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.
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.
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.:
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.