I believe it is important for anyone who is considering using Wal-Mart’s new Site to Store service to read the letter I sent Wal-Mart Corporate early this morning regarding my family’s significant problems with their service over the past week. Please read below.
”Wal-Mart Corporation:
My name is Tyler Thompson, a resident of Derby Kansas and a frequent customer of your stores. As a profession, I am a web developer in Wichita and also the Editor-in-Chief of a popular technology website PCMech.com. I am writing in utter disbelief of the events relating to your store, its customer service, and your new Site to Store service. Over the past week, my family’s patience has been pushed beyond the limit by the sheer lack of competence shown by the Wal-Mart employees at your Derby location.
Please let me begin by describing the situation over the last week. My mother and I had been looking for a game, Guitar Hero III for PlayStation 2 with a Guitar, for several days when I came across an available version at your online store. Immediately, I sent the link to my mother who proceeded to place an order on Tuesday December 4, 2007 with shipping options set for your new Site to Store service. The problems began here, as the credit card used for the transaction was declined three times by your online processing service and then was locked out by the same service for exceeding your overflow limit. My mother tried again with a different credit card, which worked perfectly the first time. It was not until later she realized that although your online processor had declined her first credit card, it had charged this card all three times for the amount of the order. After calling customer service, this issue was resolved quickly. Unfortunately, the problems did not end there, and they were relatively minor in comparison to what was to come.
On Saturday December 8, 2007, my mother received an email notification (the first sent by your service since the order) with the subject “Pickup Confirmation” – we believed this to be the notification promised as per your invoice’s instructions on how your Site to Store service worked, step one: “Wait for an email telling you your order is ready for pickup (7-10 days)” – however, the email did not mention anything about the order being ready for pickup. In fact, it was worded as if the order had already been picked up. Confused by the situation, I called the store to clarify whether this was the email notifying us the order was ready for pickup.
When I called, I immediately asked for a customer service representative, who I was readily transferred to. I inquired about the email we received and was then put on hold for “someone who knew something about how it worked.” After a few minutes, another person picks up the phone, and after again describing the situation to her, I was again told “I don’t know how that works, let me find someone who can help you.” Finally, on the third try, I was handed off to someone from the back of the store who “knew what they were doing”.
This person was very responsive and positive to deal with, as she promptly looked up our order, first by last name. She sounded frustrated when no results came back for an available pickup. She then asked for a street address to check for. Again, within seconds, she came back with a negative response about a pickup being ready. The representative then asked for an order number to search. I found the order number and read it to her over the phone, to a quick response of “Oh no. It shows the order has already been picked up. Are you sure you have not had anyone pick it up for you?” My response was that no one had picked up the order and the situation was not good. The representative looked up the order status further to find that there was a signature on file for the package. As soon as this was discovered, I was transferred to a manager, where I let my mother take over the phone conversation because she had been the one to place the order.
After a few minutes on the phone, my mother was asked to come into the store to discuss the matter further.
She left at around 10 PM and went to management in your Derby location. Obviously the signature was not a valid one for the package, and the situation began to escalate. After an employee from the stocking area confronted my mother and told her, several times, that “She was not perfect,” my mother asked for her to get out of her face, to deal strictly with management, and to be issued a refund. Three different managers refused to process the refund request, and at one point an employee told my mother “It would be extremely easy for anyone to just print off an order confirmation page and bring it in to the store for items such as that.” This has two meanings, first of which alleging that my mother was defrauding the company, or that Wal-Mart’s security is not tight enough regarding its online order process. After being refused the refund by the management, she requested to speak with corporate headquarters, which was originally denied, but upon further attempts was allowed in the store.
The lady who my mother dealt with at corporate was very accommodating and immediately told the manager in the store to process the refund and to apologize for the employee’s rudeness. The refund was eventually processed and corporate issued a new order to be shipped to our house for free.
First of all, the most important implication of this event is security. On the order confirmation page, step three, it says “Go to the Site to Store area at your store and present your printed email and a valid photo ID.” And under that, in at least two different areas, it lists the “Pickup Person” as “Kim Thompson”. If a photo ID is required, how did the box get signed for without an ID verifying the identity of the pickup person as “Kim Thompson”? The answer to this question is probably pretty simple – an employee had to have falsified the signature (a state felony as defined by KS 21-3710) and then stolen the package my mother had paid for (a state misdemeanor or felony as defined by KS 21-3701). Since the package could have crossed state lines, this action could also violate various Federal Interstate Commerce regulations.
