No real surprise here, my wife and I use Amazon regularly now as you cannot beat the convenience with a young busy family and they get your stuff to you in one day sometimes two with free shipping:

Walmart loses crown as biggest retailer after 12 years on top

What surprised me lately about my local Walmart is they seemed to have brought back lots of cashiers after years of having ONE lousy cashier with a huge line and forcing everyone else to go through self checkouts. Now you'll see the front staffed up with 5-8 cashiers.

Now that they've been overtaken, they don't have to worry about the govt coming after them about being a monopoly. When I was working through college at Walmart, that's the only reason any of us could think of since our Superstore always crushed our profit goal, but barely squeaked our sales goal. If Walmart/Sam's Club kept those cash registers full during peak times, we could have bankrupted Target like they did to KMart.

At one time, the sporting goods and electronics departments always has checkout clerks on hand. These days, you have to hunt a clerk down. I'm sure companies like Amazon have had a huge impact.

Shrinkage is the reason that cashiers are coming back to Walmart.

Intentional and accidental theft goes from 1% to up to 3.5% at self-checkout.

If something didn't scan correctly most customers either didn't know or didn't care.

All about saving money, well how about not building forty checkout lanes if you’re only going to open six of them?

Being right in the backyard of their corporate HQ, Walmart loves to use the stores around here as their testbeds.

They renovated their superstores around here in mid-2020 to remove all of the checkout lanes and install these giant open self-checkout courtyards instead:



But then just a few years later in 2023-2024, once the problems with 100% self-checkout had become evident through increased shrinkage and customer dissatisfaction, these same stores tore out about 50% of their self checkout area to reinstall traditional staffed checkout lanes.

quote:

Walmart Loses Crown To Amazon As Biggest Retailer After 12 Years

The only surprise to me is that it didn’t happen sooner.

Couldn’t care less. I do everything in my power to avoid Chinamart. Detest the place. But yes, once in a while, it is a necessary evil. Part of the loathing is the stores themselves, and part of it is getting out of there. Most of the taking your money is self checkout where the clientele turns into absolute fucking morons. Those customers take 3-4 times as long as a checker. And many customers will have a got damn shopping cart overfilled with items. So that’s going to take half a hour at that register. People play on their phones in between scanning items. It’s must be actual fun for these losers as they take their sweet ass time. Talking on my precious, finger banging my precious. It turns into a 3 ring circus too as other customers, well that got damn self checkout machine might as well be piloting the Space Shuttle. It’s just beyond them and they have to call for help from a Walmart babysitter over there by the machines. Yup total rocket science to find bar code and scan it. They’ll have maybe 2 actual humans working as checkers, and those 2 lines are long and cumbersome. My time is very important to me. And Walmart is where my time dies a slow death so I do best to avoid it. Never cared for their fish or meat quality either. Much easier to save my time, not spend the gas/fuel, and just have Amazon press the ring door bell and leave my premises.

quote:

Originally posted by Prefontaine:
Couldn’t care less. I do everything in my power to avoid Chinamart.

There are good reasons to dislike Walmart, especially in some areas more than others... But Walmart pledged $350 billion in 2021 for products "made, grown, or assembled in the USA", and that was after $250 billion pledged in 2013.

I am often pleasantly surprised when I find products with a Made in USA logo on them that I wouldn't have expected, such as disposable plates.

They state:
"More than 70% of Walmart U.S.' total product spend in FY2024 was on items our suppliers reported were made, grown, or assembled in the United States". By comparison, Target won't say how much of their spending can make that same claim.

We haven't stepped foot in a Target in several years for political reasons, but I continue to shop at Walmart (and Amazon)

Yes, still plenty of reasons to dislike them, but it seems to me they are actually doing well in prioritizing domestic goods.

read more, if you care, here:
https://corporate.walmart.com/...facturing-initiative

I ditched Walmart when they stopped selling handgun ammo.
It was one of the only reasons I went in there...

I buy a lot of stuff off of Amazon. I would prefer to buy locally but I get really tired of going to multiple stores to get what I need. With Amazon I know if they have it and when it will be delivered. My wife prefers to drive all over town to give locals her money.

quote:

Originally posted by thumperfbc:

quote:

Originally posted by Prefontaine:
Couldn’t care less. I do everything in my power to avoid Chinamart.

