13 ms·

Walmart Plus takes on Amazon Prime

123 points by jbredeche 6y ago

chromedev 6y ago
I recently ordered something from Walmart, and they will still sell stuff that isn't stocked and then you have no idea when it will actually ship when it appears to already be in stock. I hope that eventually they can at least provide accurate shipping dates.
- brianwawok 6y ago
  Is this fist party or 3rd party? They are two very different processes. Much of walmart.com is now filled via 3rd party - same as Amazon (except perhaps more likely to seller ship vs be marketplace fulfilled).
  - wolco 6y ago
    I am still trying to get my 12.99 product that was shipped a month ago but never moved. Trying to get anything resolved is impossible. I regret not using amazon.
    - brianwawok 6y ago
      Was it first party or third party?
      - wolco 6y ago
        Third party. Any tips for successfully resolving this?
  - chromedev 6y ago
    This was sold and shipped by Walmart.com
- devmunchies 6y ago
  Amazon just did this to me. I ordered books 3 weeks ago and they still haven't shipped.
  - turtlebits 6y ago
    It is past their order confimation "Arriving" date? If so, just contact CS, they'll usually give you money back in the form of credit. I've had a few issues with long ship dates because of COVID, but in general Amazon has been flawless.
    - devmunchies 6y ago
      the arriving date is for the end of september. which is why I'm assuming one of the books wasn't in stock but they sold it anyway.
graton 6y ago
I just don't see how this will compete with Amazon or Amazon Prime. You only get free shipping with orders $35 or more. I haven't checked recently but I thought you get that at Amazon without paying for Amazon Prime.
- bombledmonk 6y ago
  You get free shipping on $35 on walmart.com without WM+ so this isn't an added perk.
  - closetohome 6y ago
    The difference is 2-day versus 1-day. Which doesn't sound that compelling to me.
    - bombledmonk 6y ago
      Agreed.
- JaggedJax 6y ago
  I think the cnet article may have that point wrong, or at least confusingly worded. I can't find anywhere where Walmart says the order must be $35 to get free delivery with this program, and I know that without subcribing to anything Walmart already offers free shipping on orders over $35. However even on Walmart's own pages it really isn't clear what exactly you get in regards to shipping costs with this program.
  - graton 6y ago
    I've seen multiple articles mention $35 minimum order. For example: https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2020/09/01/amazon-prime-walmart-plus-membership-subscription-free-shipping-perks/3448879001/ https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2020/09/01/amazon-prime... If that isn't true then they aren't getting their message out on why this is a compelling service.
portmanteaufu 6y ago
Even at the slightly lower price point ($98/yr for WalMart Plus vs $119/yr for Prime), this new offering feels rather anemic. It gets you fast (sometimes same day) delivery of a popular subset of their catalog. Prime has music, video, reading, twitch, grocery delivery, etc in addition to fast delivery. > "We're not launching Walmart Plus with the intent to compete with anything else," Whiteside [Walmart's chief customer officer,] said when asked about Prime. "We're launching it to meet the needs of our customers." Sure.
- onlyrealcuzzo 6y ago
  My mom doesn't care about Prime music, video, reading, twitch, grocery delivery, etc. And my mom shops at Wal-mart NON-STOP. There are a lot of people like here. This is for them.
  - rootsudo 6y ago
    Agreed, my parents are the same way. She refuses target, and I don't know why. The 5% card discount doesn't even convince her, nor the empty lines, wider aisles, etc. I can't handle Walmart's anymore, maybe it's pandemic times, but they're overstretched, overcapacity, multiple of people in one place and a frenzy. They weren't always like that too.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    - theduder99 6y ago
      probably the same reason I don't shop at Target: because they went full SJW
      - giancarlostoro 6y ago
        I shop at both and what annoys me most is when they have self-checkout lanes but they don't make them larger sections: they have a bunch of closed up register lanes, it wouldn't kill them to ditch 1 more lane or two to make a larger self-checkout lane section. Target feels like they're much more guilty of this than Walmart from past experience. One thing that did annoy me is now after COVID Walmart employees complain if you have more than 10 items in the self-checkout lane, but there's no sign suggesting self-checkout is for a small amount of items. One lady was being loud and obnoxious about it, even when nobody was talking to her. If Walmart and Target will let me pay from an app and just walk up to a machine to print out my receipt, I'd be using their app a lot more. I don't even care about having to bag up my stuff, I got my own bags for groceries in my car already. I guess the trickery is for grocery items that must be weighed.
code4tee 6y ago
I honestly don’t get the point of this. It’s nearly as expensive as Prime but gives you a lot less. Their inability to explain the value proposition when asked that question by a reporter isn’t showing a great deal of confidence in the offering.
- notatoad 6y ago
  it's a new name and the addition of non-grocery items to their existing grocery delivery service. presumably they have some customers for this already. letting them order other store items seems like a fairly obvious move, even if the whole program doesn't look that attractive compared to prime.
- kube-system 6y ago
  Or from another perspective, it's the price Prime used to be, with the features Prime used to have.
- pasttense01 6y ago
  Look up the price of items on Amazon that are $1 or so in the local Walmart. Basically they are more likely to be $4 or so--because the Amazon seller has to build the cost of shipping into product price in order to provide the "free" shipping.
bmarquez 6y ago
> to include more items and more perks, like shipping as fast as same day for orders of at least $35 Walmart shipping is already free with a $35 dollar order, it's just 2 day instead of 1 day. I hope they would have lowered that minimum order amount if you paid for their service.
disown 6y ago
