http://money.cnn.com/2008/05/28/magazines/fortune/kapner_walmart.fortune/index.htm
Surprised?? yes, it’s the company you love to hate…lol…helping the poor again…
From the last paragraph:
In fact, it’s the small suppliers that are feeling the pain from Wal-Mart’s pushback the most. Bushwick has seen its costs rise 10% over the past year, but has passed only half that amount on to Wal-Mart and its other retailers.
There will be a lot more “poor” if small suppliers like this find, as fuel costs continue to rise, but they keep trying to offset for Wal-Mart, that they just finally can’t do it and either face laying off employees or perhaps going under, or maybe “just” bankrupt.
And I freely admit it, I will shop the sprawlmart to keep my families budget afloat. But I know that I’m not helping the economy - unless keeping WalMart making $ is helping - but that is not helping my LOCAL economy, so I’m trying to look into more local food. I try not to fool myself into thinking WalMart cares about much other than maintaining a customer base, because once you’re in there, I bet many spend more than they should - plus a friend worked there for years, so I’ve seen how she was paid, what her healthcare options were (over 40% of her take home pay! Thank goodness her dh has a job w/better benefits!) etc, etc.
I just stopped eating, take that effers 
Hey Jessica, your weight loss is wonderful!
I loathe shopping at Wal-mart, but prices there are much lower. $2.00 off a two pound Tillamook cheese. $0.90 cheaper for a dozen eggs, etc.
Ugh, Walmart. I get sucked into this horrible cycle with them. I hate them, hate their business practices, yet I’m on a very tight budget and can afford much more there than other grocery stores. It’s like my family’s financial situation and my ethics are on opposing ends. Stupid Walmart.
We have several grocery chains here and I can’t figure out the “cheap Wal-Mart prices” for the life of me. Kroger’s is far cheaper on most things, especially sale items, and the IGA and Shop n’Save are even lower on those items they carry. I DO go to Wal-Mart to buy the stuff we can’t get elsewhere. Our area had several department store chains collapse at once, and for about ten years we had to depend on Big Lots and dollar stores for things like socks, underwear, shampoo–the stuff that grocery stores price out of sight if they have them at all. Getting most clothing, any kind of shoes and any craft items took a 50-mile round trip.
People preached the wonders of Sam’s Club to me for so long I finally took up the free day offer because DH wanted to look for a radio he’d heard was cheaper. They wouldn’t let me walk back into the store. I mean the security guard told me that DS, who was 13 or 14, and I couldn’t look at the radios, but DH could. They wouldn’t explain (and remember, I was the one carrying the coupon.) When I objected, the security guard and manager whispered off in the next aisle and came back to say DS could look, but I couldn’t!
And then they had the nerve to send me a “why didn’t you join?” invitation. Sure, I’ll give you $35 for the privilege of buying stuff at only slightly higher than normal prices if I can find someone you’ll let go in the store for me!
Ditto! I use a local grocery store and stockpile shop there (buy a lot of what is on sale each week so I can make meals out of food that is always on sale). Meat is better and better priced as well. My store uses one of those “customer reward cards” and has a tally at the bottom of how much I saved this trip and how much I have saved to date. In the three and a half years I have not shopped at Wal-mart, I have saved over $7,000! I noticed that generally when Wal-mart would put things on sale, they weren’t really on sale. Once they had Oreos for “2 for $5” when the regular price of them were $2.50 each. Another time their “sale” was on Cheez-its also 2 for $5 when the regular price was $2.49. Hmmmm. Lower prices still don’t make up for poor customer service and employee respect.
Walmart has some things lower priced, but usually only by a few pennies. Mostly if you shop the sale prices or get generic/store brands at other stores, their prices are actually cheaper. I wandered through Sam’s Club to check prices and they weren’t a lot cheaper, if any, than other stores. Costco’s the same way - if you want a brand name, they’re a little cheaper, or you can save by buying in bulk. But for most things, or for just 2 people, there’s really not a lot of savings there.
This is what my DH and I have discovered. We do buy some items at Costco in quanitity for the convenience alone; however, using coupons, shopping the local specials offered by our markets seems to work for only two people. Plus, we realize our ‘local’ store(s) appreciate our patronage, even the larger chains. They recognize you, greet you. Walmart is not for us. One does not save that much, from what I’ve experienced, and they drive out the local merchants creating hardships. IMHO, Walmart is ONLY interested in the almighty buck.
