Hey, remember the Raiders of the Lost Walmart? Reader Joe sent us a picture of a comically obsolete thumb drive still on the shelves at his local Walmart, a stunning discovery in the field of retail archaeology. “We thought Walmart had the best inventory control systems in the world,” I wrote. “Perhaps not.” Then we heard from Walmart’s Arkansas headquarters. I was wrong–the inventory people are now on it.

Using the UPC code shown in the picture, the merchandising ninjas at Wally World were able to track down the item and the store where it was, as well as three other stores with the offending flash drive still for sale. The Walmart employee who got this rolling works in Pricing, and would probably notice out-of-whack prices like these.

She wrote in, thanking us (but mostly tipster Joseph) for bringing this to their attention.

Thanks very much for drawing attention to something that had slipped through the cracks in a NY Walmart store. We saw this article and reached out to our Merchandising associates in the home office in order to take care of this “dead merchandise”. We found that 4 stores still had this particular item in stock. The picture in the article was most helpful in allowing us to research the item (the upc was captured in the photo). We’ve taken steps to remove the items from the stores. Thanks again.

I’m really impressed with the honesty, friendliness, and competence of every Walmart employee involved in this situation, from the Electronics associate who originally explained the origin of the artifacts to the team in Bentonville who are reportedly fixing the problem.

Is this a pressing consumer issue? No. But I like to think that Joseph saved at least one person out there from getting a really crappy high school graduation present from a clueless and/or elderly relative. (“It’s one of those memory sticks that you can save all of your papers on! Look at all of the floppies it holds!”)

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Raiders Of The Lost Walmart Discover Cache Of Ancient Flash Drives

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