How can walmart compete without the ecosystem tie-in that amazon prime has? Amazon prime has movies, music, twitch, etc. What does walmart plus offer? It's incredible that amazon's market cap is now 4X walmart's. Amazon is well on its way to becoming the 2nd 2 trillion dollar company after Apple. Bezos and his ex-wife's shares are now worth $260 billion. Bezos is the world's wealthiest person and his wife is the world's wealthiest woman. Of course it's mostly all on paper at the moment, but the run the big tech companies had in the past 5 years is breathtaking. Is it substantive or a gigantic bubble? What's interesting is that it took AAPL and AMZN decades to become a trillion dollar company. It took AAPL a few months to add another trillion to their market cap. AMZN is on track to do the same.
- pythonaut_16 6y ago
  > Is it substantive or a gigantic bubble? It's both IMO. The whole market is in a giant bubble due to various fiscal policies and decisions, but the big tech companies have substantive/reasonably solid businesses within the bubble.
- kube-system 6y ago
  How much gravity does their ecosystem really have? I know some people clearly use it, but anecdotally, most people I know bought prime for the shipping.
  - bombledmonk 6y ago
    It's all anecdotal on my end to, but video seems to be the biggest sticking point in my circle of people. I don't really keep Prime for free shipping, especially when you can still get free shipping on $25+ orders, and their performance during covid has made it even less appealing. I keep Prime for Video mostly (kids titles), but We use the free Prime music (not unlimited) quite a bit. I recently discovered Prime books with kids titles which end up being convenient for car rides or times when carrying many books is inconvenient, but libraries have plenty of assortment for kids ebooks these days so that's not really a selling point.
- grillvogel 6y ago
mdoms 6y ago
Americans sure do love giant mega corporations. It doesn't have to be this way, guys.
- colinmhayes 6y ago
  As far as delivery goes I'm pretty sure it does. To compete with amazon/walmart you need billions of dollars of capital to invest in logistics. Small companies just aren't efficient enough.
  - kube-system 6y ago
    I find that smaller sellers (or the manufacturer themselves) on eBay can be competitive with Amazon/Walmart on price. Shipping is usually a day slower, but for most things, I don't find it to be an inconvenience.
  - garciasn 6y ago
    Unlike Amazon, which uses its own logistics and/or a homegrown gig-style delivery system, Walmart uses Doordash to deliver groceries @7.95+/delivery. Plenty of other grocers/retailers could go the Doordash route and be competitive.
    - colinmhayes 6y ago
      Seems like that might be why walmart has the minimum and amazon doesn't. I've tried services like instacart and found the experience to be horrible and expensive. Amazon works much better because they've created strict guidelines so I always get what I expect. Doordash food is consistently cold. Instacart buys the wrong stuff half the time. I don't really trust people to make good decisions most of the time.
  - lotsofpulp 6y ago
    Yes, there was a discussion a few days or week ago about trade offs between efficiency and security. Consumers will generally choose efficiency (manifested as lower prices) over security (local stores with local owners resulting in redundant supply chains).
syntaxing 6y ago
I have a higher tendency to trust things from Walmart (in terms of fakes) compared to Amazon. Though I order from Amazon more because it's just too convenient. I would be tempted to cancel my Prime subscription if they have good delivery and prices (I do not use much of the Prime benefits besides shipping)
- xmprt 6y ago
  I've only ever ordered from Walmart/Ebay once each before and both times I had a poor experience and returned the item (something wasn't working or the item wasn't what was advertised). I trust a lot of these brick and mortar stores when shopping in person but online, Amazon just works a lot better and when it doesn't, it's easy to return. Amazon is starting to get worse as of late, but it still has the most reliable online delivery so far.
  - syntaxing 6y ago
    Did you try the next day delivery items? The items were packed pretty well and was exactly what I expected. Also, there's free returns too for Walmart (for some items). But the best shipping quality was Target but takes a while compared to others and generally more expensive. Everything was packaged so nicely but we have had issues with missing items.
  - Red_Leaves_Flyy 6y ago
    Fwiw, I've been using eBay and walmart a lot more lately after getting burned by counterfeits from Amazon. I'm just sick of the hassle. Their support sucks for anything that takes an actual human. With walmart I can go in store and speak to a living human being if I get a counterfeit. EBay and PayPal almost universally side with the buyers. So while I'll never sell anything with eBay or PayPal I'm less annoyed to use their services instead of Amazon. I'm kind of over free two day delivery. If it's not worth expedited shipping, or getting off my ass to buy from a store then I'm waiting for it or not getting it. Most people probably don't need their 37th trendy widget in two days. But their addiction certainly pads bezos pockets.
- ericbarrett 6y ago
RcouF1uZ4gsC 6y ago
This is actually something I am very interested in. There are certain categories of items, I am worried about buying from Amazon due to counterfeits. I don't want to have to worry if my phone charger is actually UL certified or not and if it will electrocute me or burn my house down. If I can get free delivery from Walmart, and not have to worry about counterfeits, it would be huge for me.
- Mvhsz 6y ago
  I prefer walmart for the same reason, I have a lot more trust in their supply chain. And the free delivery times are about the same, coupled with easy returns to the store. I would guess my Target and walmart online orders are 10x my Amazon orders. But I wouldn't pay for prime or walmart plus simply for the faster shipping, the free tier is already plenty fast
  - turtlebits 6y ago
    IME, Walmart has the worst in store returns experience in any retailer, which I why prefer not to shop there. Every time I've had to return something, it has taken at least 20 minutes as there is either no employee or is understaffed with a 5+ person queue.
    - bombledmonk 6y ago
      My experience has been quite good recently. I start them through they app and they have an express returns spot in the customer service area. I'll start the return before I even set out to the store, sometimes they'll just comp it and refund my money without returning.
