Reader Jeff is confused. He wants to purchase a laptop from Walmart. Upon Perusing his website from home, he saw a nice Acer Netbook for under $300. Of course, upon walking into the store, he was confronted with a slightly higher price. Luckily, he talked to the nice customer service representative and quickly price matched the in store item to the online price and Jeff walked out a happy customer.
Nah, just kidding.
Seeing that Walmart stocked this model, went out to a B&M store, as I wanted to make sure that a laptop this size would suit my needs. I was met by a gruff sales clerk who was obviously unenthusiastic about the prospect of opening up a display case and getting the laptop out to sell to me. I did notice the instore price was $348, $50 more expensive than the online price. As we are walking over to the register, almost as an afterthought, I ask him, “You’ll match what you sell ths for online, right?”
Him- “Absolutely not. We do not honor online prices.”
Me (flummoxed) “Maybe I wasn’t clear. I’m asking you to honor the price that your own website, walmart.com, lists for this exact product, not a competitors price.”
Him- “Well in some cases we will match a competitors price, but not our own.”
Me- “Wait, do you mean you’d want me to pay the final price with shipping that the website shows?”
Him- “No, we will not honor our website price. If you want to buy this, it will be the store price.”
So, I haul off and walk out, along the way stopping by the front desk to confirm that indeed, this is not a rogue clerk, this is Walmart policy.
So, I went back home, found the model I wanted (that walmart sold) for the price Walmart offered, from a different online retailer.
This really ranks up there as one of the dumbest store policies I’ve heard of. I understand that stores sometimes have different prices online VS. in store, and part of that reason is the fact that in store requires a lot more fixed capital in location, services personell, etc.
Still, not only is this the first time since the inception of the internet that I have had a store refuse to honor its OWN price, Walmart’s logic makes no sense to me.
Best Buy got into some trouble a while back for confusion between their in store prices and their online deals. Has anyone else run into problems like this? If so, how where they solved?
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I work for the web division of a Small Company. Our store prices rarely match our online prices… here’s a couple of reasons:
1) Vendors: Our Online division is required to meet certain price points on certain brands. Brand X may require that all websites have their product at a certain price, no matter what.
We have one brand that sets their MSRP to $600 dollars, but requires everyone to sell the product at $400 online, and then will make us put it on sale at $300… even though $300 would be nearly 100% profit. The B&M stores will sell it at $250 all the time, simply to move thru it quickly while still making a decent profit.
‘Luxury’ Brands and Electronics brands are notorious for this.
2) Competition: We sell against a lot of different people online, far more than we sell against in the real world. If no one is selling the product in your area and there’s demand, of course you’re going to sell it a comfortable profit. If you compete against the entire world… well, you’ve got to cut profits to move units.
My town has two Wal-Mart stores that are around 5 miles apart. The prices are different at both stores and they do not match prices. Another Wal-Mart about 25 miles away has even higher prices on certain items.
This just happened to me today at Wal-Mart while I tried to buy a digital camera. I missed ordering it online in time to get it for a birthday so I had to run to the store. The manager, after taking 20 minutes to argue with me, did adjust it to the online price (1 time only!) as a courtesy. The problem with this is that multiple times in the past 6 months I have had Walmart price match their own website without a problem. I guess their “policy” changes daily?
I recognize that by B&M, you mean a “brick and mortar” i.e. physical store.
However there is an electronics store called B&M and I would hate for them to get bad publicity from this posting, when they are uninvolved.
You guy realize that Diesel costs money?(Trucks that ship products.) People don’t work for free(Yes, you would think they do by the morale of some workers.) So basically you are paying shipping and labor costs.
Former Wal-Mart employee here.
Their policy is to match their COMPETITOR’S prices. Their OWN website, as well as other Mal-Mart stores, are NOT their competitors.
Makes perfect sense, really. If they were going to price match their own stores, then they might as well make the prices the same in every store. And then we’d have to get into a lengthy discussion about cost of living in different areas, yadda yadda.
So, to recap kids, Wal-Mart matches their competitor’s prices. And they don’t compete with, well, themselves.
@aaron8301: Oh yeah, that was a blame the victim post, by the way.
Well, and this isn’t exactly the most honest thing, if I need something and can’t wait for them to ship it to the store, I’ll buy two, one online via site to store, and one in store to use right away. WHen the other comes in, I’ll just return it on the receipt from the first purchase.
