Walmart.com purchasing experience from hell

I usually avoid Walmart at all costs. I don't like what they stand for. I don't believe in the "cheapest thing possible" mentality, I don't like how they force their suppliers to manufacture lower quality goods with the same brand name in order to sell it at a cheaper price, I don't like how they force their suppliers to move their manufacturing plants to China in order to cut costs, and I especially don't like they way they essentially force small independent businesses to fail by swooping into cities and towns and undercutting their prices, thinking that cheap products can replace knowledge and customer service. Personally, at this point in my life, I prefer to pay more for a higher quality product, but I realize that this is not an option for everyone, especially those on limited incomes.

My youngest cousin recently had a baby, and I wanted to do something nice for her. She lives in Florida, so I can't just bring something over, and she had a shower and has most of the big ticket essentials, so I asked her mother what I could do. She doesn't have a lot of money, so my aunt suggested a Walmart gift card so she could but diapers and similar things. I held back a shudder, bit my tongue, and agreed.

Thus began my odyssey into Walmart.com hell. Notice I am not hyperlinking to Walmart.com; it's intentional. This purchasing experience was the single worst online purchasing experience of my life, and I buy a lot of things online.

I went to the page, set up an account (this was easy), and picked the items I wanted, a gift card and a pooh mobile, because I wanted to get something personal as well. So far so good. I went to complete my purchase using my debit card. Oh, wait, there is an added security feature called "verisign" for my debit card, that wants to verify my address and last 4 digits of my SSN. OK. Hmm, it says my address isn't correct. Let's try again. Still not working. Let's try Husband's SSN, since he is the primary on the account. Nope, no good, and now it won't let me use my debit card and is telling me to call my bank.

Call to the bank. As far as they can tell, I do know my own address. They aren't sure what the problem is, but it isn't at their end. Nevermind, I'll just use a different card. Go back to Walmart.com and put in second card info. This was on Tuesday March 27.

On Wednesday March 28, I get an e-mail from Walmart.com saying that the phone number I put in doesn't match the one with the credit card account. The e-mail directs me to reply to the e-mail with the correct billing phone number. Hmm. I already put in the card number, the 3 digit number on the back and my home address. Even if I transposed a number accidentally or something, shouldn't that be enough to get my order processed? I go to the credit card web page and discover that that card has my cell phone number and not my home phone number. OK. I reply to the e-mail as directed with the correct billing phone number AND go to the Walmart.com account page and change the phone number there. That should fix it.

Monday April 2, I get ANOTHER e-mail, same as the one I received on the previous Wednesday, saying that I needed to send them the correct billing phone number. Now I am angry. It took them 5 days to resend this e-mail. I call their "help" line. The associate who answers first tells me that the "billing" phone number that they require is actually the number for the credit card company. I express my doubts about this and she puts me on hold. She comes back and says everything looks ok from her end and that she needs to talk to billing, more hold time. She comes back again and tells me that everything should be ok and that the order should be processed within the hour. I ask why it wasn't processed last Wednesday when I sent the correct info, but she didn't have an answer for me. I told her that this was the works online shopping experience of my life. I forgot to ask about the verisign problem.

Tuesday, April 3. My within the hour processing still has not happened. I received an e-mail this morning saying that they have finally "received" my order and have "begun" processing it, but it certainly hasn't shipped yet. I just really wish I knew if there was a Target or something near where my cousin lives so that I could send her something from there instead.

All in all, it was a highly frustrating and unsatisfying online shopping experience. I have found that shopping at Walmart.com is as unpleasant as shopping at an actual Walmart big box store.

UPDATE 4/3/07 10:00 AM Order still has not shipped. I am going to call my aunt and see if there is a Target in the vicinity of my cousin.

FINAL UPDATE 3:15 PM. I called Walmart.com to cancel the order and instead order from Target. I hadn't gotten a shipping confirmation e-mail, so I figured it wouldn't be a problem to cancel the order, since the order confirmation e-mail said I could cancel until the order was shipped. The agent told me that I couldn't cancel the order because it had shipped. I said I hadn't gotten an e-mail confirmation that it had shipped, and their website said it was still processing, but he insisted that it had. Since there wasn't anything I could do, I had to leave it at that. Fifteen minutes after I hung up with the agent, I got a shipment confirmation e-mail. Heh. The best (worst) part is the fact that they are estimating arrival of the gift card to be April 10th, a full two weeks after I placed the order and the mobile even later than that. I could have gone to a local Walmart, bought the card and the mobile, and mailed them myself in less time, and with MUCH less hassle. NEVER AGAIN.