My Black Friday Experience at Walmart – 2nd Year in a row
I don’t normally go to Black Friday shopping. In the past, I was a merchant and had always had to work on Black Friday and that weekend. The last 2 years had been different and I spent it at Walmart.
Last year in 2011, my cousin and I drove to Walmart, Union City, which is about 45 minutes from my house in San Francisco to participate in the madness of Black Friday Shopping. It was both exhilarating and maddening at the same time. What doesn’t make sense to me is how this particular Walmart handles its Black Friday Special offers.
In 2011, you get in the door, head over to the line you want to get a the item that is on special. In my case, I got in line for HP 15” laptop for my 10 year old. The price was $249.00, a pretty good deal. By the time I got there, I was number #95 in line for the laptop. We waited for 1.5-2 hours in line just to get the laptop. There were Walmart employee’s around trying to keep order, but at this particular location, you can tell they were understaff and the few employees who were around were besieged by customers asking questions, asking for help etc… What went wrong for me and the people in our line was that because there was no way to keep track of people in line or who was suppose to be allocated the very limited number of black Friday specials, other people were letting their family/friends cut in line and getting extra. Being #95, by the time I was supposed to get mine, they’ve ran out, in fact, they ran out for the guy who was #93 so the Walmart manager did the cool thing of letting the last 10 of us get the higher model laptop for the same price. Then we proceed to stand in another line to go pay for this lap top and other few things for another 3-4 hours because (we got stuck on the line against the wall) which happened to be the longest line. (we didn’t know and besides, we couldn’t get to the other lines… because all the shopping carts just caused a massive traffic jam everywhere else in the store. It was insane, but at least we got what we went there for and more. I didn’t leave Walmart until 4am
Fast forward to 2012, my cousin and I went back to Union City store, we get there by 8pm (it was the store that didn’t have shooting incident in the parking lot and besides there were cops everywhere – it felt safer). We’ve split up, I got in the line for the HP window 8 laptop for my husband and she and my daughter get in line for the IPad 2. This year, Walmart definitely had better staffing, there were Walmart employees wearing yellow vest everywhere and they seem to have their act together. There were printed maps on where the specials are located throughout the store, they got it all figured out where you will be paying for the item so as to avoid the grid lock of carts that caused traffic jams within the store.
Now for the craziest thing that I ever heard that Walmart did. So they still didn’t have any type of raffle ticket/or ticketing systems. So you are stuck in line and you had to stay there so when the Walmart employee comes by to assign you a number, you’re present and accounted for. (Walmart wouldn’t it just be so easy to give each person a ticket for the item that they want to buy? They can tell the customer ” Hold on to this ticket for dear life, we only got 100 of them and you can pay for it and will call it at the cashier station.”
BUT, no, that would be too logical. Instead, the Walmart employee announces that for this line that you’re waiting for either the IPAD 2 or lap top, they will only ring up 1 item. One item per customer. That’s it… because they want the line to move fast and if you have a shopping basket full of stuff, you were going to hold up the line. They expect you to pay for the one Black Friday Special then go stand in another line again for to pay for anything else you might want to buy. Brilliant right?!!! The reason why they were making people pay first is because they were concern for the items walking out the door (theft), I know this because I’ve repeatedly asked and griped about it to their employees.
My cousin and my daughter were able to pay for purchase rather quickly(one item per customer only rule as well), the special on the Ipad 2 was $325.00 and with a $75.00 Walmart gift card. Then they walk over to my line and handed me the 2 gift card which I immediately applied to my lap top purchased which means, my lap top purchase was only $160.00 with taxes. Then we left. We couldn’t buy anything else because we didn’t’ want to stand in line again. Walmart lost money on us that day. We left by 11pm and went to Macy’s next.
Now, I thought that the Black Friday specials were to lure the customer in so that they can buy other things in the store, but that is not the case in this particular Walmart store. Perhaps the line moved faster and was more efficient, but I wonder how much business Walmart lost that day because of their idiotic policies. Walmart has been at this for several years you would think that they would have figured this out by now.
This is what I would do. Issue a special printed numbered for each Black Friday special. Issue them to the people standing in line then let them go shopping around the store. Have them pay for the special ticket (with barcode) for the Black Friday special and then will call it at the designated department where the item is located. Then the customers feel that they got a good deal as well as best use of their time while they were waiting around for the specials. Now if they were worried about one customer hoarding too many black Friday special, they can limit this at the cash register and not let them ring it up. Or, just let people ring up their basket along with the special. Either way, it’s probably still more profitable than the way they did it.
What did you do for Black Friday? What was your experience like?
By: Shirley Tan
