16. RRDF says...

    hey jeff, Walmart is one dumb company, read:

    Would you consider 75 school kids singing “God Bless America“ to honor those killed on Sept. 11, 2001, a “flash mob?” One Florida Walmart apparently did.

    School kids aged 7 to 10 from Coconut Palm Elementary in Miramar, Fla., were set to sing a rendition of the patriotic song in a local Walmart Tuesday when the manager on duty refused to honor an agreement Principal Terri Thelmas had made days prior, calling the performance “a liability,” the Sun-Sentinel reports. Instead, the disappointed chorus took to singing in the parking lot but their trial wasn’t over yet. As they concluded the song, police showed up at the scene to respond to a complaint of a “flash mob situation.”

    While no police action was taken, the event reportedly brought many students to tears. Walmart was prompted to make an official apology, according to CBS Miami.

    “We regret this happened and apologize to the students, parents and the school for this experience,” said Kayla Whaling, a Walmart spokeswoman based in Bentonville, Ark. “We’re also inviting the kids back to the store to help honor the victims and fallen heroes.”

    This isn’t the first time Walmart has had to apologize for kicking people out of one of its stores. In 2010, Walmart apologized after a voice over the intercom at a New Jersey location announced: “All black people leave the store now.”

    More often, however, Walmart patrons are asked to leave the stores for genuine misbehavior and often end up in police custody. Recent incidents include “sexual fondling” with stolen KY jelly, cashier punching and “booty”-induced sexual harassment.

  17. Linda K. says...

    Walmart is solely based on prices. The mgt doesnt care about decor. The mgt doesnt care about customer service. If you want low prices and no service or ambiance you go to Walmart.
    Your situation involved the need for customer service. Since there is none, you found out that buying a toaster can provide to be a daunting experience.
    Personally I dont shop at Walmart. I rather pay a few cents here and there for an item than walk around a store that looks like an Alasakan wasteland staff by people who don’t know which end is up.
    That’s the way I see it.

    • Phil T. says...

      Linda, well said. I agree.

  18. Phil T. says...

    Walmart isnt for a shopper who wants service. Go in its electronic’s dept and you find employees who have no idea as to what various items are about.
    I shop Brandsmart or Best Buy for that.
    Food, why would you go to Walmart when there is a Publix on every corner.
    Hard Goods, go to Costco or Target they have what you need.
    Walmart, AH——————-NO!!!!!!

  19. WILLIE S. says...

    Hey Jeff, I kind of like Walmart. Good prices.

  20. zig says...

    I go to Walmart 4x a month and have zero problems. WalMart is what it is. At those prices you cannot expect much customer service. But it’s the same at Home Depot, I need to ask about a product and can find someone to ask only one third of the time.

    WalMart- Cheap stuff if they have it in stock. Their expanded food stores have some real bargains. They have some hard to find items for me in their garden centers.

    There are grungy WalMarts and some really nice clean ones such as in Parkland (Coral Springs)

    • Donnie B says...

      So 2/3rds of the time u can’t find a sales person and cheap stuff if they have it in stock.
      Jeff wanted a cheap item and they didn’t have it.
      And the sales people couldn’t help him.
      Walmart is a dump.

    • Elbo McGee says...

      Zig baby,
      Try Target!

  21. Smoothasglass says...

    Jeff, recently it seems that you think people care about your opinion outside the boundries of how food tastes. You have proclaimed yourself the Andy Rooney of South Florida, but there is one difference, Andy was entertaining.

    Remember we live in South Florida where every other person is a whiny, self important nudnek. Jeff, please get back to the food opinions and stop worrying about what you deserve for free.

    • Handy Andy says...

      I’m with Jeff.
      Best blog going.
      Not just limited to how some joint’s soup was.
      Don’t like it, don’t read it.

    • Bobby Helms says...

      Other than you 27 people were interested in Talking about Walmart.
      I guess Jeff’s formula works.

    • Elbo McGee says...

      The term is nudnik. Learn to spell you nudnik.

    • FGT says...

      I could swear that Walmart sells food.
      Jeff is telling you customer service stinks.
      By the way I don’t see Jeff getting anything here for nothing.
      I also think he is as clever as they come.

  22. Smoothasglass says...

    Elbo check your yidish dictionary. For the rest of you who have equally nothing to do but worship a fellow whiner and I’m sure watch reality TV, Jeff is clearly running out of interesting things to write about.

