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.
At least the employee who looked up the order number was helpful. Either way, no excuses for that kind of stuff happening.
Excellent letter Tyler.
It’s a shame your mother had to endure a total breakdown of leadership from Walmart. I really think that some heads will roll because of your ability to reach so many readers with this message. Well Done Tyler!
Hey, excellent letter, but it will be ineffective when dealing with a large corporation like Wal-Mart. In the end, they may rectify the situation for you, but do you really think that they didn’t know the weaknesses in their online ordering system?
Thanks for your comments. In response to John, #4:
I do not know whether they realize their system’s weakness. Honestly, it would be very sad if they did know about it because it will cause their company nothing but problems. Seriously, if something like that can happen, things clearly need to change.
In the end, I do not care too much about my situation. I will not use the service again. The point of publishing the letter here was to raise awareness of the system’s problem so that others my not have to put up with similar situations this holiday season.
Thanks for the time to comment, feel free to respond
Tyler Thompson
Editor-in-Chief
PCMech
My wife recently (last month) had very close to the same problems. Screwed up order Site to Store, and horrible customer service from the locals. The corporate phone rep was, however, very responsive.
This is absolutely no surprise to me.
Walmart treats both their customers AND employees as though they are a POS.
Watch this and you will never shop at Walmart again:
http://www.walmartmovie.com/
Tyler,
Outstanding letter to Walmart. I too have had many of my own complaints about the Walmarts in my own area (san diego CA.) I’ve been there trying to buy a game and when I kindly asked an employee to open the case so I may pay for it she had to “find someone else who had wants to do it.” Afterward she asked another employee to do it who refused to because they were busy talking with their fellow employee. She then found a man who worked there who was obviously bullied by the rest and told him to do it. With a fuss of, “Why do I have to do everything?” he proceeded to get the game out of the case and handed it to the youngster at the register who wouldn’t even bother with eye contact as he chatted away about obscene things with his cohort. Many time I’ve seen such lazy acts at Walmart and I agree that it must end. Again, Tyler, an excellent letter you wrote.
Excellent letter. While I shop WalMart for their low prices I think their customer service, including from their store managers, is about the worst in the business.
Excellent letter, I am very curious to how its responded to.
I do not agree with Walmart’s corporate practices, and as such I have chosen not to spend a single dollar there.
Response from Walmart:
Dear Tyler;
Thank you for your letter. However, tldr. Thank you and please continue shopping at Walmart.
While your experience was indeed unfortunate, your rant does not belong in the newsletter.
Tyler,
Very unfortunate situation. Will you be able to update us with any correspondence from Walmart? You should probably bill them for identifying flaws in their site to store procedures.
Please do update us with any news from or about Walmart dealing with this issue
Good job and thanks for the info, and to poster Kuch: Yes it does.
Let us know the outcome!! Thanks for the heads up
Bob S
Tyler;
Thanks for making this public. I am about to send a letter to corporate since I just had an awful experience with site to store. I was just searching for other forums where folks had similar problems when I found your site.
I know some people think that a big corporation like Walmart won’t bother; yet the more of us bringing this up to corporate will help them realize how mediocre their system is.
Best of Regards
Hello Tyler,
Although I am not a company spokesperson I do work for Wal-mart as an assistant manager and have for the past twenty years worked for Wal-mart in various capacities. I am also a regular reader of your newsletter. I am familiar with the site to store program and help customers at my store on a daily basis.
I read your situation and wanted to give some insight to the program. First let me explain that Wal-mart and Wal-mart.com are not the same company and do not report as such. They are both run by Wal-mart Inc. but we have little to no direct contact with them at store level. When a sale is made on Wal-mart.com and shipped to the store we recieve a credit (not sure what that means) to our store, but the purchase does not go through us at store level. Therefore any refunds issued at store level are actually just pulled from the safe in the accounting office and pulled from our customer service account which directly comes from our profits. We do not receive a return authorization or credit for the product. The only information we receive about the order is the customer names, contact information, and order number.
The products come on our truck from whichever distribution center the store receives it’s merchandise. Orange stickers allow our unloaders to identify Wal-mart.com orders and set them aside. The next day our claims associate will use a truck manifest to verify the arrival of the merchandise and place them in a reserved area of our old layaway bins. If an item is not received then the clerk will call the distribution center and have them research and replace the item. All items that are verified by the clerk are marked as received in our system and Wal-mart. com will send an email that the item is ready for pick up. Many times we have customers that recieve a processed order from Wal-mart.com and come to the store thinking it is ready for pick-up. Usually a quick check tells us whether it is or not.
Each Wal-mart Supercenter employs about 250 to 400 associates, not all of who are trained for site to store or have the option to even log onto the layaway registers. Therefore you are unlikely to encounter an associate immediately that can help you. All CSm’s or CSS’s (the customer service associates) should be trained as well as management.
I am saying this because this should limit the amount of associates who would be able to access your account. The old layaway area is usually covered very well by video cameras and that particular register would be the only one available that could possibly print a receipt for signature verification. Given that the system records a time and date for the transaction, finding the person responsible should be an easy task. I am fairly sure that since the store refunded you and took a loss on the product they are already in the progress of investigating what happened. The results of which would not be released to anyone in the general public because we are not allowed to release the arrest, termination, or reprimand of an associate. Usually an arrest that is released to public information is done by the local law enforcement agency.
I can see why the management woould be hesitant to issue a refund. Our credit card agreements would force us to issue a credit to the card owener (VISA, MC, or Discover) which would be hard to do through our system for a Wal-mart.com purchase.Also, I would not allow any of my associates to lose their cool with a customer, ever. However, you don’t mention what lead the associate to this behavior.It is generally human nature to become offensive when offended.