- delfinom 6y ago
  Walmart online store includes third parties. It's not going to be any better.... They will absolutely move to copy Amazon's zero liability selling strategies.
downvoteme1 6y ago
There is a whole lot of middle america that would love this. For all of Amazon’s extensive collection, a lot of users still spend a lot more on groceries and household goods monthly than on Amazon. I think this will be popular in those places where Walmart is the retailer of last resort which encompasses a lot of mid-west and even the south.
- adrr 6y ago
  Even with the $35 min? Amazon doesn’t have a min. I can order $4 item and have it show up the next day.
  - closetohome 6y ago
    I think that's the deal breaker for me. If I order $35 worth of stuff I already get free 2-day shipping. I use Prime because I don't have to think about order totals or shipping - it just shows up the next day.
    - doktorhladnjak 6y ago
      The problem is a ton of items Amazon sells aren't Prime eligible. And that seems to include any lower prices items. Then you're back to getting a cart minimum, which at that point you might as well drop Prime entirely.
  - donw 6y ago
    Buying habits are different when you live outside a city, or when you have a family. A $35 minimum doesn't feel like a deal-breaker to me.
    - smileysteve 6y ago
      I think this also falls on generational lines; ordering a handful of things at once and getting one package is my goal. On demand 1 thing at a time can be nice ordering something niche online, but when you have a whole fresh grocery, just add some steak or toilet paper.
brightball 6y ago
Is it weird that Amazon has gotten so big that I cheer for Walmart just to make sure there’s competition?
bombledmonk 6y ago
I've used mint.com for over 12 years so I have purchase history going back that far from both WM and Amazon. I consider myself a relatively heavy user of Amazon for small ticket items with a few big ones mixed in (with 65 orders YTD) and I'm in Smalltown America so no Whole Foods grocery delivery. It's actually an interesting exercise to look at long term spending at stores. In the past 12 years I've spent $37k @ Amazon compared to nearly $50k at WM. Big numbers, but averaged out that's not all that much. Most of my grocery spend in recent years has been at WM due to it being the closest grocery store and is within walking distance of my house.
kevindong 6y ago
From the press release [0]: > In-store prices as fast as same-day on more than 160,000 items from tech and toys to household essentials and groceries. For people who live in dense urban areas without Walmarts (e.g. SF, Chicago, Seattle, NYC, etc.), there's a genuine value prop there. Walmart sells pantry items for less than basically everyone. [0]: https://corporate.walmart.com/newsroom/2020/09/01/walmart-introduces-walmart https://corporate.walmart.com/newsroom/2020/09/01/walmart-in...
zhobbs 6y ago
The coverage of this has been misguided IMO. The headline here should be, "Walmart Plus takes on Amazon Fresh". The benefits you get are really just delivery of in-store items to your house, it seems your walmart.com experience doesn't change much. Based on what I've seen on Amazon fresh, you'd probably make up your $98 pretty quick if you moved all your grocery shopping from fresh to WM+.
- brudgers 6y ago
  My local Walmart has iPads, gas generators, and loctite thread locker (etc.) in addition to groceries, blenders, baby clothes and charcoal briquettes. But even more competitive with Amazon, the Walmart in Van Horne, Texas has all that available for same day delivery too even though it’s 200 miles from El Paso and even further from Dallas.
- JMTQp8lwXL 6y ago
  The kind of household willing to regularly pay the premium for same-day/1-day groceries and/or shipping is an upper middle class household. How is Walmart going to shake the branding of being cheap and low quality with the segment of price insensitive consumers? Your middle middle-class household is not a Prime member, and the services Walmart and Amazon are competing on will only expand their TAM (Total Addressable Market) if costs go down. Median households don't have the budget for these services.
  - thursday0987 6y ago
    its weird you assume that upper middle class households don't shop at walmart. Walmart is cheap, but often high quality for staples. They have a good to great organics food section, their toiletries section carries high quality diapers, their toy section has legos and other luxury toys etc etc etc. even their clothes are of good quality (although no luxury brands). Walmart actually has nicer stuff than Target a lot of the time.
    - JMTQp8lwXL 6y ago
      It's not weird, it's a fact. Different income groups skew towards different stores. "Target-exclusive shoppers are more likely to be female, younger and richer. For example, Target-exclusives had an average household income of about $85,000, compared to $57,000 for Walmart-exclusives, according to a 2005 survey." https://www.jacksonville.com/article/20111104/ENTERTAINMENT/801241670 https://www.jacksonville.com/article/20111104/ENTERTAINMENT/...
stonogo 6y ago
A lot of comments seem to be from people who aren't aware that Amazon's delivery network kind of sucks in huge swaths of America. If you're not in a major metropolitan area, Prime delivery took about a week pre-Covid, and things have only gotten worse since then. Compare Walmart store locations [1] to Amazon fulfillment centers [2] and you'll see that delivering from their stores enables them to cover a lot of rapid-delivery territory where Amazon just isn't. 1 https://www.scrapehero.com/store/wp-content/uploads/maps/Walmart_USA.png https://www.scrapehero.com/store/wp-content/uploads/maps/Wal... 2 https://truthout.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/02-Amazon-Warehouse-Map-courtesy-of-www.freightos.comG2018google.png https://truthout.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/02-Amazon-Wa...
- adolfojp 6y ago
