A controversial retailer VS a computer company with a black hole for a warranty repair operation. Which will you choose?
This is a post in our Worst Company In America 2009 series. The companies nominated for this honor were chosen by you, the readers, and seeded according to number of nominations. Keep track of all the goings on at consumerist.com/tag/worst-company-in-america. Download the bracket here.
More From Consumerist
-
Worst Company In America Round 2: Walmart Vs. Sears
-
Worst Company In America Quarterfinals: Bank Of America Vs. Walmart
-
Worst Company In America Round 1: Best Buy Vs. Walmart
-
Here Are Your Contestants For The 2013 Worst Company In America Tournament!
-
Stuck Without Refund, Should I Listen To Walmart Or PayPal?
Neither of these are, in my opinion, all that evil.
That said, I voted for Walmart, because my local Walmart overprices things I actually want to buy (like video games and toys). When a store sells a toy for twelve dollars that they had last week for seven? I stop buying things there and go to Target.
And my experiences with HP haven’t been horrid. I’ve had two HP laptops, and both have treated me very well.
Walmart wins easily.
I’ve purchased from both companies, and even though many people have had problems with HP, I was able to get my computer repaired several times and they even sent me a replacement computer, more than once, and each time with a fresh 3-year warranty.
Sometimes they were a pain to deal with, but they did manage to live up to their customer service needs.
Walmart on the other hand does not.
I purchased a tent from walmart for a camping trip. I specifically asked the employee in their outdoors department what tent would be sufficient to stand up to some harsh conditions I would be camping in. (strong winds)
He confidently helped me choose and assured me that it was a great tent, even though it was pretty expensive.
Needless to say the tent was up for about 5-minutes before it got torn to shreds in the wind.
Luckily we had friends nearby that took us in and even had a good trip.
But when I returned to Walmart with the destroyed tent they refused to take it back and blamed me for intentionally damaging it.
@snowburnt: Here in lowly Texas, the Walmart that I go to is always clean, the employees are nice and I can buy my laundry detergent and socks generally without issue.
But then again, I’m trashy.
@hooooooot: Ha! Ditto here in rural NC. Plus, the people who work at my local WM are all my neighbors and are friendly, helpful folks. And lucky to be employed in a county with a 13% unemployment rate. I might be joining them if things don’t pick up in our household.
I voted for HP because they just screwed me over on my laptop.
They never heard motherboards over heating and dying until it happened to me, go figure. Although Walmart is truly awful. I try to limit going there to only a couple of times a year.
Wal Mart has great items at great prices and yes every retailer treats their “associates” the same way if you don’t believe me try working for Toys R Us.
HP has the worst service since if you dare to dial the 800 number you get someone in India that you can’t even understand half the time.
Are you kiddin’ me? I’ve a five year old HP computer, and it still hasn’t died on me. But Walmart makes small businesses die.
@snowburnt:
You know, I was with you there for a while, but you lost me when you turned a potentially legitimate critique of Wal-Mart the soul-sucking company into an ugly classist rant against people who may or may not live below the poverty line.
I refuse to shop at Wal-Mart because of their horrendous labor practices.. not because the people who shop there are somehow “genetically” subhuman.
But you stay classy, and thanks for making it more difficult for the rest of us with a cogent argument.
Business Week just listed HP in its Top 10 Companies with the Best Customer Service, and referenced it’s outstanding warranty service in doing so. Meg Marco is a crack-smoking mugwump. One person in a million has a bad customer experience, and suddenly it’s the worst company in the world. Based on that cogent logic I can also deduce that it will never-ever stop snowing in Northern Colorado. So either Business Week is off — way off. Or you people are all living in a parallel universe in your Mom’s basement. I’ll go with the latter.
Voted HP. I deal with consumer PCs all the time though, so I’m kinda biased.
Honestly, I have never bought anything from HP so I have no real complaint with them. But I have never had a problem with Wal-Mart, so I won’t vote against them.
I shop there all the time, in fact I was just there today. I have never had a problem with a return. Just this month I returned unworn Underoos (I can’t believe they still make those) and a bicycle. Two different transactions, no issues.
Almost all of my encounters with staff have been helpful and friendly ones. Maybe it’s just that folks where I live are friendly. Lucky me.
Finally, they have the best prices on all sorts of mundane items I buy all the time. Life isn’t all about electronics. This month alone I have purchased lotions, soaps, make-up, bicycles, gardening supplies, toys, movies, books, medicine and I don’t even remember what else. I shop around and Wal-Mart is routinely cheaper with these types of items, beating my local grocers, drugstores, hardware stores and toy stores. If I can’t find a coupon for something, I can go to Wal-Mart and often save more than the value of a typical coupon for the product I wanted anyway.
