You can buy just about anything on Amazon, but do you know what you can’t find on the mega-retailer’s site? Santa. That’s one of the reasons why Walmart is trying something new and bringing Santaland to Wally World. Stores also plan to have more decorations than in the past––no, not just on the shelves for you to buy, but on the walls, decorating the place. [More]
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Walmart Now Has An Internal “Swat Team” To Prevent Embarrassing Costumes From Hitting Shelves
By 10.30.15
Walmart and its website have a spotted history when it comes to questionable Halloween costumes, like the “Naughty Leopard” outfit for toddlers, or the entire section of Walmart.com dedicated to “Fat Girl Costumes.” In an effort to pre-empt this sort of embarrassment, the retailer now has an internal team tasked with heading off offensive costumes at the pass. [More]
Walmart Doesn’t Need Free Shipping: They Want Everyone To Use In-Store Pickup
By 10.30.15
Competing big-box stores like Target and Best Buy are trying to attract shoppers this holiday season by offering free shipping on all online purchases, no matter how small. This strategy doesn’t interest Walmart, because their plans this year for holiday domination don’t include free online shipping: they include using in-store pickup to get shoppers into their stores. [More]
Your Health Insurer Could Pay You To Take Your Blood Pressure And Weight (Sort Of)
By 10.27.15
The kiosks at pharmacies where you can take your blood pressure, pulse, and maybe even weigh yourself aren’t just for killing time while you wait for a prescription. Well, they’re mostly for that, but Walmart will be trying out a new rewards card that compensates customers to visit the checkup kiosks to take a few measurements. [More]
Walmart Asks The FAA For Permission To Test Drones For Home Delivery, Curbside Grocery Pickups
By 10.26.15
Amazon isn’t the only retailer on the market that wants to get into the drone delivery game: Walmart filed paperwork with the Federal Aviation Administration today asking permission to test drones outside for home delivery, curbside pick-up and duties around the warehouse and parking lots. [More]
Walmart Offering Fewer Products, Widening Aisles
By 10.26.15
Walk into any Walmart and you’ll see shelves upon shelves stocked with a wide variety of products in every shape and size. But that will soon change, as the retail giant begins a transformation of sorts by decluttering its aisles of excess items. [More]
Regulators Drop Probe Into Walmart’s “Made In The U.S.A.” Labeling After Designation Dropped From Website
By 10.21.15
Four months after an advertising watchdog group called out Walmart’s website for selling more than 100 products labeled as “Made in the U.S.A.” even though they were manufactured in other countries, raising the watchful eye of federal regulators, the retailer announced it had removed the designation from its products. [More]
Raiders Of The Lost Walmart Find Strange And Useless WebTV
By 10.16.15
Do you remember the WebTV? You may not have even known anyone who used them, but they were a device that turned a regular TV into a slow Internet terminal. Some people who find computers intimidating really liked the idea. However, they should not pick up this unit that Liz found on the shelf at her local Walmart, mostly because there’s not much you can do with it. [More]
Police: Walmart Shopper Doused Halloween Costumes With Lighter Fluid, Set Them On Fire
By 10.14.15
There always has to be someone – or something – that tries to ruin everyone’s favorite spooky holiday: the thief who wiped out a preschoolers’ pumpkin patch, the wild boars that threatened to put a damper on trick-or-treating, and now a California man who allegedly set an aisle of Halloween costumes on fire at Walmart. [More]
Walmart Moving Protein Bars To More Highly-Trafficked Areas In Health Push
By 10.6.15
Walmart wants its customers to know it’s thinking about their health, so it’s moving things around a bit in its stores: instead of leaving health and protein bars to languish amidst dietary supplements and vitamins, in January the big box store is shifting those products to aisles that see more grocery traffic. [More]
Yesterday Was Walmart’s Goal Date To Significantly Improve Its Stores
By 10.2.15
Yesterday marked two soft deadlines for Walmart: the EMV shift at payment terminals and a pre-holiday “line in the sand” that the company’s head of U.S. operations set for the retailer to shape up its stores. That includes making checkout lines shorter and other changes that might seem invisible, but which affect how friendly and easy to use shoppers find their local Wally World. More importantly, he shows up to visit stores unannounced. [More]
Walmart Employee In Trouble Over Facebook Video Of Shoplifter Scuffle
By 10.2.15
We’ve told you before of Walmart employees who were fired for intervening in violent or potentially dangerous situations at the store, but here’s a story of a Walmart worker who’s in trouble for not stepping in. Of course, it doesn’t help that he posted video of the incident along with his wisecracking running commentary. [More]
Walmart Officially Launching Online Grocery Pickup With Expansion To More Cities
By 9.29.15
After testing the concept for months, Walmart plans to offer more shoppers the opportunity to order their groceries online and pick them up at the store later. [More]
Police: Women Steal TV From Walmart, Change Clothes And Steal Another One
By 9.28.15
Earlier this month, a man masquerading as a Walmart employee walked in the door, grabbed four big screen TVs and simply walked back out the way he came. While that was no doubt a brazen shoplifting incident, two women may have topped him over the weekend: police say the women swiped one TV from a local store, changed their clothing and then stole another TV — from the same store.
[More]
Walmart’s Streaming Video Service VUDU Discounts All Of This Year’s Emmy-Nominated Shows To $.67
By 9.25.15
For folks who might enjoy, say, Game of Thrones and Veep, but not enough to pay for HBO or HBO Now just for those two shows, or someone who wants to watch House of Cards without getting a Netflix subscription, Walmart’s streaming service VUDU might make sense: it charges per episode for TV shows, instead of requiring an upfront subscription fee for access to its libraries. VUDU is now sweetening the deal on some shows, knocking the per-episode price of all 2015 Emmy nominees and winners down to $0.67. [More]
Regulators Won’t Investigate Claims That Walmart’s “Raise In Pay” Commercial Is Misleading
By 9.22.15
Federal regulators won’t investigate a Walmart television advertisement two months after an ad review board found the retailer might have misled TV viewers about recent changes in pay for Walmart workers. [More]
Here’s A Fun Customer Service Idea: Text Walmart For Help From Within Walmart
By 9.21.15
We’ve often said that it’s not really a good idea to post on social media or e-mail a company while you are physically standing in their store or restaurant, and talking to a person is a better alternative. Here’s a possible exception to that from the TechCrunch Disrupt hackathon: a text-messaging service that uses a combination of bots and customer service chat reps to let you text for help from within Walmart. [More]
This Walmart Is Apparently Stuck In 2011
By 9.21.15
Reader Knah is one of the bravest explorers who form the Raiders of the Lost Walmart: retail archaeologists who comb the nation’s big-box stores for retail antiquities that have somehow stayed on the shelves even though they’re now obsolete, sometimes comically so. Here are his three latest finds: all of which are out of date, if not useless, yet are locked up in security equipment. Why? [More]
