Reader Dave said he was shopping with his friend (male) at Walmart, searching for the coveted Nintendo Wii. He was happy to find that Walmart had 7 or 8 of the consoles in stock — enough for both he and his friend to purchase one. Walmart, however, had other ideas. Dave says that Walmart wouldn’t let he and his friend each purchase a Wii because they were “together.” First they’re rationing rice and now men are forced to share their video games? What’s going on in America, folks?

My friend and I went to Walmart (in Exton, PA) on Sunday evening (4/27/08) looking for a Nintendo Wii because neither of us owned the system and have been looking for it for quite some time.

To our surprise, there were around 7-8 Wii’s in stock. The problem? The Walmart employee working in the Electronics department (older man with glasses) refused to sell a Wii to both me and my friend. He would only sell a Wii to one of us because we were shopping “together.” Mind you, we’re not dating or married. Just two guys each looking for a Wii.

He said that because we were in the store together, we could only buy 1. It’s as if we were the same person or something. He told my friend to come back the following day if he wanted one. We argued with him to no end…but he refused to sell my friend a Wii. I never heard of something like that before. It’s not like I was trying to buy 5 Wii’s..we each wanted one. Someone please tell me how Walmart can DENY a customer a product under these circumstances? I can understand if they have a policy stating one Wii per Customer per day. But, we were two separate people trying to each buy a Wii and pay with our own credit cards.

The man was rude to us, and he even had cocky remarks stating that my signature was only somewhat close to matching the signature on the back of my credit card. Mind you, I had to sign my name electronically, which is awkward to begin with.

Dave, that’s just weird. We’d suggest giving Walmart corporate (or even the manager of the store) a heads up about this incident. You seem to have encountered some sort of rogue employee who enjoys bullying people for no good reason.

Are Wiis really still this scarce? Has this sort of thing happened to anyone else?

(Photo:u2acro)

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