For starters, everyone needs to take 10 seconds to look up the notebook, which does not have a free shipping option. Secondly, the website specifically says that the price will be different in stores…
And last but not least, if you’d just pick up a newspaper with a current flier you’d see the stores are dropping the acers to 298 in store next week…
I would suggest that the next time anyone is tempted to buy from Wank-mart or anywhere else know for bait-and-switch tactics, they do two things:
1) Print a copy of the web page, the URL included.
2) Don’t attempt to deal with a low level flunky or a minimum wage know-and-do nothing. Get the store manager and deal with him directly to avoid the headache.
the solution i always use when this happens is to take out my trusty iphone (any web accessible phone will do), go to the website of the store that im in, purchase the product at the online price, select in store pickup, and then go right back to the same ‘helpful’ clerk and tell them i’m there to get my in store pickup for said item.
not only do i get what i wanted at the price i was looking for, but i also get the last laugh! gotta love technology!
@KCChiefsFan: If a Wal-Mert isnt making a profit it goes out of business. According to your logic if we all shopped online Wal-Mart would keep its stores open. It DOES cost less for Wal-Mart to sell an item online versus in a store. It doesn’t have to ship the item to the store, pay someone to open the box and warehouse it, then pay someone to move it to a shelf. Then it has to pay someone to ring it up on the cash register and then someone to keep the store clean.
All those people work for ALMOST nothing, but not quite free.
@jklug80:
No, according to my logic, people are shopping at wal-mart.com right now, and wal-mart stores continue to operate just fine. The money you spend at wal-mart.com goes towards keeping the brick and mortar stores open in the same way that buying an item in store does. If a store is underperforming, it’s going to close anyway, and no 5-10 dollar price hike on an item compared to the online price, and a refusal to price match, is going to fix that.
wal-mart.com competing with wal-mart stores on price is a joke. They are the same company. By having cheaper prices online than in store, they are stealing business from stores. If I could do site to store, and pick up my item for ten dollars less than I could get it in the store, why wouldn’t I? It would cost Wal-Mart even more money to ship that item to the store for me to pick up than it would for them to just sell it to me for that price in the store.
This type of price discrepancy isn’t there to keep stores running. It is there in hopes that the customer is too oblivious to look online and find the real price. If they refuse to price match an item for the few people that do notice the scam, then they deserve to lose that persons business.
Anyway, I wouldn’t worry about the health of wal-mart. A wal-mart can do just fine even if sits right across the street from another wal-mart, and right next to a target. It’s that big. I’ve never, ever, seen a wal-mart go out of business due to underperformance. On the contrary, I’ve seen them continually move into larger and larger retail spaces due to being so prosperous.
And here I thought my experience was a crazy one!!!! I was looking to purchase a new Garmin GPS Unit. When I went to Walmart.Com I found that they wanted $298.00, a seemingly good price compared to other retailers. Well, I happen to be somewhat impatient so I started calling around to the local Walmart stores to see if they had it in stock. The first call went to the store closest to my house and they didn’t have it. So I called the 2nd closest store and after battling with the Operator just to get transferred to Sporting Goods (Not Home Electronics Lady!!!, a Sales Rep did confirm that he had one to sell. Then he proceeds to tell me that the cost for this device is marked $499.99. Can you hear the screaching brakes????? So I proceeded to tell the Sales Rep that their Website was listing this unit for $298.00 (I did confirm that the unit had the same Walmart SKU# as the one on their website). I asked if he would match their price on the website and he replied “I’m not sure”??? So I asked to speak with the Store Manager. After going over the details with the Manager, he too advised me that they would not price match their very own website. I asked him why he wouldn’t match the price and he responded “it’s against our policy, it says so on the website, just look”. I then asked “why would you and Walmart be willing to let a customer go spend there money elsewhere in a situation like this”? His response, “it’s against our policy, it says so on the website, just look”. So needles to say I went over to Best Buy of all places and they price matched the Walmart.Com price. Go figure???
Was it the exact same model? I was looking at these before Christmas and most B&M Walmarts sell the 120GB 3-cell version for $298, same as the online price. Some stores in larger areas had the 160GB 6-cell model in-store for $348, but if you weren’t in a larger area you’d have to order that model online for $348. After using a friend’s Aspire One, I went with an MSI Wind. Looking at the website, it seems that the 160GB version is now $398, so I guess they could have raised their prices after Christmas. When I was in one of my Walmarts last week though, I did see the 120GB model in-store for $298. “Prices may vary by store.”
First mistake – going to Wallmart.