Re: “Wal-Mart is known to place extraordinary pricing demands on the companies that sell to it.”

Here’s the article that says all you need to know about how Wal-Mart uses a brand’s reputation for quality to sell cheap, poorly made crap to the ultimate disadvantage of brand, the consumer and the environment (seeing that everything they sell is cheap enough to be disposable, and likely will become so): “The Man Who Said No to Wal-Mart.”

http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/102/open_snapper.html

Personally I wouldn’t ANY big ticket item based on the salesreps input – be it at WalMart or specialist boutique! I consider it my responsibility to educate myself before purchasing and, when it’s time to buy, I’ll go where the price (and store reputation for service) is best.

My Dad had a Dukane grill when I was a kid, he’s been using it for over 20 years and it still cooks great.

One day I was in WalMart and found a two burner Dukane grill on clearance for $125 – Dukane usually sells at specialty stores for about $600. I bought their last 3 grills, gave two to friends, and kept one for myself. Granted, these grills were called “Americana by Dukane” and they obviously were made of materials of slightly less quality than mainstream Dukane grills, but they were still Dukane.

7 years later, I’m still quite happy with my cheapo strange walmart off brand Dukane grill. I guess Walmart was experimenting with them, and decided that demand was not great enough.

And that is all I have to say about that! (LOL, I know, what a random story.)

While there is a huge buyer in Wal-Mart, they are not the exclusive unless a complany choose to sell to them exclusively.
While Best Buy, Circuit City, Radio Shack, Costco, and BJ’s do not have the volume of Wal-MArt individually, collectively they do.

Frank

Yawning after reading lines and lines of the obvious. WalMart has an employee/management problem, always has – always will.

The question is, is a Panasonic LCD television a Panasonic television. Meaning – is it the same one Best Buy sells or is it stripped down, gutted, el – cheapo. That’s all I want to know. It would not be wise to save 300.00 dollars at Wal Mart and end up with a puff of smoke in your viewing room a year later. At the same time, it would not be wise to spend 300 dollars more for the very same product elsewhere.

I recently investigated a Panasonic 50 inch Plasma from which I obtained the Model Number from an employee. Upon returning home, I went to the Panasonic internet page and typed in the provided model number. No match? I was likely given the wrong Model Number, likely. Then I purchased a Dell E228WFP Monitor. Upon getting it home, I went to the Dell internet page to register it. After two weeks of emails going back and forth between Dell and myself, a number that Dell needed was found on the shipping label of the box. As a rule you find these numbers inside the box on a printed label. Dell reps seemed to think that WalMart would provide this information. Upon asking people at the WalMart store for the information, you guessed – deer in the headlights. I have another Dell Monitor which I purchased directly from Dell. All the required paper work was inside the box, not buried on a shipping label outside the box.
The kicker for me was that the Dell rep told me the warranty on the monitor started when WalMart purchased the Dell, not when I purchased the Dell. Poor me, as it turned out, the Dell I purchased at walMart was on sale at the Dell internet store for less than what I paid at WalMart, shipping included. I’m too lazy to return it.

Anyway, buyer beware. Big screen TV is NOT cheap by anybody’s standard, at least not by mine. The prices and the name brands now appearing at WalMart are inticing. BUT are they the same TV??? I just don’t know. I do know the gut wrenching feeling is that if I shell out two grand at WalMart, I am clearly on my own thereafter. Not a good feeling.