I am not making excuses for the process or the treatment, However I will say that my store processes literally hundreds of these orders per month with very few issues on our end. I also know that of the million plus associates and vendors who make a living through wal-mart, that many of us bust our tails to ensure good customer service through various means. I don’t feel like your store or personal situation represents all of us. So, If they won’t apologize, I will on their behalf. I apologize for the breakdown in service a professionalism you received at that store. Thanks, Marty,
Wow. In direct response to Marty’s comment:
I admire you for taking the time to write that post. As I was moderating it, my mouth literally dropped wide open. You have no idea how much I appreciate someone who is willing to do that.
I will try to respond as directly as I can to what you have said.
1) It didn’t bother me that it took several people to get a hold of someone who knew about site to store. And honestly, the first person I talked to who knew the system was VERY polite to me.
2) I was appalled at the rudeness of the entire staff. Three managers blew us off completely. They didn’t try to explain, as you have, what the situation was, nor did they offer to find out from corporate what they needed to do. In fact, they accused us of having someone go to sign for it (which should be against the terms of service unless specified at order time) and then come back to claim it was stolen. Even after seeing the “fake” signature, their attitudes did not change. The attitude was one of the most frustrating of the experience. Once corporate was called, at my mother’s request, they were furious with the treatment, and made the manager there apologize for the behavior.
3) I do not know what set the associate off. I could only speculate (my assumption would be her having to do extra work, but that could be wrong). In dealing with customers for the last five years, I know that it is inappropriate.
4) The manager at the store called Monday. He did not apologize (all that was really needed) nor did he seem much to care about the situation.
Your response has been the most helpful we have gotten so far, and I would like you to know how much I appreciate you taking the time to write it. Expect to get an email from tyler@pcmech.com very shortly. I am interested in showing that I am not someone just interested in ranting…
Have a great day.
I will keep you posted as to the status from a corporate and local level to see if we get something worked out.
Thank you!
Tyler.
Edit: Hey Marty – The email address isn’t valid, if you would initiate the emails with the body of “Hi from Marty” to tyler@pcmech.com, I have a letter to send to your inbox.
They are horrible at customer service!!! I recently ordered mini frigerator. They told me that it would arrive at the store here locally within 7 to 10 days but when I went to pick it up, local store stated that it didn’t arrive yet. After waiting for a month, someone from the local store calls me and said that they have sold my regrigerator becuase site to store messed up on my paperwork. He didn’t apologize nor was he very sympathetic at all about the situation. He just told me to go on line and just order another one. He made me SO MAD! all customer service on line can say is we will paid for your shipping. WAL MART IS HORRIBLE AT CUSTOMER SERVICE!
I used Site to Store twice. Although my situation didn’t escalate to your level, both times it took forever to find the one person that “knows how it works” to receive my shipment. I won’t use it again.
My solution – don’t shop at Walmart. Low prices aren’t worth the poor customer service, crowds, dirty stores, jammed aisles, etc. Most places match Walmarts prices (or come pretty close) and don’t give you any near the hassle.
Absolutely. Walmart has done more to hurt this economy more than antyhing. They have driven so many local and small business out while they claim to “help” their own workers. They do not. They do not allow unions that would allow their workers to make a living wage or get decent health benefits. And you know they aren’t happy that Obama is president. Too bad!
I am currently in a very similar situation with Walmart.com except I chose not to get site to store. I placed my order for Guitar Hero 3 on 12/8. I got a notice that it had shipped along with a FedEx tracking number. However, the package was never actually picked up by FedEx. Walmart will not respond to any e-mails with anything other than an automated response pointing me to their website.
At this point, I figure the item is out of stock. Maybe they will get around to telling me sometime after the new year. I think site to store would have only complicated matters.
I also had some trouble with Site-to-Store ordering, but my problems were completely different. I placed an order with a lot of baby items, totalling over $500. On the website, it says that processing takes UP TO 48 hours, and shipping 7-10 days. The items were processed in about 7 business days, NOT 48 hours as promissed. Then, some items arrived fairly quickly and I picked them up. The rest of the items showed as “ready for pickup” about 3 weeks after the order was placed. When I went to the store to pick them up, none of the employees could locate the items, and I was told to contact the customer service online. I emailed the customer service twice, and got the same generic response both times: “To track the item, go to walmart.com and click on “order status.” I don’t think that they even read my email. Then, I called customer service and asked them to refund my money for the rest of the order, since the items could not be located. It took them about 2 weeks to process the refund. So, a total of 5 weeks of waiting for the items and then waiting for a refund. Plus, at the physical store itself, employees cannot help you at all. You are right – half of them do not know how this stuff works. Why do they even have a feature available if the staff does not know how to work with site-to-store items? I am usually not a picky person, and do not complain often, but I will be writing to corporate about this situation. Very disappointing.
I have used site to store twice in the last month and the only problem i had the first time was with all of my order not showing up at the same time. I asked the lady at site to store pick up to find out where the rest of my order was and she acted like she did’nt know what to do until i told her she could call customer service and find out….they can’t problem solve. They did’nt charge my credit card the first time until i picked up my order so i made another purchase and did site to store pick up again. This time they charged my card right away and caused alot of problems in my bank account. I wish they would be consistent at all times and do things one way all the time. Now i have to get a letter from walmart in order to get refunds for the NSF fees it caused.
Anyways good luck!
I think the thing to remember is most of these problems are atypical, that site to store is relatively new on a nationwide basis for Walmart (I think less than 2 years), and that it’s not practical to train every store employee to do and know everything, especially at the entry level positions where turnover is quite high. I’ve used site to store about a dozen times over the last year, the only problems so far have been long waits for an associate at the pickup location (they have it marked aside near the stock room and a call button for help).