On Tue, 17 May 2016 06:12:25 -0700, Don Y
wrote:

On 5/17/2016 5:56 AM, CRNG wrote:

Based on the two WMs (super centers) where we used to shop, one about
20 miles west of us and the other about 20 miles east of us, I would
say:

1. Empty shelves - About 15% of the items we try to buy on any given
shopping trip are out of stock. There is a place for it on the shelf,
but it's not there. The items vary from trip to trip, but there are
always a couple.

Target is even worse, in that regard. If it was an occasional thing, we'd
assume someone just botched their JIT MRP. But, it seems to happen
too often to write it off to a fluke!

I don't know what products might be missing from their shelves, but
neither store here has any empty shelves. Walmart's very
restrictive return policy caused me to get stuck with something I
coudl have returned earlier.

2. Their on-line shopping seems chaotic and uncertain. It would be
nice if anything ordered on-line had the option to be picked up
(shipping free$) at the local store.

SWMBO ordered a battery for her camera some years ago. Walmart was
one of the few online places that carried it. And, we could just
pick it up in the store (lots of camera batteries are third party
and we wanted to be able to play touchy feely before settling on the
purchase). The service was worse than the post office! There
wasn't even a person *at* the Will-Call desk (which was hidden in the
back of the store).

Home Depot was very good at "ship free to store". Strangely, I
thought it would come to them with their normal truckload of stuff,
but it seemed to have been shipped individuallly from St. Louis. They
coudl have shipped it to me for the same money, but it's really no
effort to go there to pick it up.

[The USPS is actually very "efficient" in their counter service;
they keep the minimum amount of staff there as possible to
address the needs of their clientele. Staff "standing around"
might improve service *times* but not "efficiency"! In that
regard, WalMart was even MORE "efficient"! : ]

This sort of thing should be a no-brainer: if you have an online
presence, all you should have to do is arrange for the parts to
be included in the latest shipment to Store #1234 with a label
"To the Attention Of: Online Sales Will-Call".

WalMart appears to be missing the business aspects of The Internet
in much the same way that MS did!