Posted on 02/18/2015 10:09:06 AM PST by Citizen Zed
For Walmart, the dip in its customer satisfaction ratings could spell more trouble ahead. Retailers, after all, are at the whim of the consumer, who is typically looking for a mix of good prices, selection and customer service. If a retailer starts to fail on those fronts, it can end up in what ACSI director David VanAmburg calls "a deadly cycle." On top of that, Walmart's well-publicized struggles with calls from employees for higher pay and benefits may be taking a toll.
"They are not as dominant on the price side as they were, and the quality still isn't there," VanAmburg told CBS Moneywatch. "They haven't stepped up their game on that side, so we are seeing a lot of dissatisfaction by comparison."
Walmart, meanwhile, has been criticized by activists and employees for its low wages, which have prompted embarrassing episodes such as company stores holding food drives for their own workers. It doesn't look very good for the nation's biggest private employer when its workers have to rely on handouts and government aid to make ends meet.
Conversely, the top-rated speciality retail store, Costco, has benefited from a few trends, including its relatively high pay for retail workers and access to benefits, with Bloomberg BusinessWeek calling it the "happiest company in the world."
(Excerpt) Read more at wctv.tv ...
I ring a bell every Christmas season for Salvation Army at the Walmart. There is actually a line for Handicap spaces and the motorized carts. They never have enough Handicap spaces available. Not that the people parking in them have trouble getting into Walmart.
People are always nice to me though. I guess people think I am one of the homeless guys they hire to ring the bell despite the massive Kiwanis flag next to me.
Sam Walton built a great company, for those that have family and friends that work at Wal-Mart we know how far the company has fallen as far as the way it runs the store since his death. Everything you posted is still going on today and they are following in K-Mart’s path of a retail company that has cut to many corners. Being the lowest rated retail store by customers is not a hit piece, it is simply reflecting years of neglect by their management on how to run a successful retail company. They fired the last North American store CEO just six months ago for a reason.
The WalMart’s by me are intolerable third world hell holes. Foreigners rummaging through cheap Chinese garbage bins. The future of America right before my eyes.
There are several around Tulsa, Oklahoma. Take your pick :-) ...
Well, that’s a nice thing to do. You didn’t get any gold coins this year, did you?
THAT is precisely the type of “high quality” customer service you get from a company that could CARE LESS about it. It’s horrendous, and barely tolerable, it at all.
You provide a good example.
Food stamp day is crazy. They are like WILD ANIMALS ... no kidding!
AND ... there are three different dates at the beginning of the month for food stamps. Of course that is the type of clientele that fits Walmart!
...
He was also very smart, well educated and used a lot of technology.
You said, “The WalMart’s by me are intolerable third world hell holes. Foreigners rummaging through cheap Chinese garbage bins. The future of America right before my eyes.”
You got that right!
Food stamps distribution is done at the state level. Tell your legislators to spread it out over the entire period.
All you have to do is take a look at this thread, and you can see that there are others who know exactly how bad Walmart is ... :-) ...
I don’t personally know those other posters, and so when you see unrelated people giving you accounts of how terrible Walmart is and the dregs of humanity you find there, plus the misfits which are hired there ... then you know it’s not an isolated experience.
I guess you should be running your own forum then ... LOL ...
You said, “The alternate business model to Bentonville is Beltway:”
Ummm, no, that’s not the alternative to crappy services, misfits for employees, trashy products and clientele from the third world.
The alternative is good customer service, excellent employees, keeping a consistent stock and having quality products. THEN you end up with first rate customers coming in and no third-world clientele. And this has nothing to do with the Beltway, but with now to run a good business.
We get our groceries at H-E-B (this town of about 17,000 has 2 of them and they are always packed), there is also a Wal-Mart *ho-hum*
we get our “stuff” at various places
hardly ever go to Wal-Mart any more
WalMart is subject to market competition from many sources both cheaper and more upscale.
I have no fear of them becoming a monopoly in the USA.
It’s a free country (so far), so frequent the stores that you desire to frequent and don’t go to the stores that you hate.
Some Walmarts are better than others. In my area, there are two stores less than 6 miles apart and one is clean and well stocked and one is dirty and you can never find anything. I don’t frequent the one that is dirty very often.
IMO, the article is biased based on the union’s inability to make inroads with WM employees. Again, if it were that bad for the employees, they would organize.
me either
They were saying the same thing about Sears and JC Penney back in the old days (teens and 20’s or something like that)
Retail isn’t like making cars where you need huge capital investments to get into the business.
That’s why it will always be very competitive, just like selling hamburgers.
I wasn’t talking about unions, but what kind of crappy store it is.
BUT, I did mention one thing about unions, when someone else thought I was just griping in relation to politics or unions (which I wasn’t ... just that they are the worst business I’ve ever come across in my lifetime).
What I said about Walmart and unions, up above, was that Walmart has no need to be concerned about unions, because they hire misfits who don’t even understand what a union is ... LOL ...
So, what you’re saying in that “if the conditions were that bad ...” — really has no relevance here. It would be like looking at a bunch of pigs in the pig-pen and saying about those pigs ... “If they get dirty enough, those pigs will finally want to get cleaned up!” Ummm ... NO ... they’re PIGS!
It’s the same way for the misfits that Walmart hires. So, Walmart has no need to be concerned about unions.
Way to miss the point. And I don’t go, unless what I need really needs to be a WM trip. It’s a bad place to shop.
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