Also, the implication that anyone could forge an email by your online store and come in to pick up the package is troubling. Being a web developer, I deal with internet security and e-commerce on a daily basis. As such, your website should have adequate protections built in to prevent such happenings. Also, in order to forge the order confirmation, one must know the order number, time of order, pickup person name, and credit card information. As this information was passed from your servers via Secured Sockets Layer communication, it would be impossible for an outside source to intercept the encrypted content and decrypt it for personal use. Internet security is not a joke, especially for someone who works in the industry.
Secondly, the way your store handled the situation was dysfunctional at best. From the very beginning, no one at the store seemed to know or understand how the Site to Store worked, and the way the management and employees communicated with my mother was offensive. Customer service should be a priority, especially in situations where it is possible that an employee stole merchandise belonging to a customer. My mother being told she was “not perfect” is extremely unprofessional and borderline on childish behavior. This kind of behavior is sickening from a company of your size.
Thirdly, if this can happen in Derby Kansas without anyone catching on, in how many of your other stores is this lack of oversight causing problems? How many other customers are going to be affected by similar incidents? This needs to be taken care of immediately.
As I mentioned earlier, I am the Editor-in-Chief of a website called PCMech.com. I am publishing this letter as an Open Letter on the website to warn our audience of the dysfunctional status of Site to Store, and also to hopefully make your company accountable for the actions of your employees. This letter will be featured in a newsletter which is received in the inbox of over 25,000 people, and visible on the internet to our audience of over 15,000 per day. As an open letter, your company is free to respond openly on the website as a comment.
In order to make sure this letter is acted on, I will be mailing this to your corporate headquarters and to the Manager of the Derby Wal-Mart. To rectify this situation, we would like to receive a written apology from both the corporate office and the Derby Wal-Mart, as well as have action taken as necessary against the employees involved in this situation. I am saddened that it has to be taken this far, but in light of the treatment we received; I feel the situation can not be ignored.
Thank you for your time.
Tyler Thompson”
Tyler Thompson A native of Derby, Kansas, Tyler is the man who brings you our weekly newsletter. He is currently interested in programming, hardware and networking systems, and technology integration.
After reading this article I was a little fearful of the purchase I had just made with Wal-Mart Site-to-Store. (Living in North Dakota, I thought ordering the cabinets I needed and having them delivered to the store was great Idea.)
I was however, pleasantly surprised when the transaction was easily tracked and picked up. The only delay, if you want to call it that, is one of the items was still on the truck when I arrived to pick it up. They asked if I had any shopping to do and if I could stop back in about an hour. I had my usual list of items to pick up at Wal-Mart, so the hour went quickly. When I returned to pick up the 3 flat-packed cabinets they were packed on a cart and an employee pushed them to my van and loaded them for me.
My ID was checked both times I went to the Site-to-Store department to inquire about my cabinets and I had to sign for the items. The employee also checked my signature with the one on my ID!
I will definitely order things from Wal-Mart this way again!
I am currently waiting on a site to store delivery to make it to my store for pickup.. I really hope I do not have all of these problems! I’m frustrated just reading them.
I should have read this site before ordering from walmart.com nearly a month ago. I ordered a chair for my daughter on March 6th and decided to save my money on shipping and use their site to store feature. I called the store on March 24th to let them know the chair had been in transit to their store since March 12th and wanted to know if there was anyone I could speak with that knew what happened to my chair. Their Site to Store customer service rep could not answer any of my questions. I was given a 1-800 number, which was all automated. I called back to the store to talk to a manager and was put on hold. After five minutes on hold the phone went dead. Distracted, I called back twenty minutes later. The lady on the other end told me all of the managers were at a meeting. I told her I would call back later. A couple hours later I called back and asked to speak to a manager about my order. I was on hold for over ten minutes this time. I hung up and called back, finally reaching a manager.
As I was discussing this issue with their manager, I noticed that walmart.com had cancelled my order. She took my order number and said she would call back when she found out what happened to my order. When she called back she said the chair was shipped to the wrong store and they just told her to go ahead and cancel the order. I asked why it wasn’t just sent to the store after they realized their mistake or why wasn’t I given the option to pick up the chair at the other location. She couldn’t answer these questions and did not offer any other solutions to satisfy me.
Although my credit card was credited, I also used a gift card that was bought specifically for the purchase of the chair. She offered to give me cash back on the gift card if I brought it into the store. I am very skeptical because the e-mail I received about the credit to my gift card was very generic and did not state an amount. I will cash in the gift card because I will NEVER do business with such an inept company again.