  That's really it. I live in Puerto Rico which is one of those places where Amazon kind of sucks. Items used to take over a week to get here and I was OK with that because I understand geographic limitations. Now they often take a month, which I'm willing to accept because of current circumstances. But what puts me off is that they flat out refuse to sell me many items. I have a Prime subscription but my last phone didn't come from Amazon. It came from Walmart online. Even eBay serves my region better. About Walmart, I have a Walmart owned supermarket within walking distance of my house, a Supercenter about 9 miles away, and there's a Sam's club right next to it. My groceries and my medicines come from a store owned by Walmart and they're everywhere. If I didn't have the time or the energy to buy my parents their groceries I would get them delivered to them from Walmart. Now, I don't expect to use their service (if it becomes available here) because most of my online shopping consists of items that I can't find locally, but for people in areas like mine who can't visit or who don't like to visit physical stores this service would be great.
bigmilesjr 6y ago
more like walmart plus takes on target delivery
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
indigodaddy 6y ago
So. I’m a little surprised that if Walmart has had this plan in the works for some time, why did they sell off Vudu? Why not leverage that somehow into a service included with Walmart Plus, if not only to include just the Vudu free-with-ads stuff initially. Just rebrand it into Walmart Plus.. Wouldn’t this have helped to compete with Prime more? Then they could include the paid Vudu stuff just as video results-to-purchase inside of Walmart.com, much like Amazon does, to drive more users and purchases of the Vudu paid content, but basically all rebranded to Walmart Video content inside of Walmart. They must have explored this idea yeah? How could they not have? I guess that Vudu was just too valuable for cash and was a good time to sell?
- godzillabrennus 6y ago
  In an organization this big the right hand doesn’t always know what the left hand is doing.
- gurumeditations 6y ago
  If you’ve ever worked for Walmart, you’ll realize they’re #1 because they’re a monopoly, not because they’re particularly smart.
  - jjeaff 6y ago
    But they weren't the first. They got to be number one by being very smart. Whether they can remain smart enough to stay number one is a different story.
  - throwaway1777 6y ago
    Walmart is not a monopoly at all.
  - km3k 6y ago
    I'd argue they are smart. I shop a lot at Wal-mart, but rarely step in the store. I shop online, do their free grocery pickup and their in-store (non-grocery) pickup. The last one is technically walking into the store, but the non-grocery pickup is just inside the front door, so I'm not really going to the main part of the store. Plus, the times I do go into the store, they have a really nice automated checkout with a lot of stations. In my experience, Wal-mart automated checkouts are the smoothest and least likely to be broken compared to other stores I've used automated checkout at. Wal-mart does a great job getting my business without requiring me to actually interact with their employees and other customers or wait significant amounts of time for anything.
zxcvbn4038 6y ago
Wal-Mart wants $98 a year to tell me they are out of stock, don’t ship to my area code, and I need to come to them? Prime Video alone is worth the cost of Prime, never mind that Amazon sells everything I want and need, and ship it to my home next day for free. I did my first Amazon Fresh order recently, loved that they used frozen water bottles to cool perishables, got fresh bread for the first time since the pandemic started. Now if the liquor stores will just deliver - there are 19 liquor stores within a three mile radius of me, only three have web sites, only one delivers (and only through Drizly), selection is limited. Amazon UK ships alcohol, hopefully US will too one day.
- donw 6y ago
  > Amazon UK ships alcohol, hopefully US will too one day. You can thank the Progressive Era[1] for giving the US Prohibition[2], the legacy of which is the insanity of present-day US drug and alcohol laws. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progressive_Era https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progressive_Era [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prohibition_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prohibition_in_the_United_Stat...
  - zxcvbn4038 6y ago
    Yes, that is a whole topic in itself. My sister-in-law lives in Utah where not only do you have to buy all alcohol from the state owned stores, the state waters down all alcohol over a certain ABV. It makes her very easy to shop for on the holidays - grab some bottles of the good stuff from another state on the drive over, but still crazy stuff like that still happens in this age.
    - exclusiv 6y ago
      Yeah I saw some dumb laws in Colorado when visiting. I think it was just the grocery stores with the 3% stuff. So ridiculous. Looks like Colorado allowed > 3.2% in grocery stores starting in 2019. [1] Not too long ago you couldn't buy beer in Indiana on Sunday. Archaic. [1] https://www.5280.com/2019/10/are-grocery-store-beer-sales-killing-colorados-liquor-stores/ https://www.5280.com/2019/10/are-grocery-store-beer-sales-ki...
bloomingeek 6y ago
Twenty years ago I wondered why WM didn't dedicate a section in their store to computers and put Best Buy out of business. Or for that matter, any competitor of theirs. Sure, they must have thought about who shops in their stores, but if the prices are good enough, the BMW's will show up. Right?
- smileysteve 6y ago
  In my hometown, Porsche put their dealership right next to Walmart. 15 years ago.
canada_dry 6y ago
> Walmart will face an uphill battle against "subscription fatigue" So much this. I'm guessing the next phase of this will be subscription aggregators who will package these services into bundles e.g. netflix, prime, uber eats along with a bunch of fringe services for the low-low-monthly-price of just $199.99.
anonymouswacker 6y ago
I have grown weary of supporting Bezos' empire and ordering as much as I can from Walmart in recent months once I noticed that his media arm (WaPo) was fueling the flames of COVID hysteria and BLM's destruction, which only helped Amazon and other Big Tech players strangle small American businesses in favor of offshore, mostly Chinese companies. Next step is moving my company's cloud from AWS to Azure. Not sure yet what to do about the surveillance devices (Alexa) as I want something that can run without an internet connection to a Big Tech company.
dominotw 6y ago
walmart is dirty, gross and depressing. I don't want some horrible crap from walmart delivered. Your life has take a serious wrong turn if you shop at walmart. Walmart has lost the plot, Seriously just look at what target is doing and try to keep up. Walmart needs to stop dreaming about competing with amazon, they are not even the same orbit. Walmart sucks!

