Walmart observations

Predicting the demise of Sears & Kmart since 2017!
storewanderer
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Re: Walmart observations

Post by storewanderer »

retailfanmitchell019 wrote: May 26th, 2021, 10:27 pm
storewanderer wrote: May 26th, 2021, 6:42 pm I agree however there is zero expectation of customer service when entering a Wal Mart Store.
One of the reasons why I don't shop at Walmart is exactly that: terrible "customer service". I haven't stepped foot in a Walmart for a year.
Even before COVID, I only went to Walmart as a last resort (very rarely).
The best case in Wal Mart is when you do not have to deal with the staff for any reason. The installation of so many self checkouts combined with the deactivation of the weight sensor on the self checkouts has really cut down on interactions. I did buy some alcohol there a couple months ago and it was a 4-5 minute wait for the employee to come clear the alert. It is rare I have to deal with any staff in Wal Mart. I haven't had many scan errors there in recent years either somehow which seems to be real good luck. I recall having more scan errors in the past and it was often not handled well (and certainly happened again the next visit if I bought the same item again).

In the California Wal Marts with the exit greeter the policy is receipt check for all unbagged merchandise. That includes reusable bags. So you suck it up pay the .10 bag fee and get to leave the store without messing around.

When I was in Portland last month I went out one night and went into a Wal Mart in Vancouver, WA which was quite nice, peaceful, neat, clean, felt very safe. It was after 10 PM and I drove over the bridge back into OR and found a Wal Mart in Troutdale, OR. This Wal Mart was extremely busy but was a nasty scene; the parking lot did not feel safe, inside the store did not feel particularly safe, store was a mess, store was understaffed, store had multiple levels of security around the entry/exit including what looked like an armed security guard, and I did not stay there long.
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Re: Walmart observations

Post by jamcool »

retailfanmitchell019 wrote: May 26th, 2021, 10:27 pm
storewanderer wrote: May 26th, 2021, 6:42 pm I agree however there is zero expectation of customer service when entering a Wal Mart Store.
One of the reasons why I don't shop at Walmart is exactly that: terrible "customer service". I haven't stepped foot in a Walmart for a year.
Even before COVID, I only went to Walmart as a last resort (very rarely).
That is pretty much all mass market retailing today
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Re: Walmart observations

Post by Romr123 »

Good for you in forcing WM to the terms of their purported 5 year warranty. Say what you will about Sears.....there was never an issue with their private label clothing/tools warranty.
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Re: Walmart observations

Post by BillyGr »

storewanderer wrote: May 26th, 2021, 11:09 pm
The best case in Wal Mart is when you do not have to deal with the staff for any reason. The installation of so many self checkouts combined with the deactivation of the weight sensor on the self checkouts has really cut down on interactions. I did buy some alcohol there a couple months ago and it was a 4-5 minute wait for the employee to come clear the alert. It is rare I have to deal with any staff in Wal Mart. I haven't had many scan errors there in recent years either somehow which seems to be real good luck. I recall having more scan errors in the past and it was often not handled well (and certainly happened again the next visit if I bought the same item again).

In the California Wal Marts with the exit greeter the policy is receipt check for all unbagged merchandise. That includes reusable bags. So you suck it up pay the .10 bag fee and get to leave the store without messing around.
One strange one a few weeks back was having gotten a couple gift cards as a reward (the kind they email and you print to scan at the register). They scanned fine but even with the person working self check they couldn't "authorize" something and had to get someone else to do it, which seemed odd. I know I've used similar ones before (though it may be from a different site/source).

The question is, how would they do that checking, since someone with everything in a bag (be it theirs or one you brought) would just walk by and keep going, as there is nothing obviously "loose". Seems if it was a question it would be hard to argue - it's easy enough to say we have to check items not bagged but a bit more issue trying to make different rules from one bag to the next.
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Re: Walmart observations

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BillyGr wrote: May 27th, 2021, 4:49 pm
One strange one a few weeks back was having gotten a couple gift cards as a reward (the kind they email and you print to scan at the register). They scanned fine but even with the person working self check they couldn't "authorize" something and had to get someone else to do it, which seemed odd. I know I've used similar ones before (though it may be from a different site/source).

The question is, how would they do that checking, since someone with everything in a bag (be it theirs or one you brought) would just walk by and keep going, as there is nothing obviously "loose". Seems if it was a question it would be hard to argue - it's easy enough to say we have to check items not bagged but a bit more issue trying to make different rules from one bag to the next.
Personally the whole concept of stopping people at the door and checking their receipt is not something I find favorable.

I have been told the reusable bags are subject to a receipt check. It is only if you walk out with a .10 Wal Mart California thickness plastic bag they are supposed to let you go and not be stopped. The logic is if you have a bag you paid for the purchase. This is also why you may notice many Wal Marts do not have any bags on the closed checkstands... they are supposed to remove all bags when the checkstand is closed just like they remove money from the checkstand (this is not really done much but is at a couple high theft stores in Reno). Yes they have some odd policies.

