Wal-mart absorbs increased wages, no price increases

[87iroc]

Poor Poor Walmart. Crappy stores, crappy service, long lines....crappy employee treatment.

I wrote them off 18 months ago when they wrongly fired my mom(she fought and got job back then retired as planned 6 mos later)

 

[terrehautian]

I switched my prescriptions from Walmart to Meijer. Meijer doesn't annoyingly put my pills in blister packs like Walmart.

 

[GodFearinGunTotin]

List of the 154 U.S. stores Walmart is closing

 

[level.eleven]

Wal-Mart is opening 282 stores.

Don't fall prey to click-bait.

50 year old stores get closed.

Walmart strategy drives growth and sustainable returns, Plans $20 billion share repurchase program over two years

 

[pudly]

Where do you get 50 year old stores? 2/3rds of the American stores being closed are Walmart Express which only were started in the last 4-5 years.

 

[bwframe]

Wal-Mart is opening 282 stores.

Don't fall prey to click-bait.

50 year old stores get closed.

Walmart strategy drives growth and sustainable returns, Plans $20 billion share repurchase program over two years

Click-bait? How 'bout a google news search?

https://www.google.com/webhp?source...v=2&ie=UTF-8#q=walmart+closing+stores&tbm=nws

 

[BehindBlueI's]

I work for Walmart. The past few years they talked up the Walmart Express as the next big thing at our meetings. Lately it's about competing with Amazon.

I believe that 100%. It's easier to find things on Amazon, I don't know that it's cheaper but it's price competitive, and you don't have to wear pants. Or park. Or stand inline. Plus I can price compare, read reviews, etc? There is literally nothing that Wal-mart could do to get me to make routine purchases at their physical locations instead of online. The convenience of online retail is just too appealing to me. They could convince me to "shop" online with them, but it'd be an uphill battle to pull me away from Amazon at this point.

Side story, I bought a Kodak digital camera through Amazon. It died about a week before the 1 year manufacturer warranty was up. Kodak had went bankrupt in the meantime. Amazon honored Kodak's warranty and refunded my entire purchase price. That's a strong incentive to buy through them.

 

[looney2ns]

So, I needed an HDMI cable yesterday. Walmarts site. Found what I wanted, showed in stock at my local store for $6.93. I could of course buy it online and pickup in store, or since we were going there anyway, I decided to just stop in and get it. I should have known better.....

Back to electronics, looked at the selection in the HDMI cable section, cheapest cable hanging there was $19.99. I pull up the one for $6.93 on my phone, to double check it was shown as available at my store, it was.

A walmart worker comes by and I asked if I needed help. Told him and showed him the HDMI cable on my phone which had a walmart number attached to it.
Got the look of a deer in headlights. He had no idea where that HDMI cable may be. So, I deduced that the only way to get that cable at that price, was to stand in their electronics dept, order the cable online with my phone for $6.93, then walk up front to customer service to pick it up.

But by this point I was ticked off, left the cart with other items in it we were going to purchase and went to target.

I could of easily ordered it from Amazon, got it in two days with free shipping at the same or lower price. Walmart is the reason I started reloading, I got sick of going down there and not able to find anyone that had a key to the ammo case. Yet they think Amazon is their entire sales decline problem.

 

[mrjarrell]

Walmart will be raising pay starting next month. Going from $9/hr to $10/hr (more for some others, I'm sure). Now if we could just get the government to stop taking so much away from employees, they might actually have a living wage. That would be too much to ask of the dems and reps, though. They need to keep up the balance on their credit cards.

Walmart To Raise All Employees Wages Next Month - Consumerist

 

[hoosierdoc]

Is this starting pay? Their average wage was nearly $13 in May 2015.

If $49k is median household income in America and two adults work 2000 hours each, then $12.25/hr makes them middle of the road typical American household income.

 

[GodFearinGunTotin]

This is frustrating. If I were a Walmart manager, I'd want to know my systems were causing people to be treated this way. They can't fix it if it's never brought to their attention.

