Scott Lurndal wrote:
Larry Blanchard writes:
On Sun, 06 Jul 2014 22:11:25 -0700, Lew Hodgett wrote:

Last Nov (2013), changed my health insurance provider and as a
result had to select an approved local pharmacy for drugs.

The closet place was Wal-Mart, not one of my favorite places, but
what the heck.

We started using Walmart for prescriptions back before I was
eligible for Medicare because we could get generics there cheaper
than anywhere else. Now that we're on a fixed income we do some of
our shopping there and still use their pharmacy.


Walmart is like Harbor Freight. Some good stuff and some junk. But
I've been pretty happy with their pharmacy.


The problem with Walmart is not the quality of their merchandise
(albeit
often low) nor their prices (unusually low), but rather the adverse
effect they have on other merchants in many small communities, and
thus on the health
of the community businesses.

Harbor Freight has no chance of driving the local hardware store out
of business, whereas Walmart has done that routinely and on a wide
scale.

A very common misconception. Think about it - how much of what a hardware
store carries, does Wal-Mart carry and compete with? Very little. So,
here's something a bit more factual for you... a friend of mine used to own
a local ACE franchise and at the time Wal-Mart was coming into town. He
contacted ACE to ask how to compete, how to fight, etc. ACE responded that
the best thing that could happen for his franchise would be is Wal-Mart were
to go in right across the street. Consumers don't understand this and they
talk about how Wal-Mart drives business out of town, but it's simply not
true. What Wal-Mart typically drives out of town are the guys that have
been raping the public because they had no compeition prior to Wal-Mart's
arrival - and then they cry about the big giant driving the little guy out.
But... three years later - do you hear any consumer complaining about it?
The quality of the stuff in that "local" guy was no better than what
Wal-Mart sells, but was priced 2-3 time higher. Good thing that the rip off
artists got driven out of town. As for the hardware stores - ACE does
pretty well right next to Wal-Mart.

--

-Mike-