    • Elbo McGee says...

      I checked and it’s nudnik. You lose.
      See ya!

    • JOHN D. says...

      smoothasglass,
      i enjoy reading jeff eats.
      not only does he pick some great restaurants but he writes about them in a clever way. unlike many other bloggers he doesnt take himself or his readers to seriously. every so often he throws in a topic that doesnt involve food. just look at his columns on walmart, bungalow bar, dogs in restaurants, obama and look at all of the comments and debate that follows. obviously people enjoy the now and then depature from hearing about pizza and tacos.
      lighten up my friend.
      jeff eats is a gem.
      by the way, if you do some research you will find that thousands and thousands of people read him every day. they all can’t be wrong.

  23. robertw says...

    Wow. Walmart gets alot of posts. With all this being said I know a few companies that I do business with, who sell to Walmart and they do HUGE numbers. Gigantic orders in the multi millions, and they pay their bills on time. Frankly if the price is right I buy at Walmart. The Parkland/Coconut Creek store has soft lighting if anyones cares. Often they may not be the best price on items due to other stores sale items. I shop at Costco but the same can be had about some of the huge bulk packs over there. Many times Walgreens/CVS/Publix will have better deals on smaller sizes than Costco. Remember that Costco makes the bulk of their money on membership fees and should not be compared to any standard retailer. You have to pay to get in the door. Therefore on a relative basis Costco has much lower and theft and deals with much higher incomes.

    • JOHN D. says...

      robertw,
      i don think that jeff is saying walmart doesnt have lower prices. i think he is saying that the customer service stinks. i also think he is saying that some of its low prices are bogus because they dont have the mdse when you go to buy it.
      personally walmart isnt on my list of places that i like to shop at. costco and target and publix do quite nicely for me.

  24. Gary says...

    Walmart And the Demise of America’s Middle Class!!
    Cheapest Merchandise Lowest Wages.

    2001-2007/ 40,000 U.S. factories closed eliminating millions of jobs.

    1992-2007/ the # of independent retailers fell by more than 60,000.
    as more communities lose their retailers. there is less demand for local services like-accounting,graphic design,advertising,local bank accounts, etc.

    As more dollars come into big box stores they flow out of the local economy.

    In 6 years Walmart’s imports from China rose from 9 billion to 27 billion.

    Big Box stores ceaseless search for lower costs continues to drive production overseas.

    Whatever we may have saved shopping at Walmart, we’ve more than paid for it in diminished opportunities and declining income.

  25. JOE FROM QUEENS says...

    Walmart is a very poorly run store.
    It’s employees no absolutely nothing about the merchandise.
    Walmart has good prices on some items and not such good prices on others.
    Jeff’s story is interesting.

  26. sheryl k says...

    Jeff, just saw your update that the GM delivered a toaster to you.
    you are so right, if the small guy fights back, the big guys usually give in just to make them go away. the problem in america is that most small guys dont fight back so big guys like walmart and comcast and fpl and att just roll right over them. just think about how the airlines treat people with lost luggage. if you dont fight hard you are dead meat. thanks for the great fight story.

  27. frank w says...

    Jeff, I think that this is such an interesting forum that you should continue to branch out and comment on everything. The food stuff is great but more material on that discrace Obama, Walmart, Publix, etc. are all equally if not more interesting.Keep up the great work.

  28. Gary says...

    Interesting statistic that I read
    95% of people who live within 5 miles of Walmart, shop there in the month of December

    • Joe T says...

      gary,
      you must also believe in ufos
      no way is your info right
      stop reading the national enquirer

      • Gary says...

        Joe T
        This is a fact. Prove me wrong genius.

      • Gary says...

        60% of the US population lives within 5 miles of a Walmart.
        96% of the US population lives within 20 miles of a Walmart.

        Joe T before you respond to a blog post, have somebody read you some facts and statistics.

  29. Ronny says...

    I think she should have gone to Target first.

  30. RKS says...

    Target is so much better.

  31. Young Court says...

    Walmart’s employees are a disaster.
    The store itself has some great prices but it doesn’t have all of the best brands.

  32. Gary Goldberg says...

    I think that Walmart makes errors at the checkout hoping that you don’t catch them or are too busy to go back to the store for a refund.

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