123 points by jbredeche 6y ago

I recently ordered something from Walmart, and they will still sell stuff that isn't stocked and then you have no idea when it will actually ship when it appears to already be in stock. I hope that eventually they can at least provide accurate shipping dates.

brianwawok 6y ago
Is this fist party or 3rd party? They are two very different processes. Much of walmart.com is now filled via 3rd party - same as Amazon (except perhaps more likely to seller ship vs be marketplace fulfilled).
- wolco 6y ago
  I am still trying to get my 12.99 product that was shipped a month ago but never moved. Trying to get anything resolved is impossible. I regret not using amazon.
  - brianwawok 6y ago
    Was it first party or third party?
    - wolco 6y ago
      Third party. Any tips for successfully resolving this?
- chromedev 6y ago
  This was sold and shipped by Walmart.com
devmunchies 6y ago
Amazon just did this to me. I ordered books 3 weeks ago and they still haven't shipped.
- turtlebits 6y ago
  It is past their order confimation "Arriving" date? If so, just contact CS, they'll usually give you money back in the form of credit. I've had a few issues with long ship dates because of COVID, but in general Amazon has been flawless.
  - devmunchies 6y ago
    the arriving date is for the end of september. which is why I'm assuming one of the books wasn't in stock but they sold it anyway.

graton 6y ago

I just don't see how this will compete with Amazon or Amazon Prime. You only get free shipping with orders $35 or more. I haven't checked recently but I thought you get that at Amazon without paying for Amazon Prime.

bombledmonk 6y ago
You get free shipping on $35 on walmart.com without WM+ so this isn't an added perk.
- closetohome 6y ago
  The difference is 2-day versus 1-day. Which doesn't sound that compelling to me.
  - bombledmonk 6y ago
    Agreed.
JaggedJax 6y ago
I think the cnet article may have that point wrong, or at least confusingly worded. I can't find anywhere where Walmart says the order must be $35 to get free delivery with this program, and I know that without subcribing to anything Walmart already offers free shipping on orders over $35. However even on Walmart's own pages it really isn't clear what exactly you get in regards to shipping costs with this program.
- graton 6y ago
  I've seen multiple articles mention $35 minimum order. For example: https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2020/09/01/amazon-prime-walmart-plus-membership-subscription-free-shipping-perks/3448879001/ https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2020/09/01/amazon-prime... If that isn't true then they aren't getting their message out on why this is a compelling service.

portmanteaufu 6y ago

Even at the slightly lower price point ($98/yr for WalMart Plus vs $119/yr for Prime), this new offering feels rather anemic. It gets you fast (sometimes same day) delivery of a popular subset of their catalog. Prime has music, video, reading, twitch, grocery delivery, etc in addition to fast delivery. > "We're not launching Walmart Plus with the intent to compete with anything else," Whiteside [Walmart's chief customer officer,] said when asked about Prime. "We're launching it to meet the needs of our customers." Sure.

onlyrealcuzzo 6y ago
My mom doesn't care about Prime music, video, reading, twitch, grocery delivery, etc. And my mom shops at Wal-mart NON-STOP. There are a lot of people like here. This is for them.
- rootsudo 6y ago
  Agreed, my parents are the same way. She refuses target, and I don't know why. The 5% card discount doesn't even convince her, nor the empty lines, wider aisles, etc. I can't handle Walmart's anymore, maybe it's pandemic times, but they're overstretched, overcapacity, multiple of people in one place and a frenzy. They weren't always like that too.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - theduder99 6y ago
    probably the same reason I don't shop at Target: because they went full SJW
    - giancarlostoro 6y ago
      I shop at both and what annoys me most is when they have self-checkout lanes but they don't make them larger sections: they have a bunch of closed up register lanes, it wouldn't kill them to ditch 1 more lane or two to make a larger self-checkout lane section. Target feels like they're much more guilty of this than Walmart from past experience. One thing that did annoy me is now after COVID Walmart employees complain if you have more than 10 items in the self-checkout lane, but there's no sign suggesting self-checkout is for a small amount of items. One lady was being loud and obnoxious about it, even when nobody was talking to her. If Walmart and Target will let me pay from an app and just walk up to a machine to print out my receipt, I'd be using their app a lot more. I don't even care about having to bag up my stuff, I got my own bags for groceries in my car already. I guess the trickery is for grocery items that must be weighed.

