Does Walmart Bully their Customers?

One thing we have come to enjoy in our lives here in America is our freedom.

We have the freedom to voice our opinions, to choose our career path, to choose where we want to live, to chase our dreams, and to chose which retailers will we patronize.  The list of choices is endless and is one of the many reasons people move to America.

In America, we also have a long history with retailers.  In the early 1900’s, a stores main function was to supply products to consumers, regardless of whether the consumer wanted or needed those products.

Today, though, retailers not only bring products to the consumer, they also work hard at bringing value.  Retailers look for ways to build relationships of trust with their consumers in order to achieve customer loyalty.  Without customer loyalty, a retailer loses business to other retailers.  Consumers aren’t interested in only the price of the product anymore; they also want to know the retailer values them.

Don’t think that’s true?  How many store loyalty cards do you have and use on a regular basis?  Knowing retailers work hard to gain your business, and knowing the economy is struggling, one has to wonder why one retailer has decided that it is better to bully their customers rather than continuing to build relationships?

No one likes being bullied, but it appears Walmart has taken to bullying their customers rather than valuing them.

Consumers work hard for their money and don’t like giving it to just any retailer.  Consumers will drive an extra five miles if it means patronizing a retailer they value and gives value back to them.

Walmart has taken to bullying customers by insisting they view customer receipts and bags upon exiting the store.  Mind you, they have no probable cause to conduct these searches.  The customer hasn’t done anything to warrant being detained and their bags searched.  Walmart has taken the term “taking the law into your own hands” to a new level with these perceived “mandatory” searches.

While our country’s founding fathers worked hard to ensure people enjoyed certain freedoms, such as being presumed innocent until proven guilty, not being illegally search or detained without probable cause, Walmart is dismantling those freedoms and rights by desensitizing consumers with their supposed ‘necessary’ searches.

Will Walmart’s distrustful, bullying attitude pick up steam and roll into the stores of other retailers? Is our country entering an era where retailers don’t trust their consumers, but want a portion of their hard earned money?  Is our country slowly shifting to a police state with Walmart acting as a police officer?

Aside from agreeing to terms to be “receipted” upon exiting a Sam’s Club or Costco, I haven’t been stopped and asked to hand over my receipt and bags to be searched at any other retail store yet I have been stopped countless times and asked to hand over my receipt at a variety of Walmarts in several states.  They view my receipt, scan the tops of my bags and off I go.

As I exit the store, I wonder want the point is when they are not really checking to see if the contents in my bags match my receipt?

There is something inherently wrong when a retailer thinks every consumer is guilty of theft until proven otherwise. They don’t care that they cannot legally detain and search people’s bags without probable cause, which chips away at the relationship of trust Sam Walton work so hard to build with his customers.

Why should they?  Consumers haven’t objected or stood up to Walmart, which is most likely due to their prices being so much lower than the competitors on a majority of products.  Walmart flexes their muscle, letting consumers know they are the biggest game in town and they can offer the low prices other stores cannot.

Walmart seems to have become the bully in the playground of retailers.  Their attitude is that they will do what they want and if you don’t like it, shop somewhere else, but customers continue to go back for more.  With that being the case, Walmart customers are giving them permission to bully them; giving them virtually free reign to stomp on their freedoms and rights.  When will consumers be fed up?

Our family is fed up and we now shop at other stores.  Even if we have to go to several stores to get the products we want, we will do so just to avoid stepping into Walmart and being bullied and receipted.

We do so because other retailers appreciate our business and respect our freedoms and rights.  We do so because other retailers don’t bully us; they instead think the best of us.