I started keeping a price book and I’ve found, based on unit prices, that that penny difference between Wally and the other store works out to the same unit price when rounded off to the nearest whole cent. Unit price is what really matters because it determines what kind of value you’re getting. That penny difference in the total price is mostly psychological, so you think you’re getting a good deal, but in all actuality, you’re paying the same price per unit as you would if you went to the store down the street and paid a penny more. And if you drove out of your way to save one cent off the total price at Wal-Mart, you just spent more than that penny on the gas it took to get you there.
I’ve also found, since I started keeping price book, that Wal-Mart, for the most part, was actually more expensive to shop at than the grocery store where I do my shopping. The difference in price on a head of lettuce between Wal-Mart and my store was 50 cents (my store was cheaper). And yes, Wal-Mart is cheaper than my regular store on some things, but on the majority, they are not. The difference in price on coffee alone pays for the gas for me to drive to my other store. I started comparing unit prices on things I buy between the two stores, because I wanted to see how I would come out if I started shopping at Wal-Mart. Wal-Mart is actually closer to where I live than the store I shop at. I discovered that, factoring in the cost of gas and distance, I still come out ahead shopping at my regular store. Plus my regular store is huge and has the biggest selection of items I’ve ever seen. If I can’t find it there, then it probably doesn’t exist.
I suspect that what Wal-Mart is doing is nothing more than good PR and drumming up more business and getting us to spend our money there. I don’t know how long they could keep it up because I don’t think even they have the power to keep vendors from passing the shipping and fuel costs onto them, and in turn, Wal-Mart passing it on to us. Lowering their prices doesn’t help when the quality of some of their items is very poor.
DH and I were wanting to have a look at Sam’s to see if it would pay for us to get a membership there. We live in an apartment, and don’t have a lot of storage space for big bulky items, but there are some things we could buy in bulk. We found that they won’t let you in the store unless you buy a membership. Not wanting to spend the money on a membership without knowing if it would pay off for us, we turned around and left and decided never to go there again.
That’s odd, the time I went in to Sam’s to look around, they let me. I think I just told them I was interested in a membership and wanted to see what they had.
Maybe it depends on the particular Sam’s Club. :shrug:
Yeah, it probably varies by store, or the employees just didn’t care that day…
I wish I had faith in Walmart’s ulterior motives. Unfortunately, having seen enough, the only thing this does is help to further pound the nails into the coffin of the mom and pop shops that were already struggling to compete.
Back in the days that I used to shop at the Sam’s and Walmart stores, I was buying something at Sams. I went to walmart later and found that the exact same item was actually cheaper in walmart. how freakin’ rude! :tap:
The article sounds as though it came straight from Walmart’s public relations department.
They are [I]temporarily [/I]lowering prices on [I]hundreds [/I]of items this year. Which means the savings can last for a week and then disappear. What’s the difference between that and putting items on sale temporarily? And what about the thousands of other items they sell? Are those prices by any chance creeping up?
And how are they achieving this great gift to mankind? By clipping a couple of pennies from their own profits? Heaven forbid. They are demanding that small vendors lower their prices by “making distribution more efficient.” Of course the vendors are supposed to bear the costs of all the changes. Not much they can do about it either, since they need the Walmart business. Who else are they going to sell their goods to – the smaller shops and chains that Walmart has driven out of business?
I don’t buy much food at Wal-Mart at all and it helps that mine isn’t a Super Center but yesterday Julianne & I were in there and she wanted milk. I din’t pay attention to the price but when I got home and looked at my receipt I found that it cost much less than I expected or than the last time I bought milk. Nice surprise. I still don’t feel right buying it there.
The great smoke and mirror trick of wal-mart continues…
Wal-Mart is a wolf in sheep’s clothing.
i actually found that i spend MORE at walmart on groceries than I do shopping locally… and we’re not talking just the gas (it takes 1/4 of a tank round trip to go to the super center… they’re talking about building one here but as soon as the target near us that they’re building is done, we’re DONE shopping at walmart). I have an Aldi’s nearby, a Save - a- Lot and even those have just about the same prices as Hannaford and Price chopper… but all 4 are cheaper than the walmart super center…