So, I needed an HDMI cable yesterday. Walmarts site. Found what I wanted, showed in stock at my local store for $6.93. I could of course buy it online and pickup in store, or since we were going there anyway, I decided to just stop in and get it. I should have known better.....

Back to electronics, looked at the selection in the HDMI cable section, cheapest cable hanging there was $19.99. I pull up the one for $6.93 on my phone, to double check it was shown as available at my store, it was.

A walmart worker comes by and I asked if I needed help. Told him and showed him the HDMI cable on my phone which had a walmart number attached to it.
Got the look of a deer in headlights. He had no idea where that HDMI cable may be. So, I deduced that the only way to get that cable at that price, was to stand in their electronics dept, order the cable online with my phone for $6.93, then walk up front to customer service to pick it up.

But by this point I was ticked off, left the cart with other items in it we were going to purchase and went to target.

I could of easily ordered it from Amazon, got it in two days with free shipping at the same or lower price. Walmart is the reason I started reloading, I got sick of going down there and not able to find anyone that had a key to the ammo case. Yet they think Amazon is their entire sales decline problem.

 

[Lil Bob]

My wife has worked for Walmart the last 20 plus years. Over those years many of their benefits have steadily declined. I love how the company proclaimed in a lot of commercials lately about giving their associates pay raises and that they were thinking about them. Since that time many stores have started to cut their hours to make up for those pay raises. So now they make more pay an hour but the same as they did before the pay raises because they are working less hours. Then today the wife was telling me that more pay was being cut. Years ago employees were paid time and a half on Sundays, then it was changed to an extra dollar an hour for Sundays and then that was taken away. Those employees that were already receiving that pay for Sundays were still getting it. Now they are going to take that away from long term employees. My wife collected time and a half for Sundays, but not no more.

The major reason Walmart has gone down hill the last few years is because of manning reductions in their stores. There is just not enough people to get the job done. Super Centers had over 500 employees 15 years ago now they have 350 to 400. Another way to cut cost is to reduce manpower.

It is sad that a multi billion dollar company has so many employees that receive public assistance. These public subsidies are what allows them to keep their overhead costs down.

As a company they have also driven many companies out of business and pushed others overseas to compete. They have such a market share they have the ability to dictate to their vendors what they will pay them for their product to be put on their shelves. What are their suppliers to do - reduce cost or not have their product on shelves in over 1,000 US stores. They are the bully on the block.

I am a big fan of Amazon. They are competitive with almost everyone and they deliver. I do not even have to leave the house. Amazon may become the next bully on the block but for now I like them.

 

[looney2ns]

I've complained before to the store manager, and emails to corp. NO ONE seems to give a crap.....at all. Never heard a thing back from corp.

Another time we were checking out at Walmart, the cashier was ringing us up, she told a lady that just joined the line that the man in front of her was her last customer. Cashier made the comment that she had to get clocked out as it was the end of her shift. They had already remotely turned off her open light.
It was 2 minutes until 4pm. Cashier claimed she would get in trouble for not clocking out in time. That's a pitiful way to treat employees.

I blame a lot of Walmarts woes, and no customer service on so called "Process Improvement Engineers". Yes, that's a college course. So you get some snot nosed kid, setting in a cubicle, that has never worked a real job in his life, making decisions on "Process's". That he was taught by a professor that never worked a real job in his life.

The new show on NBC, Superstore, is very obviously making fun of Wally world.

 

[AA&E]

My wife has worked for Walmart the last 20 plus years. Over those years many of their benefits have steadily declined. I love how the company proclaimed in a lot of commercials lately about giving their associates pay raises and that they were thinking about them. Since that time many stores have started to cut their hours to make up for those pay raises. So now they make more pay an hour but the same as they did before the pay raises because they are working less hours. Then today the wife was telling me that more pay was being cut. Years ago employees were paid time and a half on Sundays, then it was changed to an extra dollar an hour for Sundays and then that was taken away. Those employees that were already receiving that pay for Sundays were still getting it. Now they are going to take that away from long term employees. My wife collected time and a half for Sundays, but not no more.