Please……this whining has been going on for a year!!
Let us get back to subjects relevant to PC MECH and the readers!!
Ed, this website didn’t anticipate so much WalMart traffic, but I have seen your posts before. I think that this is an appropriate website, it is available to folks who have some concerns about Walmart’s ship to store, it might be more than you want, but it is what I want and probably one of the few places that these concerns can be posted for a corporation like Walmart.
What is wrong with that?
We have had a number of people who want to express their stories about this part of the Walmart experience. I am hopeful that eventually Walmart will get the message. If they do, they will improve their ship-to-store offerings; if not, it will cause them some problems. This is what it is all about–being responsible.
This is all my own opinion, I have no connection with PC MECH other than these posts.
Ed:
First of all your comments about people whinning about their problems with Walmart online purchases is their right to ‘freedom of speech’ and whether or not you wish to read these posts or not doesn’t give You the right to critize or chiestize anyone for expressing their concerns about Walmart’s rude practices. Personally I think any public forum is correct to be inform of other persons quest for Walmart to be responsible for their screw ups and rude employees.
As for reading post regarding PCMech issues….am open to those as well. Walmarts everywhere have rude and unprofessional employees and customer service at local Walmart stores ‘Suck’ big time.
Now that is my opinion! I thank the persons who posted their problems with WALMART for the rest of us in the general public to be AWARE of these issues.
Gosh Richard M……I have been duly “chiestized”. I do not know what I would do without your moral and social guidance in these matters. Please accept my apology. I do note however, that you too need a spelling checker and punctuation guide!!!
what is your deal? Are you a spell checker? Is that what you do for a living? c’mon seriously people use this to make comments about their experience not to have people edit their comments.!!
Since you are checking punctuation maybe I should tell you that only one exclaimation mark goes after a sentence. Check your own self buddy
You know Richard, keep in mind walmart is’nt the only place with rude employees there are many other places but that is a whole different site.
Sorry to bring this back up, especially when people are getting frustrated with this being non-PC related, but it seems like the best place to add my voice.
I just had a terrible experience with site-to-store. I ordered an item, figured it wouldn’t hurt to have it shipped to the store, I mean hey! save a few bucks in shipping, right? I waited 2 weeks for my order, anxiously awaiting getting to play with my new GPS. I finally get an email from WalMart.com, I figure “YIPPEE! I’ll go pick it up at lunch, this has got to be my “come and get it” email!” But no, it’s an email saying that my order has been cancelled. With no explanation. So I called the store where I was supposed to be picking it up (because there are no phone numbers on the website for corporate or walmart.com) and she explained that they never received the item, so they cancelled it and gave me the phone number for corporate.
I call corporate customer service, and the woman was rude and unhelpful. She said that my debit card would be refunded in 2-3 business days. Frankly, that’s absurd, especially considering they have been holding my money for 2 weeks already! They wouldn’t speed up the refund and said that the best I could do would be to reorder it. I said that wasn’t acceptable since I had done nothing wrong, they had lost the item and should be bending over backward to make it better! She was unhelpful some more. I demanded to speak with her supervisor, who she wouldn’t give me to. She said that she could upgrade the shipping to standard shipping for free as a consolation, I said again that wasn’t acceptable, since I should have had the item in hand already and didn’t want to wait another week. Back and forth with “That’s the best I can do” “No it’s not, get your supervisor” she finally agreed to upgrade it to 2-3 day shipping.
When I got the email saying it would STILL be another week before I got my item, I cancelled the order and bought it from Buy.Com. Never again will I purchase from walmart.com in any way shape or form. What a disaster!
I think it is pretty sad that all of you pathetic people have nothing better to do than blame walmart for your problems. You are the ones that chose to do site to store. No one held your hand and made you do it. First of all when ever doing something on the internet you deal with idenity things. plus, people that work there are only human. You never see small retail stores being bashed because they made a mistake do you? If you have to have a package so damn bad then go and get it yourself . stop whining because a human made a mistake or don’t exactly know what they are doing. There are new people at walmart just like any job and they all don’t know every thing. They are very particular in their training and don’t just throw people in a job and you can’t expect them to treat you like the queen of england. After all I am sure they don’t need rude people in their face day in and day out. The people there are putting their pants on one at a time just like the next guy.
