More than two months after Target temporarily halted the sale of “hoverboards” over safety concerns, the retailer is at it again, removing the self-balancing scooters from its website. [More]
Retail Services
Thief Dons Walmart Smock, Steals Four Flat Screen TVs
By 2.22.16
In September, an alleged thief posing as a Walmart employee walked into a Dallas-area store, grabbed four big screen TVs, and simply walked out the way he came. That theft apparently worked so well, another shoplifter pulled the same stunt in Virginia. [More]
Raiders Of The Lost Walmart Find 8-Year-Old GPS For $150
By 2.22.16
It’s not that if you bought this Garmin Nuvi (sorry, Nüvi) 260 standalone GPS, it wouldn’t work. As long as the battery still holds a charge, and the maps are updated, it should work just fine. The problem is that Walmart is trying to charge $150 for an 8-year-old GPS model, and an item that may have been on the shelf for that long. [More]
Amazon Raising Free Shipping Minimum For Non-Prime Shoppers From $35 To $49
By 2.22.16
In what would appear to be an effort to nudge more people toward paying $99 a year for the free shipping included in a Prime membership, Amazon is raising the free shipping minimum for non-Prime members from $35 to $49. [More]
Kmart Buys Closeouts From Liquidating Companies To Offer More Tempting Deals
By 2.17.16
Maybe they got the idea from their own store closing sales. Kmart announced today that it is seeking out a new type of merchandise in hope of finding more fabulous deals. It wants to compete with retailers like Big Lots and Ollie’s by purchasing dirt-cheap merchandise from liquidating companies. The chain’s president, Alasdair James, says that the retailer wants to offer its customers “truly brag-worthy” and “extreme-value deals.” [More]
GameStop Planning To Sell Sony VR Headset In The Fall
By 2.16.16
We’ve been hearing about the Sony VR since it was dubbed “Project Morpheus,” but as much as the tech giant loves to show it off, Sony has yet to give a firm release window for the virtual reality headset. However, GameStop CEO Paul Raines tipped his cards on that schedule during an interview this morning. [More]
6 Walmart Trucks Shot At On Oklahoma Highway Since Sunday
By 2.16.16
A number of Walmart trucks have arrived at their destination this week, only to find out that they had been used as target practice while driving along a stretch of highway in Oklahoma. [More]
Yes, You Can Combine Amazon Subscribe & Save With Free 2-Day Prime Shipping
By 2.15.16
Amazon’s Subscribe & Save feature is useful when there’s something that you want to buy online and know that you’ll need regular shipments of, like electric toothbrush heads or bags of freeze-dried marshmallows. There’s a catch, though: if you have Amazon Prime and want free two-day shipping on those mailing labels or novelty emery boards, selecting the Subscribe & Save option from the item page doesn’t get you two-day shipping by default. [More]
Woman Gives Birth In Sam’s Club Bathroom With Employees’ Help
By 2.15.16
On more than one occasion we’ve reported on the miracle of birth taking place not in a hospital, but in a Walmart parking lot or inside the big box store. Over the weekend, an Arkansas woman took a slightly different approach, giving birth at another local retailer: Sam’s Club. [More]
Raiders Of The Lost Walmart Discover New Variety Of Ancient MP3 Player
By 2.15.16
In retail archaeology, it’s exciting when an excavation turns up a new type of artifact that has never been studied before. Reader Paris is one of Consumerist’s Raiders of the Lost Walmart, the brave explorers who hunt down retail antiquities in the world’s big-box stores. He found something that we had never seen before: another variety of decade-old MP3 player with a comically high price tag and free downloads from the Walmart Music Store, which shut down in 2008. [More]
Police Investigating Death During Walmart Shoplifting Incident
By 2.11.16
Early on Sunday morning, a 62-year-old man piled DVDs worth $380.74 in a shopping cart at a Florida Walmart and headed for the door. When he couldn’t produce a receipt for the greeter, he ran out the door, and employees followed him. He collapsed and was resuscitated, but died in the hospital 12 hours later. [More]
User Agreement For Amazon Game Engine Includes Zombie Apocalypse Clause
By 2.11.16
No one wants to — and virtually no one does — read the lengthy, legalese-filled user agreements. But for those who do choose to plow through the mouseprint, Amazon has left an amusing zombie-flavored treat in one of its contracts. [More]
Target Introducing New Shopping Carts Designed For Children And Adults With Disabilities
By 2.10.16
Pushing a wheelchair as well as a shopping cart may pose a bit of a challenge for your average shopper. In an effort to provide another option for those customers, Target is introducing new shopping carts in all of its stores that are specifically designed for children and adults with disabilities. [More]
Stock Analyst: Sears Is No Longer ‘Viable As A Retailer’
By 2.10.16
You might not realize it when looking at our coverage, but we aren’t cheering for Kmart and Sears, the stores of Sears Holdings, to go out of business. The company’s continued survival is impressive, and sort of a surprise, but one stock analyst thinks that the company won’t survive without doing something drastic. [More]
Report: Amazon Wants To Help International Factories Sell Directly To You
By 2.9.16
A few years ago, Amazon made a prediction that came true: shoppers were about to use Amazon more for commerce across oceans and borders, ordering easily from all over the world. Yet experts at Amazon must have been wondering how they could help international merchants along, and make more money while they were at it. One possible solution: becoming a freight and warehouse operation for manufacturers abroad. [More]
Sears Holdings To Accelerate, Expand Planned Store Closings
By 2.9.16
The only bit of good news in the most recent financial report from Sears Holdings, parent company of Sears and Kmart, is that the sibling stores had better sales during the holiday season than last year, and not just because they kicked off Christmas in mid-September. Unfortunately, the news isn’t very good other than that: the company is still losing money in its retail business, and plans to speed up its planned store closings. [More]
The Pilot Of NBC’s ‘Superstore’ Was Filmed Inside A Real Kmart
By 2.8.16
What happens when a TV production team wants to make a show set in a big-box discount store, but can’t build an entire store set because they’re only filming a pilot episode? To film “Superstore,” a new (and funny) show on NBC, they lightly remodeled a Kmart store in Burbank, California, and used it as their set… while the store remained open. [More]
Is Amazon Doing Anything To Fight Latest Wave Of Fake, Paid-For Reviews?
By 2.8.16
Since Amazon began allowing customers to post reviews on product pages, various waves of bogus reviewers have attempted to game the system by posting fictitious or dishonest write-ups. While Amazon has recently taken legal action against people paid to write fake reviews for products, and the site has a ban on most forms of “paid” reviews, there’s a new crop of compensated reviewers who are receiving free or discounted products in exchange for then writing “honest” reviews. But some of these users are writing dozens of reviews a day, sometimes for products they couldn’t possibly have tried. [More]