code4tee 6y ago

I honestly don’t get the point of this. It’s nearly as expensive as Prime but gives you a lot less. Their inability to explain the value proposition when asked that question by a reporter isn’t showing a great deal of confidence in the offering.

notatoad 6y ago
it's a new name and the addition of non-grocery items to their existing grocery delivery service. presumably they have some customers for this already. letting them order other store items seems like a fairly obvious move, even if the whole program doesn't look that attractive compared to prime.
kube-system 6y ago
Or from another perspective, it's the price Prime used to be, with the features Prime used to have.
pasttense01 6y ago
Look up the price of items on Amazon that are $1 or so in the local Walmart. Basically they are more likely to be $4 or so--because the Amazon seller has to build the cost of shipping into product price in order to provide the "free" shipping.

bmarquez 6y ago

> to include more items and more perks, like shipping as fast as same day for orders of at least $35 Walmart shipping is already free with a $35 dollar order, it's just 2 day instead of 1 day. I hope they would have lowered that minimum order amount if you paid for their service.

disown 6y ago

How can walmart compete without the ecosystem tie-in that amazon prime has? Amazon prime has movies, music, twitch, etc. What does walmart plus offer? It's incredible that amazon's market cap is now 4X walmart's. Amazon is well on its way to becoming the 2nd 2 trillion dollar company after Apple. Bezos and his ex-wife's shares are now worth $260 billion. Bezos is the world's wealthiest person and his wife is the world's wealthiest woman. Of course it's mostly all on paper at the moment, but the run the big tech companies had in the past 5 years is breathtaking. Is it substantive or a gigantic bubble? What's interesting is that it took AAPL and AMZN decades to become a trillion dollar company. It took AAPL a few months to add another trillion to their market cap. AMZN is on track to do the same.

pythonaut_16 6y ago
> Is it substantive or a gigantic bubble? It's both IMO. The whole market is in a giant bubble due to various fiscal policies and decisions, but the big tech companies have substantive/reasonably solid businesses within the bubble.
kube-system 6y ago
How much gravity does their ecosystem really have? I know some people clearly use it, but anecdotally, most people I know bought prime for the shipping.
- bombledmonk 6y ago
  It's all anecdotal on my end to, but video seems to be the biggest sticking point in my circle of people. I don't really keep Prime for free shipping, especially when you can still get free shipping on $25+ orders, and their performance during covid has made it even less appealing. I keep Prime for Video mostly (kids titles), but We use the free Prime music (not unlimited) quite a bit. I recently discovered Prime books with kids titles which end up being convenient for car rides or times when carrying many books is inconvenient, but libraries have plenty of assortment for kids ebooks these days so that's not really a selling point.
grillvogel 6y ago

mdoms 6y ago

Americans sure do love giant mega corporations. It doesn't have to be this way, guys.

colinmhayes 6y ago
As far as delivery goes I'm pretty sure it does. To compete with amazon/walmart you need billions of dollars of capital to invest in logistics. Small companies just aren't efficient enough.
- kube-system 6y ago
  I find that smaller sellers (or the manufacturer themselves) on eBay can be competitive with Amazon/Walmart on price. Shipping is usually a day slower, but for most things, I don't find it to be an inconvenience.
- garciasn 6y ago
  Unlike Amazon, which uses its own logistics and/or a homegrown gig-style delivery system, Walmart uses Doordash to deliver groceries @7.95+/delivery. Plenty of other grocers/retailers could go the Doordash route and be competitive.
  - colinmhayes 6y ago
    Seems like that might be why walmart has the minimum and amazon doesn't. I've tried services like instacart and found the experience to be horrible and expensive. Amazon works much better because they've created strict guidelines so I always get what I expect. Doordash food is consistently cold. Instacart buys the wrong stuff half the time. I don't really trust people to make good decisions most of the time.
- lotsofpulp 6y ago
  Yes, there was a discussion a few days or week ago about trade offs between efficiency and security. Consumers will generally choose efficiency (manifested as lower prices) over security (local stores with local owners resulting in redundant supply chains).