While I agree that their unwillingness to price match their own website is ludicrous, it certainly doesn’t make it worthy of the worst company in America. I think being anti Wal-Mart is a fashionable thing for people who think they are for small businesses and individuality. Besides, what kind of idiot picks on the little guy? Wal-Mart is a massive organization and many people believe that in and of itself is wrong. I happen to disagree. I am glad Wal-Mart is out there making my life easier. Selfish? Maybe. Still, I’m a happy customer.
FWIW, I’ve had HP products for decades, starting with their financial calculators, printers, scanners and computers. I can’t say that I’ve ever had a bad experience with an HP product. Some of them are 20 years old and still functional. They’re sometimes a bit more expensive than a competitor’s product (for example, Epson) but I think the quality is worth it.
I vote HP! Their entire line of 9700 laptops are defective and they’re refusing to even acknowledge it, let alone do anything about it. Mine is still under warranty but they want to charge me $450 to correct the problem with the monitor.
I work for Walmart, and drink their Kool Aid by the Gallon. They hire people that couldn’t get jobs anywhere else except for the Drive-thru at Taco Bell. They prize diversity and innovation, and root out bad treatment more than any company I’ve ever worked for. They produce results, not excuses, for their shareholders (including me). And they sold me a pair of Levis that fit quite nicely for less than 20 bucks. Call me a hapless prol, but I loves me some Walmart…
I vote HP!
A while ago the power jack fell off the back of my laptop. I thought it was just my luck, but it turns out that so many people had the same problem that there was a (successful) lawsuit against HP. Sadly, I couldn’t participate in the lawsuit because I live in Canada, not the U.S. A sympathetic phone agent on the Canada side told me that I was entitled to a new laptop and they’d mail me one. Should I really have been surprised that it never came? In the end, HP told me it was my fault for buying an “American model” laptop. That must mean that their policy is to sell crap to “Americans”, and send their best laptops to other countries. Right.
If Carly Fiorina was at HP, I would’ve selected the HP radio box.
Wal-Mart. Don’t forget the NAZI shirt fiasco that took them months and months to resolve. Or did it every actually get resolved? I honestly don’t know, because it took so long for them to not do anything.
I am an Australian that was recently holidaying in Canada and was unfortunate enough to be taken to the local Walmart. I walked in to be shown the DISGRACEFUL display of an older doormen being castigated in full view of customers and staff by a very young and unattractive person masquerading as a manager. He was actually asking the older guy to answer with “yes sir!”.Disgusting. Never in Australia are staff members treated in such a demeaning manner. Shame Walmart.
Wal-Mart should win this entire competition. Yes, even beat AIG and Peanut Corporation of America.
For years now, Wal-Mart has been one of the biggest forces driving manufacturing jobs out of the U.S. to China. If you want to do business with Wal-0Mart, they give you a book called “How To Do Business with Wal-Mart”. Wal-Mart does not care about quality of goods. They only care about the final price. To achieve that price, the main recommendation they make is to move factories to China.
Wal-Mart puts Mom and Pop stores out of business, and mom and pop stores and factory jobs are two very important building blocks for our economy.
China will defeat the U.S. without ever firing a bullet. They will take us over economically. They are already doing a good job of it. Wal-mart is helping them.
If you are a patriotic American, you would never ever shop at Wal-Mart.
Save Money, Live Better is such a bullshit slogan. Shopping at Wal-Mart is a downward spiral which forces you to shop at Wal-Mart.
People shop at Wal-Mart because that “is what they can afford”, but it is all they can afford because they shop at Wal_Mart. Wal-Mart drives down wages and raises unemployment rates by destroying the American factory. If no one shopped at Wal-Mart and bought American, there would be more factory work here, and more people employed by mom and pop stores.
Live Better? The exploited workers and the children living in towns polluted by the factories which have no environmental regulations, enabling us to have our cheap shoddy lead tainted Chinese products from Wal-Mart would probably disagree.
And when you have to buy that product again in 3 months because it was made so poorly, you proabably aren’t really saving that much money after all.
I fell down on the ice and broke my arm. Walmart said, sorry, we’re not liable because we’re not required to salt IN BETWEEN parking spots!! How do these idiots think we get from the car into the store?? Guess what – I now go to Meijer, no ice there!