Of course someone could have reused one of the plastic bags too- not sure how they determine a "used" Wal Mart bag vs. one that you just paid .10 for.
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Re: Walmart observations

Post by jamcool »

storewanderer wrote: May 27th, 2021, 5:49 pm
BillyGr wrote: May 27th, 2021, 4:49 pm
One strange one a few weeks back was having gotten a couple gift cards as a reward (the kind they email and you print to scan at the register). They scanned fine but even with the person working self check they couldn't "authorize" something and had to get someone else to do it, which seemed odd. I know I've used similar ones before (though it may be from a different site/source).

The question is, how would they do that checking, since someone with everything in a bag (be it theirs or one you brought) would just walk by and keep going, as there is nothing obviously "loose". Seems if it was a question it would be hard to argue - it's easy enough to say we have to check items not bagged but a bit more issue trying to make different rules from one bag to the next.
Personally the whole concept of stopping people at the door and checking their receipt is not something I find favorable.

I have been told the reusable bags are subject to a receipt check. It is only if you walk out with a .10 Wal Mart California thickness plastic bag they are supposed to let you go and not be stopped. The logic is if you have a bag you paid for the purchase. This is also why you may notice many Wal Marts do not have any bags on the closed checkstands... they are supposed to remove all bags when the checkstand is closed just like they remove money from the checkstand (this is not really done much but is at a couple high theft stores in Reno). Yes they have some odd policies.

Of course someone could have reused one of the plastic bags too- not sure how they determine a "used" Wal Mart bag vs. one that you just paid .10 for.
If people didn’t shoplift you wouldn’t need to have bags and receipts checked.
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Re: Walmart observations

Post by ClownLoach »

Alpha8472 wrote: May 25th, 2021, 3:25 am Many companies are having problems keeping employees. If an employee quits, the company needs to spend money to train a new employee. This is time and money. With unemployment pay so easy to get today, many people are quitting and staying on unemployment.

Companies need to realize that a small investment in more staffing will ease the stress on overworked employees. Fewer employees will quit and you will save money on training new employees.

There will be an increase in sales as lines at checkout will be shorter. Customers will be more satisfied and they are more likely to return and buy more. A staffing increase will help sales, and not hurt profits.

Walmart of all companies is doing reasonably well. They can afford to invest in more staffing and make a difference in increasing sales.
There are three factors that are causing these issues in major retailers, and something has to give or I fear Amazon is going to be able to completely take over the world.

First, Wall Street expects that retailers grow sales and leverage payroll doing it. Payroll is a percentage of sales - that percentage cannot go up, only stay flat or decrease. And all you have to do is review the quarterly earnings reports for publicly traded retailers and you'll see that they are not spending more than they were a year ago, two years ago, three years ago. If your payroll as a percentage of sales increases then you will be beaten to a pulp by the Wall Street analysts and investors, the stock will plummet, and in many cases these retailers have been buying back their stock (investing in themselves) which means that they will then take losses on their own stock on the next quarterly earnings (usually the only way out is to cut payroll to offset the projected earnings loss). The bad earnings lead to another stock drop, and you quickly see the retailer go into a death spiral on the road to Chapter 11.

Second, the cost of labor is increasing as we all know. But despite the glossy press releases from these retailers that announce their minimums are increasing - what they don't say is that they will not spend one additional cent on payroll even with those wage increases. So if the average pay rate in the retailer went from $13/hour to a new minimum of $15/hour, about a 15% increase, they will adjust for the new higher rate with a 15% reduction in labor hours. The store must now Do More With Less. In cases where they cannot afford to reduce the hours any further (lower volume stores) then they will adjust the Management Structure of the store, eliminating higher paid Assistant Managers and replacing them with lower paid supervisors or leads. (Walmart made an announcement a few years ago that they were creating tens of thousands of new leadership positions - the reality was they eliminated thousands of salaried high paying Assistant Manager jobs and replaced them by promoting regular associates to supervisors making a few cents more per hour than they did before - ultimately cutting hundreds of millions in payroll). Again just because the minimum wage increases either by government edict or company decision that does not mean that the payroll is actually going to increase at the store level, or that collectively the employees are going to make any more money. Stores are going to have less service, lower standards, and more shrink (which most retailers stupidly try to offset by, guess what, lowering payroll!) You can see how this kind of death spiral led to Walmart closing some of their highest volume stores in the company in California because they couldn't cut any more expenses and the shrink ate then alive even in good areas. (That Irvine Store that closed that everyone figured was going to be replaced by another retailer who would pay more rent? It's vacant and nobody is going in - Walmart is paying dead rent and hasn't even liquidated the fixtures - the payroll rate required in the area was too high and the shrink was too high - it lost more money open than closed).

