Walmart.com: Always the Lowest Price?
Written: Jan 11 '04
| Ease of Ordering: |
 |
|
| Customer Service: |
 |
|
| Selection: |
|
|
| On-Time Delivery: |
|
|
|
| Full Review |
Wal- Mart is the largest retail operation in the world and the largest corporation in the United States in terms of total annual sales revenue. Founded in Arkansas by entrepreneur Sam Walton, Wal- Mart has grown into a behemoth among retail stores, with total sales exceeding 240 billion dollars in the past year.
It’s no surprise that Wal- Mart made the decision many years ago to establish a presence in cyberspace. The addition of an internet on- line store has now added more money to the mountain of Wal- Mart revenue. The web site is simply Walmart.com, the on- line store for the retail giant.
What Does This Site Have to Offer?:
Walmart.com offers merchandise for sale in the following broad categories: Electronics, Photo, Movies & Music, Books, Toys, Video Games, Home, Garden & Patio, Sports & Fitness, Baby, Gifts & Flowers, and Jewelry & Watches. Many of the items that you can find at your local Wal- Mart store (except for food) can be purchased through one of these links.
Walmart.com does offer a few other merchandise areas that could come in handy. You can place an order for a prescription drug through this site, buy tires, purchase contact lenses, even sign up for a Wal- Mart credit card. There are also items like school textbooks for sale and a clearance and price rollback section featuring items that have been further reduced.
Other Services:
Most web surfers come to Walmart.com to purchase general merchandise, but there are some other noteworthy services offered here as well. One is Walmart.com’s internet service. You can signup for internet access using Walmart Connect, and pay only $9.74 per month including your first 700 hours free.
I you like to travel, Walmart.com offers a vacation service complete with on- line booking for cruises, hotel stays, and car rentals. You cannot book individual flights through Walmart.com, but you can purchase a vacation travel package that includes a flight.
Shipping Methods/Charges:
Walmart.com offers three methods for shipment: Express (1 Business Day), Priority (2 or 3 Business Days), and Standard (3 to 7 Business Days). If your item of merchandise is very large (like a piece of furniture), then you will have to use the special freight option, which will take 7 to 14 days.
Shipping charges are based on weight, so they vary widely from item to item. For those items that are uniform in weight (like CD’s, videos, gift cards, etc.), Walmart.com uses a standard shipping table to compute charges. These charges are broken into eight categories, with slight differences (less than 1 or 2 dollars) between each one. For example, music CD’s carry a standard shipping charge of $2.78 for the first CD and 97 cents for each additional one (This is for standard shipping- the other methods cost slightly more).
Methods of Payment:
Walmart.com accepts Mastercard, Visa, American Express, Discover, and Wal- Mart’s own credit cards for payment. They also accept personal checks as a method of payment as well as debit cards.
Customer Service:
If you have questions about your order, you can logon and check the progress, including the tracking. There is a help section with answers to other general questions, like ordering, making payments, setting up an account, etc.
If you have a more specific question, you can obtain an answer by either sending an e-mail, writing a letter, or placing a call to the customer service hotline, 800-966-6546. The customer service line is open from 6am to 1am Central time, seven days per week. If you need a quick response, placing a call is the way to go.
Final Thoughts:
Walmart.com is a full- service on- line shopping experience. For those who enjoy shopping at their friendly neighborhood Wal- Mart, Walmart.com can help satisfy your shopping desires away from the store by proving a 24- hour refuge to partake in the Wal- Mart experience.
I first got to know Walmart.com a couple of months ago when I was looking through different on- line store sites to complete my Christmas shopping. I know it sounds shocking, given all the on- line web sites that I have actively used in the past several years, but until November 2003, I had never logged into Walmart.com. I knew the site existed (from reading Epinions.com reviews), but for some reason, I never felt the urge to even logon and take a look. I don’t know if it’s my attitude toward shopping in general or the fact that I can easily drive down the street and shop at Wal- Mart anytime I want that kept me away for so long. But now I can proudly say that I have used Walmart.com and, overall, my feelings on the site are mixed.
Walmart.com does have some good points worth mentioning. There is a large amount of merchandise for sale in this site (although some areas are better than others) and unless you’re looking for a specific brand that is more on the obscure side, you should have no trouble finding what you want in Walmart.com. The site even offers a few things that surprised me, like the tires (can you imagine the shipping charges for a set of 4 tires?!) and the vacation service.
Making a purchase requires that you first setup an account, but it’s fairly simple, requiring only an e-mail address, your first and last name, and a password. Then, you will be directed to another page that will ask you to enter your mailing address and phone number. You can also enter multiple addresses, if you wish.
Prices at Walmart.com are competitive, and I have been able to find CD’s and books at prices that are equal to or below the prices charged by the on- line competition. But there is one thing to note before you decide to purchase from this site: Walmart.com adds sales taxes to orders shipped to every state except Delaware, Montana, New Hampshire, and Oregon. With the sales tax added in, along with the shipping, the total cost could easily end up greater than the price you would pay at another on- line site. The addition of sales tax used to be a rarity when making purchases through the internet. But, unfortunately, it is becoming more and more of a reality as state governments continue to strike deals with on- line retailers to collect sales taxes- money that the state would have received if the buyer had made the purchase at a physical store location.
Product information at Walmart.com is so- so. With some items, you don’t really need much product info, but with other items, it can make the difference between buying and not buying. It’s also useful to have more product info when a customer is browsing for something to buy. Take the books section, for instance. There is very little product info at all on each book. It doesn’t come even close to the amount of info contained at an on- line store like Amazon.com or Barnesandnoble.com. Maybe Walmart.com feels this isn’t necessary, given that most people who come here already know what they want and don’t intend to browse. Whatever the reason, a little more product information, or maybe I should say more consistent product information (some products have a good amount of info) would be nice.
Yet another bother with Walmart.com is the frequency of pop- up ads. As you move from page to page, there is a good chance that an advertisement will pop up to greet you. Make sure you have your pop- up ad blocker downloaded on your pc before you logon to Walmart.com. It will save you some annoyances.
Taken as a whole, Walmart.com is a fairly good discount store web site. It’s easy enough to use, and the pages load in good time (if you can avoid the pop- up ads). Customer service reps are very easy to get hold of, with availability seven days per week, nineteen hours per day. Prices are competitive, but you have to be careful about the sales tax and the shipping. With these charges added in, your total could end up higher than what you would pay at another web site, and it might even be higher than the price you would pay at the store itself.
Walmart.com isn’t overly impressive. I have had better on- line shopping experiences and I have used other sites that were more user- friendly with more customer tools to help make a purchase. But this is still a good web site to try if you’re in need of general merchandise from clothing to appliances to books and much more.
Recommended:
Yes
What product did you purchase or try to purchase? Books
|
|
|
|
|
- Add to My Yahoo!: 
- Add to Google Homepage: 
© 1999-2009 Shopping.com, Inc.