syntaxing 6y ago

I have a higher tendency to trust things from Walmart (in terms of fakes) compared to Amazon. Though I order from Amazon more because it's just too convenient. I would be tempted to cancel my Prime subscription if they have good delivery and prices (I do not use much of the Prime benefits besides shipping)

xmprt 6y ago
I've only ever ordered from Walmart/Ebay once each before and both times I had a poor experience and returned the item (something wasn't working or the item wasn't what was advertised). I trust a lot of these brick and mortar stores when shopping in person but online, Amazon just works a lot better and when it doesn't, it's easy to return. Amazon is starting to get worse as of late, but it still has the most reliable online delivery so far.
- syntaxing 6y ago
  Did you try the next day delivery items? The items were packed pretty well and was exactly what I expected. Also, there's free returns too for Walmart (for some items). But the best shipping quality was Target but takes a while compared to others and generally more expensive. Everything was packaged so nicely but we have had issues with missing items.
- Red_Leaves_Flyy 6y ago
  Fwiw, I've been using eBay and walmart a lot more lately after getting burned by counterfeits from Amazon. I'm just sick of the hassle. Their support sucks for anything that takes an actual human. With walmart I can go in store and speak to a living human being if I get a counterfeit. EBay and PayPal almost universally side with the buyers. So while I'll never sell anything with eBay or PayPal I'm less annoyed to use their services instead of Amazon. I'm kind of over free two day delivery. If it's not worth expedited shipping, or getting off my ass to buy from a store then I'm waiting for it or not getting it. Most people probably don't need their 37th trendy widget in two days. But their addiction certainly pads bezos pockets.
ericbarrett 6y ago

RcouF1uZ4gsC 6y ago

This is actually something I am very interested in. There are certain categories of items, I am worried about buying from Amazon due to counterfeits. I don't want to have to worry if my phone charger is actually UL certified or not and if it will electrocute me or burn my house down. If I can get free delivery from Walmart, and not have to worry about counterfeits, it would be huge for me.

Mvhsz 6y ago
I prefer walmart for the same reason, I have a lot more trust in their supply chain. And the free delivery times are about the same, coupled with easy returns to the store. I would guess my Target and walmart online orders are 10x my Amazon orders. But I wouldn't pay for prime or walmart plus simply for the faster shipping, the free tier is already plenty fast
- turtlebits 6y ago
  IME, Walmart has the worst in store returns experience in any retailer, which I why prefer not to shop there. Every time I've had to return something, it has taken at least 20 minutes as there is either no employee or is understaffed with a 5+ person queue.
  - bombledmonk 6y ago
    My experience has been quite good recently. I start them through they app and they have an express returns spot in the customer service area. I'll start the return before I even set out to the store, sometimes they'll just comp it and refund my money without returning.
delfinom 6y ago
Walmart online store includes third parties. It's not going to be any better.... They will absolutely move to copy Amazon's zero liability selling strategies.

downvoteme1 6y ago

There is a whole lot of middle america that would love this. For all of Amazon’s extensive collection, a lot of users still spend a lot more on groceries and household goods monthly than on Amazon. I think this will be popular in those places where Walmart is the retailer of last resort which encompasses a lot of mid-west and even the south.

adrr 6y ago
Even with the $35 min? Amazon doesn’t have a min. I can order $4 item and have it show up the next day.
- closetohome 6y ago
  I think that's the deal breaker for me. If I order $35 worth of stuff I already get free 2-day shipping. I use Prime because I don't have to think about order totals or shipping - it just shows up the next day.
  - doktorhladnjak 6y ago
    The problem is a ton of items Amazon sells aren't Prime eligible. And that seems to include any lower prices items. Then you're back to getting a cart minimum, which at that point you might as well drop Prime entirely.
- donw 6y ago
  Buying habits are different when you live outside a city, or when you have a family. A $35 minimum doesn't feel like a deal-breaker to me.
  - smileysteve 6y ago
    I think this also falls on generational lines; ordering a handful of things at once and getting one package is my goal. On demand 1 thing at a time can be nice ordering something niche online, but when you have a whole fresh grocery, just add some steak or toilet paper.

brightball 6y ago

Is it weird that Amazon has gotten so big that I cheer for Walmart just to make sure there’s competition?

bombledmonk 6y ago

I've used mint.com for over 12 years so I have purchase history going back that far from both WM and Amazon. I consider myself a relatively heavy user of Amazon for small ticket items with a few big ones mixed in (with 65 orders YTD) and I'm in Smalltown America so no Whole Foods grocery delivery. It's actually an interesting exercise to look at long term spending at stores. In the past 12 years I've spent $37k @ Amazon compared to nearly $50k at WM. Big numbers, but averaged out that's not all that much. Most of my grocery spend in recent years has been at WM due to it being the closest grocery store and is within walking distance of my house.

kevindong 6y ago

From the press release [0]: > In-store prices as fast as same-day on more than 160,000 items from tech and toys to household essentials and groceries. For people who live in dense urban areas without Walmarts (e.g. SF, Chicago, Seattle, NYC, etc.), there's a genuine value prop there. Walmart sells pantry items for less than basically everyone. [0]: https://corporate.walmart.com/newsroom/2020/09/01/walmart-introduces-walmart https://corporate.walmart.com/newsroom/2020/09/01/walmart-in...

zhobbs 6y ago

The coverage of this has been misguided IMO. The headline here should be, "Walmart Plus takes on Amazon Fresh". The benefits you get are really just delivery of in-store items to your house, it seems your walmart.com experience doesn't change much. Based on what I've seen on Amazon fresh, you'd probably make up your $98 pretty quick if you moved all your grocery shopping from fresh to WM+.

