Walmart online shopping is both good and sometimes not-so-good.  The Money Skinny™ article Walmart Shopping – The Good and Not-So-Good details the Walmart store experience.  This focus is on Walmart online shopping experience.  Walmart’s purchase of Amazon rival Jet.com is an acknowledgement that online improvement is needed.  This investment makes the fight for online customers a bare-knuckle brawl.  Recall The Money Skinny™ mission is to save you time and money.  Let’s review the good and not-so-good of Walmart online shopping so you can decide if Walmart.com is where you want to spend your hard-earned money.

Free Site-to-Store Shipping and Free Home Shipping of Orders >$35

Free store pick-up and in-store returns are a major competitive advantage Walmart has over online retailers without brick-and-mortar stores.  What’s especially good about Walmart online is free site-to-store customer pick-up any size order and free two-day shipping to home for orders over $35.

Walmart Online Shopping has no annual membership fee

It’s an uncomplicated/uncommitted Walmart online shopping relationship.  You’re not paying $99 per year for “free” two-day shipping.  Then spending a year trying to justify that fee by over-spending.  The price of each product can be evaluated on its own.  When Walmart has the product for the lowest price – buy it.  When Walmart is not the lowest price – don’t.  Like keeping things simple, Walmart.

Walmart Online Shopping Order Example

I ordered the Equate moisturizer from Walmart.com at less than half the department store brand price.  Who doesn’t want anti-wrinkleness?  It was waiting for me a few days later at the closest Walmart store.  Outstanding.  Online orders can be returned to a Walmart store.  Post office avoidance for package return is priceless.  Picking up a gallon of milk when returning an online order is a win-win.  Appreciate two-birds-one-stone, Walmart.

Store vs Online Inventory Mismatching

Walmart store inventory often does not match Walmart online inventory.  I can see a half dozen of a product in the store with my own eyeballs.  However, Walmart online says that store has none of that product available.  The delta between store and online inventories needs to be reduced.  Liar-liar-pants-on-fire, Walmart.

Third-party Vendor Pricing

Walmart online can have outrageous pricing by third-party vendors.  A brand name product is listed at the MSRP of $40 on Walmart.com.  A third-party vendor on Walmart.com lists that same item at $120.  On sale from $240.  Huh?  This reminds me of my textbook reseller experience.  During vacations, an easy solution to suspend textbook sales is to increase the price of the books way above market value.  It takes three seconds to correct the prices post-vacation.  Third-party vendors may be using nonsensical prices in a similar place-holder way.  Regardless, wild pricing hurts the integrity of the entire online enterprise, Walmart.

Third-party Vendor Shipping

Another third-party vendor issue is that their products are not available for free site-to-store shipping.  Sometimes?  All the time?  Hard to know.  Third party products may be exempt because they are physically located outside Walmart distribution channels.  While understandable, it’s not clear on the Walmart online website until check-out.  It’s also unclear if the $35 free shipping requires that all products must come from the same third-party vendor.  Too confusing.  Please work on third-party vendor issues, Walmart.

Queue Site-to-Store Pick Up Area

Moving the site-to-store pick up locations from the back of the store to the front has been great.  This enables the customer to do a parking lot/pick up/parking lot UsainBolt.  Except when there is any other customer also picking up an order.  The customer pick-up area quickly dissolves into a huffy, hostile mob.  Walmart, don’t make me remember my place in line between the guy in the tank top and the woman in stretch pants.  Use a queue system!  I can take a number like in the deli department.  Better yet, I can input or self-scan my order number.  Help me out here, Walmart.

• Free store pick up of any size order and in-store returns are a major competitive advantage.
• Free two-day shipping of over orders over $35 is fantastic.
• Walmart has store versus online inventory discrepancies as well as third-party vendor issues.
• Walmart needs a queue system for site-to-store pick up area.