I’m hoping someone has a definitive answer for what causes the phenomenon, but educated guesses are cool too.
Lately I’ve been trying more generic products to try saving some money, and despite my dislike for the company, Walmart generally has the cheapest prices around me for groceries. But trying to read product reviews to get an idea of what to expect it seems like the vast majority of comments don’t talk about the product’s qualities at all but just Walmart related service problems.
“This item was missing from my order!”
“It’s expired, I want a refund!”
“The can was dented.”
“Delivery driver put the chips under the milk!”
etc.
My question is: are these just confused users that are intentionally leaving these pointless messages on specific products they order instead of contacting support, or (my current suspicion) that Walmart is somehow presenting them with some kind of post-purchase rating request that is easily confused as something intended for customer service?
And regardless of the cause of it, why doesn’t Walmart do anything to filter them out? They don’t help prospective shoppers decide on an item, and usually only serve to make the employees/company look bad.
I don’t place orders on their site so I don’t know what the typical web order flow looks like to the end user so I’m hoping someone has an idea what’s causing it.
Don’t rely on walmart product reviews. I on more than one occasion have left less than favorable reviews on products themselves which was valid issues with the product, and they accept the review… and then never actually post the review for everyone else to see.
What you see isn’t an accurate representation of the products, bad reviews rarely get posted. Take everything with a grain of salt.
I think it’s a combo of stupid and some people can’t be arsed to reach out the seller to fix shit or they expect they’re going to get ignored.
I know on amazon some people will give a negative review and the seller will refund or replace the product and ask for an updated review. They might be hoping for free product.
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People are stupid
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Walmart fails to moderate the reviews
And three, the stupid reviews obfuscate the other negative reviews that aren’t stupid.
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This is why many/most reviews are actually useless.
Many people use reviews to complain, about anything, especially if it has nothing to do with the product because it’s the easiest way to try and get it out of their system.
Combined with fake reviews, astroturfed reviews from undisclosed free products, and the average user having no knowledge of a product or category to compare against, etc. and I’d even say most reviews are effectively useless.
On the bright side, seeing any of those types of phrases in the review means you can effectively ignore that review entirely.
It’s kind of both things. Sites like Walmart encourage users to leave reviews, but that leaves the door open for unhappy customers to complain.
Same thing is rampant on Amazon.
I always wonder whether the people bother to actually contact the companies to try to get things fixed, or if they just post out of anger and expect someone to respond to them.
They aren’t filtered because companies like Walmart don’t actually read the reviews.
The Amazon situation was the first I’d heard about this problem so I assumed it was the same reason it happens on WM (and elsewhere). And while I certainly don’t expect Walmart to actually read reviews, I would think they would be concerned about potentially losing sales due to projecting a bad image and try to at least (poorly/cheaply) implement a system to address it.
Assuming it’s not like an email based feedback system but something with an asynchronous connection, it can’t be too hard to look for a handful of keywords (dent, missing, broken, spilled, delivery …) then throw up a Clippy-style message - “It looks like you’re talking about a problem with your order, would you like customer service to assist?” and then route the message/user in that direction.
I know I’m expecting a lot from our primitive technology in 2025 but I refuse to stop dreaming, dammit!
This is the same for virtually everything. I see it all the time in the App Store where everyone complains about some problem with the company (or developer) rather than the actual app and it’s infuriating.
It happens on Amazon too. They will email you a link asking you to answer some questions. You click it and it takes you to a page that asks a specific question such as how do you like the product. Or in amazing case it has you answer other users questions. To filter that stuff out requires money and manpower.
People are stupid. People shopping at, and working at walmart are usually EXTRA stupid.
I mean, why work a job that barely pays you peanuts, but also treats you like shit? Yet Walmart is the nations largest employer.
Then you go into their store, and get treated like shit for existing. And the prices aren’t that much lower than Target. Which in my city is literally right across the street.
Now your city may not be literally right across the street, but in most markets the Target is usually still fairly close. Close enough that if you were going to go to walmart, you may as well have just gone to Target instead.
There’s a reason PeopleOfWalmart was a thing. Or how Superstore/Cloud 9 was CLEARLY based on Walmart.
It’s a shit store, with shit employees, and slightly lower prices. The whole experience no matter what perspective you’re coming from is built to enshitify YOUR experience at the cost of saving Walmart money. Tiny amounts of money.
So I assume people use the review section as their only source of an outlet to rage.
I know several people who work at Walmart. I wouldn’t say they are stupid, but they’re trapped in a shitty situation where they all rely on public transportation (in Texas) to get to work, which means Walmart is one of the only options.
Tell them to move to Cleveland. We have one of the best public transportation systems in the country.
The downside is, it’s still technically Ohio. But you’re coming from Texas anyways. So it’s not like you have a high horse to stand on anyways. If anything going from Texas to Ohio is like going from the 2nd worst state to like the 8th worst state.
Sooooook, slight upgrade.
Riiiiiight. They can’t afford a car and can barely pay rent despite being split between three of them, so they can definitely afford to move to Ohio.
move to Cleveland
As someone who has never set foot in Cleveland, I even know this is horrible advice
There’s multiple Targets much closer to me than the nearest Walmart but I can’t recall a single time I’ve gone to one and they’ve had all the items in stock I was looking for. Simple staple items that shouldn’t have scarcity problems that just aren’t being adequately ordered or stocked on shelves.
Now that I’ve finally vented about this problem I’m now also imagining the monkey paw curling and all the customer service complaint comments will just be replaced with LLM generated pro-WM propaganda :(
…what? What are you shopping for thats not in stock?
It’s not like specific items always being unavailable, it’s just different random things being OOS necessitating a second grocery stop. It happens everywhere, but at least post Covid, and in my region, it happens consistently with Target.
e.g.:- Campbell’s cream of mushroom soup
- Kraft mac & cheese
- (any) Butter sticks
- Jack’s frozen pizza
Tombstone pizza is a pretty good replacement for Jack’s if they carry it.
Tombstone is more expensive than Jack’s but it’s definitely a huge step up in quality. When I’m just focused on maximizing my budget Jack’s is the lowest I’ll tolerate. But if the goal is taste and quantity of toppings, Tombstone is certainly the better option.
Good to know about Jack’s place on the frozen pizza ranking. I actually like the sauce on Tombstone pizzas which is rare for me. Pepperoni tastes pretty damn too.