There are good reasons to dislike Walmart, especially in some areas more than others... But Walmart pledged $350 billion in 2021 for products "made, grown, or assembled in the USA", and that was after $250 billion pledged in 2013.

I am often pleasantly surprised when I find products with a Made in USA logo on them that I wouldn't have expected, such as disposable plates.

They state:
"More than 70% of Walmart U.S.' total product spend in FY2024 was on items our suppliers reported were made, grown, or assembled in the United States". By comparison, Target won't say how much of their spending can make that same claim.

We haven't stepped foot in a Target in several years for political reasons, but I continue to shop at Walmart (and Amazon)

Yes, still plenty of reasons to dislike them, but it seems to me they are actually doing well in prioritizing domestic goods.

read more, if you care, here:
https://corporate.walmart.com/...facturing-initiative

I don’t care. I don’t buy disposable plates either. I buy food, actual food. Their veggies, fruit, fish, and meat, are not quality. Their stores are awful to shop in. I only go in one when I have no other choice at all. I’m far from alone in that regard.

I am not really concerned about Walmart’s status. I would rather shop at Walmart than Target, but Amazon is just so easy to use. Their search function is so much better than everyone else in the retail space. They do a great job of knowing what I am looking for based on previous searches and purchases that even my lame attempts at describing things always nets the desired result. At every other retail web site I have to dig around to find what I want.

quote:

Originally posted by Prefontaine:
I don’t care. I don’t buy disposable plates either. I buy food, actual food. Their veggies, fruit, fish, and meat, are not quality. Their stores are awful to shop in. I only go in one when I have no other choice at all. I’m far from alone in that regard.

I see these types statements often. If your conviction is so strong, you wouldn’t ever shop there. Not only when, “I have no other choice”.

They’re still getting your money. This is fine, it’s okay, but your tone shouldn’t be so absolute given your reluctance to find a reason to do what you’re so adamant on not going.

Bottom line, in terms of the typical American breakfast, you’re the chicken, not the pig.

quote:

Originally posted by OttoSig:

I see these types statements often. If your conviction is so strong, you wouldn’t ever shop there. Not only when, “I have no other choice”.

Nope, sorry. I have some rural land. When we drove in the last time we were trying to get to a grocery store on the way. The mom and pop grocer was closed already and Chinamart was literally the only thing open. Nothing else was. We went in, just grabbed what we needed to get through the night and went to the independent grocer the following day and gave them our money.

quote:

Originally posted by OttoSig:
They’re still getting your money. This is fine, it’s okay, but your tone shouldn’t be so absolute given your reluctance to find a reason to do what you’re so adamant on not going.

$10-15, once every 5 years? Um, okay, but they are getting very little of it. I go years without having to set my feet in one. Until last November, it had probably been 5 or more years. You sound like a Chinamart shopper. Only their patrons would get upset that other people don’t like it, don’t want to spend their money in there, etc. Why? It’s my money, not yours. If I don’t want to spend it some place, shouldn’t really be that big of a deal.

As Abn556 stated, Amazon’s search function and ease of use is far superior to anything out there. My wife has worked for Walmart for 35 yrs in various forms of management for Walmart and she said the same as Abn556 almost verbatim numerous times about Amazon.We will do grocery orders from Walmart because it’s convenient and they deliver free but 90 percent of the stuff we order is thru Amazon.

We can go into Amazon ,get a cart and stop shopping?

I usually don't go to Walmart except to buy motor oil and other automotive supplies. Shopping online at Walmart is often cheaper than Amazon and you can usually get stuff delivered on the same day from a local store. I was comparing prices for a Stanley Vacuum insulated bottle and Walmart is $29 while Amazon is $45. There is a delivery fee around $10, but it is worth it to me. I just make sure to consolidate my orders.

Not to be specific, I feel uneasy around Walmart shoppers. Don't like the way they drive in the parking lot or the way they act in the store ( leaving carts in the center aisle, generally rude, etc.). I don't go to Costco or Sam's, none around here, so I don't know if it's common.
Maybe customer quality has something to do with Amazon doing well.

quote:

Originally posted by rizzle:
Walmart shoppers.

Walmartians