Walmart

There is no Walmart close to where I live. There is one in Suffern, New York but that's a fair distance. During the pandemic I started buying online from Walmart because sometimes it would be cheaper than Amazon. This worked out especially for paper goods.

The problem with that was since I didn't want to pay to join their Walmart+ for free shipping I always had to have at least $35 in my order in order to avoid paying shipping costs. That's really not too difficult because I can always throw in some toilet paper or paper towels which I then store in my garage.

This was sort of my downfall.

My wife wanted coffee. Folger's Decaf in the 25.9 oz. plastic cannister in particular. I must have been bored that day because I checked Walmart, Amazon and Stop & Shop and it was a little cheaper on Walmart. But that only amounted to $17 so I threw in two packages of toilet paper.

It all arrived in a big box about two days later. As soon as my wife found the box she told me she could smell coffee.

Well, that wasn't a good sign.

The two packages of toilet paper and the coffee had been put in the box with no packing material or any way of keeping things from moving around during shipping. As a result the toilet paper had sort of crushed the coffee cannister and coffee had spilled out into the box.

The toilet paper smelled good though.

The toilet paper went into the garage and the coffee cannister and spilled coffee went into a garbage bag which we immediately put in the garbage can.

Then I decided to contact Walmart for a refund. I tried setting up a refund through their online website but it told me it couldn't process a coffee refund and I should call their 1-800 customer service number.

OK...of course what I got was an automated system which I went around in circles with for a bit before it finally connected me to Mohammed.

Mohammad listened patiently, apologized for the problem with the order, and then asked me if I could return the damaged item to a Walmart store. As previously explained, there ain't any Walmart close to me. 

When I said "no," Mohammed put me on hold to confer with greater powers. I figured he was going to come back and tell me to just dump the coffee (which I had already done) and they would simply refund my charge card.

Well, not quite. When Mohammed came back on he asked me if I could take the coffee to a Fedex return store. Now, we have a UPS store in the next town but I had no idea where I might find a Fedex store so, again, I said "no."

Mohammed put me on hold again and presumably went to confer with greater powers once again. Again I was expecting him to come back and tell me to just dump the coffee.

Nope. When Mohammed came back on he asked if it would be OK if they sent a Fedex truck to pick up the item the next day. That sounded absolutely ridiculous but I was going to be home so I said sure, why not? Mohammed said he would e-mail me a shipping label, which I should attach to the original box (you know that REALLY BIG box) and then wait for the Fedex truck to show up.

So, I retrieved the box from the garage, the coffee from the garbage, attached the shipping label and waited excitedly for the next day when the Fedex truck would arrive. I was finding the whole process wildly entertaining. This was all of a $17 item which, even if the container wasn't damaged, they couldn't legally resell anyway.

Sometime on Thursday February 20th, 2025, the Fedex truck arrived to pick up the broken coffee cannister. I couldn't resist sliding my hand under the flap of the huge box and lifting it effortlessly. the Fedex driver's eyes almost popped out until I explained that all that was in the box was a broken cannister of coffee, a garbage bag and some loose coffee. He returned to his truck humming and juggling the mostly empty big box.

So, today I said to myself it's been over a week since the Fedex truck picked up the box yet I see no refund on my charge card. Honestly, I was in no mood to call Walmart Customer Service but I figured I should play out this farce to the end.

Again I got an automated voice system which surprisingly got me to "checking on the status of a refund" pretty quickly. Now please note that today is Friday, February 28th, 2025 (the day where we're not buying anything from large corporations).

The first issue was to determine which order I was referring to. The automated voice asked me "are you referring to your most recent order of Angel Soft Toilet Paper on Saturday, March 2nd, 2025?"

Now there are SO many things wrong with that question not the least of which was that it would be Saturday, March 1st and that day was still in the future.

Anyway...after getting the order right, we arrived at they had processed the return and it could take up to 10 business days for it to appear on my charge card.

We shall see what we shall see. But why do I suspect I have a future date with Mohammed.