The four-letter words are a turn-off for me with your post, Stacy. That alone negates much of what you have to say. Are you a present or former Wal-mart employee (I will guess present)? If not, then how do you know about their training? I worked at Wal-Mart for three years after I retired. The day I started the store manager and assistant manager were both fired. My first meeting as an employee was about that subject. Have you ever purchased anything from Wal-Mart’s ship to store process? If not, then how do you know what is going on? My friend just ordered a big-screen TV and got frustrated watching the shipping process online and yet the TV didn’t show up at the store for four days after it was scheduled. Where was it if the routing information was supposedly correct? It is not the employees at the stores, it is the processing at the warehouses, and if those employees don’t know what they are doing because they are “new,” then they need more training before they have hands on. Most of the problem lies with management. Aside from that, we live in a democracy, and you have had your opportunity to make your comments. BTW, when “small stores” mess up, often they close shop because of it. Half of small businesses fail the first year.
Lilarose, dont sit there and act like you have never heard a curse word. and second of all what is the only company that isn’t hurting by the economy? Have you ever heard of walmart laying off? nope. yes I do work for walmart and did for 10 years . best place I have worked at. I am sick and tired of people blaming things on wal’mart. how can walmart control the warehouse if they don’t send something on time? they can’t. they have millions of people everyday do site to store. what is walmart suppose to do keep employees in the back on the computer for months until they know everything there is to know about walmart? No, and you wouldnt expect that at any other buisness either. Obviously if the store manager and an assistant got fired it was because they couldn’t cut it. That is why they were fired they get people outta there that don’t want to try and do their job. Obviously you were not paying attention in your training because you don’t get trained in one day. And yes I have done site to store. Best idea ever. I have never ran accross any problems. judging by your whining I can tell alot about what kind of employee you were. I would say 60% of the training at walmart is done hands on. That is the only way people can learn things efficiantly. No wonder you can sit there and say you learned it in one day. and I am not talking small stores. I was talking other retail places such as hy-vee, target , Lowes etc. No one wants to pick on them always wal-mart because they have money. I see every day people say they will never come back to walmart. and …..they always do. whether they do or not that is their choice. one bad expierince and their life is over.
Stacy…..Get a spell-checker, a book about punctuation, and a chill pill!
ed,
get over yourself. who died and made you king. I guess I did’nt know someone would be so bored to take the time check spelling. Sorry, I don’t have time to read a book I’m too busy working and dealing with cranky anal people like you everyday. who asked you anyway. I was talking to lilarose.
Stacy,
I like Wally World too, but I also like proper English. The first word of a sentence is always capitalized. A question is always ended with a question mark. The apostrophe in the contraction for “did not” goes between the “n” and the “t”. All of these observations come from a cursory reading of your last message. Like it or not, people judge you by the way you speak or, in this case, write. Chat rooms, bulletin boards, and text messaging don’t excuse bad grammar. Also, you attract more bees with honey than with…
john
what is wrong with you people. who cares im not writing a book. I am simply writing a statement its not going on the cover of a magazine. ive never heard so many people get so freaked out about spelling and what not. Has it ever crossed your mind that it doesen’t mattter to everyone? Seriously, I’m simply making my point about Wal-mart. i really don’t care if spelling and punctuation is correct. FYI when i type for work and letter heads i use spell check and all that . but to make a comment, who cares? not me as you can see.
Ok,
Now I am worried. I just made an order ship to store.
I will be waching this very closely, but see if I have any problems. I will cancel and dispute the charge with my credit card company. The website says my purchase will be here next week. So 8 days from now I will report my findings back here.
Anyone have any reports on returns ?
for some reason the product is’nt the quality you thought it would be just bring your reciept and walmart will return it no problem. make sure you have your id and your print out from the internet and you should be ok when you pick it up. I will let you know that sometimes when the items arrive at walmart they go by when the trucks are scheduled to be there. so it could be a day later or even earlier. Some people like to over react. site to store is a great thing never known anyone where I live to have any issues. Have a nice day.!!
Geez, I hope the T.V we just bought will arrive soon and without probelms such as the ones I have just read about. For some reason my order has been sitting at the Delivery Facility for about 3 days and the Delivery Facility is only about 3 hours from where I live. I wonder why it takes so long?
I emailed them and of course no response yet.
I like Wal-Mart too and the computer I ordered arrived to my home in a very timely manner and they only charged me 97 cents for shipping. What a deal! I only chose the site to store because they wanted over $20.00 for the shipping and this option was free…. I’ll just wait and see!