Now the real killer is e-commerce. With everything I stated above - Wall Street expects no additional payroll, labor costs are out of control causing less payroll hours to be spent in the stores - the customer is now demanding e-commerce such as Curbside Pickup. Curbside Pickup services in a higher service selling environment store like Best Buy, or even Nordstrom are a minimal cost, usually picking one or two items and although the store doesn't get to try to "upsell" add on items they aren't spending any more in labor to service that customer than they would in the building. But for a customer shopping online for many items, as they do at a grocery store or a mass discounter like Walmart or Target, is a completely different story. Somebody has to walk up and down all the aisles selecting everything the customer buys, then bag it up, stage it somewhere, and finally take it out to the customers vehicle. The prior service level would have been maybe 2 minutes for the cashier at the register to scan and bag. Now you are talking about 10 to 15 minutes per customer in payroll, and the customer expects the same price. Now technology helps a little bit here - the stores are now "batching" orders with special carts that have multiple dividers so they can save footsteps by pulling multiple orders at the same time if the store gets a "wave" of orders to fill - but even then they are never going to get more than 7 or 8 orders pulled in one labor hour. And the larger the store the longer it takes, which hurts Walmart more than Target or the grocery chains because they have the largest boxes overall across their chain. Walmart has stopped building 250K square foot supercenters and has built a new prototype in Lake Elsinore, CA that fits the highest SKU count in their chain into a building that has a sales floor of only about 150K, narrow aisles, "Airport style signage" so the customer can find product without help, and about 30 new self checkout "pods" but only two full service checkout lanes, one of which is always closed. The stores will continue to reduce any customer facing service area (no service deli, bakery, etc) and cut front end checkout payroll to nothing to fund these highly costly, unproductive e-commerce services. Register lines will get longer or there will be forced self checkout as we see in that new Walmart prototype. In a way it creates two classes of customers, the e-commerce customer who gets white glove service, and the in store customer who gets a dirty messy store and has to ring themselves up or wait in a mile long line but both pay the same.

Wall Street says stores can't spend more on payroll, plus the payroll cost goes up so they have to have less hours/more productivity, and now the customer demands more labor intensive service than they've ever received before. Something has to give here.
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Re: Walmart observations

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Wall Street has been destroying retailers for years because of the short term minded focus they have on each quarter.

Your presentation of the pick-up experience for the customer vs. the experience for the customer who still goes into the store and shops is spot on and you have to ask yourself how is this sustainable? Again these pick up services were done in response to Amazon... Wall Street punished retailers who were not offering such services... Amazon again leading the regular retailers down a money losing path.
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Re: Walmart observations

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storewanderer wrote: May 28th, 2021, 7:48 pm Again these pick up services were done in response to Amazon... Wall Street punished retailers who were not offering such services... Amazon again leading the regular retailers down a money losing path.
Not Walmart related but along the lines of this particular aspect of the topic. I was in a local Hannaford earlier this week and noticed a rather large footprint of floor space being partitioned off with drywall. When I went to checkout I asked the cashier what was going on and was told it was for Hannaford To Go which is their online grocery ordering and pickup offering. Look at the initial upfront construction costs per store they're sinking into this while at the same time repurposing floor space on the sales floor where high volume (and high margin) merchandise once was. And this store while not small was not a large unit to begin with. Glad it's not my money these stores are spending on all of this.
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Re: Walmart observations

Post by ClownLoach »

storewanderer wrote: May 28th, 2021, 7:48 pm Wall Street has been destroying retailers for years because of the short term minded focus they have on each quarter.

Your presentation of the pick-up experience for the customer vs. the experience for the customer who still goes into the store and shops is spot on and you have to ask yourself how is this sustainable? Again these pick up services were done in response to Amazon... Wall Street punished retailers who were not offering such services... Amazon again leading the regular retailers down a money losing path.
Thanks. Some companies recognize the road to destruction like Costco, and are not implementing these kinds of curbside pickup services. Here in California where non grocery retailers were forced into curbside pickup or closure for months, this has become something that the customer became used to and now expects and demands. It unfortunately isn't just a Wall Street demand.

What they are not recognizing is that part of the "inflation explosion" being called out right now is that the retailers who can't afford their e-commerce operations are cutting back on promotions, coupons, advertising etc. in hopes that this will be a temporary fad. Prices are going up because of these services more than any other reason in retail. What makes it tough is that they can't raise prices for the e-commerce pick up service - because the customer can instantly compare price and if they see it cheaper elsewhere then that's who will get the order. So I think that the in store retail shopper is going to pay the price. On items that are not frequently price compared or purchased online the price will have to go up in store. Again I need to investigate further but I believe that Amazon has already made adjustments like this to the Fresh stores and may be charging more in store than online - they are probably the best example of a retailer where the in store customer is not very likely to be an online shopper. But for Walmart, Target and others they run the risk of upsetting the customer who sees a low price online and goes into the store only to find it higher on the shelf. Target already got some negative publicity last year when their app was proven to show a lower price outside of the store, but when the customer entered the app is connected to "Bluetooth beacons" inside the building that tell the app to download updated pricing to match that particular location. I suspect the stores that have the heaviest "Target Drive Up" sales are getting price increases on the sales floor.
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