The major reason Walmart has gone down hill the last few years is because of manning reductions in their stores. There is just not enough people to get the job done. Super Centers had over 500 employees 15 years ago now they have 350 to 400. Another way to cut cost is to reduce manpower.

It is sad that a multi billion dollar company has so many employees that receive public assistance. These public subsidies are what allows them to keep their overhead costs down.

As a company they have also driven many companies out of business and pushed others overseas to compete. They have such a market share they have the ability to dictate to their vendors what they will pay them for their product to be put on their shelves. What are their suppliers to do - reduce cost or not have their product on shelves in over 1,000 US stores. They are the bully on the block.

I am a big fan of Amazon. They are competitive with almost everyone and they deliver. I do not even have to leave the house. Amazon may become the next bully on the block but for now I like them.

Not to discredit the state of your wife's employment/diminished benefits, but this is the norm today. I work with a large number of defense contractors, most of which are fortune 500 company employees. All of them have seen reduction not only in benefits (PTO accumulation, health insurance, retirement contributions, etc) but also pay. I've known several that have had their hourly pay reduced by as much as $4.00/hour in the past few years. This is the key point I think many people overlook when addressing poverty, the separation between the rich/poor, the destruction of the middle class.

I see many people champion themselves as defenders of the free market and capitalism without opening their eyes to the fact the corporate world has hijacked our political system for their own personal gain. Everything that has stagnated wages for decades has been lobbied for by corporate America, and then pushed upon us by politicians as if being done for our own good. Free trade. Immigrate workers doing jobs American's won't do... (at the price they want to pay is the part they leave off), etc. All policy bad for the US worker advanced for good of corporate America.

 

[1775usmarine]

So you raise the wage of your employees without adjusting other factors and end up closing stores under the guise that they weren't performing well. Again they say they will raise wages and not adjust other factors so who knows maybe this is their way of pushing people to their website while keeping those stores that sell sell sell open while closing ones that are mediocre.

 

[HoughMade]

I wish I wasn't forced to work for Walmart.

....wait.

 

[pudly]

So you raise the wage of your employees without adjusting other factors and end up closing stores under the guise that they weren't performing well. Again they say they will raise wages and not adjust other factors so who knows maybe this is their way of pushing people to their website while keeping those stores that sell sell sell open while closing ones that are mediocre.

Not adjusting other factors? Seems like they are doing exactly that by closing less profitable stores that can't support the wage increases. Increasing prices in a competitive environment (both brick & mortar retailers and online) is a losing strategy for a company that has built their customer base on a low-price, low-service model. Those customers will quickly run to other retailers if they become less price competitive. What other factors can they adjust?

 

[1775usmarine]

Not adjusting other factors? Seems like they are doing exactly that by closing less profitable stores that can't support the wage increases. Increasing prices in a competitive environment (both brick & mortar retailers and online) is a losing strategy for a company that has built their customer base on a low-price, low-service model. Those customers will quickly run to other retailers if they become less price competitive. What other factors can they adjust?

If they didn't increase prices they were thinking more people would shop due to the fact they pay more now. It was like the pizza joint in Cali the guy started paying his employees 15/hr or what they want to raise it ended up having to raise prices on his food and cut out the lunch buffet before closing down completely. I think walmart was gambling they would get more shoppers to offset the raise in wages, but after holding out and seeing it not work had to close those stores.

 

[pudly]

Betting a $200 billion business on an example from a small software company? If so, the entire management should be fired.

 

[1775usmarine]

Betting a $200 billion business on an example from a small software company? If so, the entire management should be fired.

Who knows maybe they did think we have more capital we can do it and then show how its done. As posted further above the a rise in one thing will cause the free market to equalize it somewhere else when living in the real world. In fantasy world you can bend economics at your will and nothing happens just like physics and time cease to exist when you make girts in your kitchen as you seen two boys rob the convenience mart.