brudgers 6y ago
My local Walmart has iPads, gas generators, and loctite thread locker (etc.) in addition to groceries, blenders, baby clothes and charcoal briquettes. But even more competitive with Amazon, the Walmart in Van Horne, Texas has all that available for same day delivery too even though it’s 200 miles from El Paso and even further from Dallas.
JMTQp8lwXL 6y ago
The kind of household willing to regularly pay the premium for same-day/1-day groceries and/or shipping is an upper middle class household. How is Walmart going to shake the branding of being cheap and low quality with the segment of price insensitive consumers? Your middle middle-class household is not a Prime member, and the services Walmart and Amazon are competing on will only expand their TAM (Total Addressable Market) if costs go down. Median households don't have the budget for these services.
- thursday0987 6y ago
  its weird you assume that upper middle class households don't shop at walmart. Walmart is cheap, but often high quality for staples. They have a good to great organics food section, their toiletries section carries high quality diapers, their toy section has legos and other luxury toys etc etc etc. even their clothes are of good quality (although no luxury brands). Walmart actually has nicer stuff than Target a lot of the time.
  - JMTQp8lwXL 6y ago
    It's not weird, it's a fact. Different income groups skew towards different stores. "Target-exclusive shoppers are more likely to be female, younger and richer. For example, Target-exclusives had an average household income of about $85,000, compared to $57,000 for Walmart-exclusives, according to a 2005 survey." https://www.jacksonville.com/article/20111104/ENTERTAINMENT/801241670 https://www.jacksonville.com/article/20111104/ENTERTAINMENT/...

stonogo 6y ago

A lot of comments seem to be from people who aren't aware that Amazon's delivery network kind of sucks in huge swaths of America. If you're not in a major metropolitan area, Prime delivery took about a week pre-Covid, and things have only gotten worse since then. Compare Walmart store locations [1] to Amazon fulfillment centers [2] and you'll see that delivering from their stores enables them to cover a lot of rapid-delivery territory where Amazon just isn't. 1 https://www.scrapehero.com/store/wp-content/uploads/maps/Walmart_USA.png https://www.scrapehero.com/store/wp-content/uploads/maps/Wal... 2 https://truthout.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/02-Amazon-Warehouse-Map-courtesy-of-www.freightos.comG2018google.png https://truthout.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/02-Amazon-Wa...

adolfojp 6y ago
That's really it. I live in Puerto Rico which is one of those places where Amazon kind of sucks. Items used to take over a week to get here and I was OK with that because I understand geographic limitations. Now they often take a month, which I'm willing to accept because of current circumstances. But what puts me off is that they flat out refuse to sell me many items. I have a Prime subscription but my last phone didn't come from Amazon. It came from Walmart online. Even eBay serves my region better. About Walmart, I have a Walmart owned supermarket within walking distance of my house, a Supercenter about 9 miles away, and there's a Sam's club right next to it. My groceries and my medicines come from a store owned by Walmart and they're everywhere. If I didn't have the time or the energy to buy my parents their groceries I would get them delivered to them from Walmart. Now, I don't expect to use their service (if it becomes available here) because most of my online shopping consists of items that I can't find locally, but for people in areas like mine who can't visit or who don't like to visit physical stores this service would be great.

bigmilesjr 6y ago

more like walmart plus takes on target delivery

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

indigodaddy 6y ago

So. I’m a little surprised that if Walmart has had this plan in the works for some time, why did they sell off Vudu? Why not leverage that somehow into a service included with Walmart Plus, if not only to include just the Vudu free-with-ads stuff initially. Just rebrand it into Walmart Plus.. Wouldn’t this have helped to compete with Prime more? Then they could include the paid Vudu stuff just as video results-to-purchase inside of Walmart.com, much like Amazon does, to drive more users and purchases of the Vudu paid content, but basically all rebranded to Walmart Video content inside of Walmart. They must have explored this idea yeah? How could they not have? I guess that Vudu was just too valuable for cash and was a good time to sell?

godzillabrennus 6y ago
In an organization this big the right hand doesn’t always know what the left hand is doing.
gurumeditations 6y ago
If you’ve ever worked for Walmart, you’ll realize they’re #1 because they’re a monopoly, not because they’re particularly smart.
- jjeaff 6y ago
  But they weren't the first. They got to be number one by being very smart. Whether they can remain smart enough to stay number one is a different story.
- throwaway1777 6y ago
  Walmart is not a monopoly at all.
- km3k 6y ago
  I'd argue they are smart. I shop a lot at Wal-mart, but rarely step in the store. I shop online, do their free grocery pickup and their in-store (non-grocery) pickup. The last one is technically walking into the store, but the non-grocery pickup is just inside the front door, so I'm not really going to the main part of the store. Plus, the times I do go into the store, they have a really nice automated checkout with a lot of stations. In my experience, Wal-mart automated checkouts are the smoothest and least likely to be broken compared to other stores I've used automated checkout at. Wal-mart does a great job getting my business without requiring me to actually interact with their employees and other customers or wait significant amounts of time for anything.

zxcvbn4038 6y ago

Wal-Mart wants $98 a year to tell me they are out of stock, don’t ship to my area code, and I need to come to them? Prime Video alone is worth the cost of Prime, never mind that Amazon sells everything I want and need, and ship it to my home next day for free. I did my first Amazon Fresh order recently, loved that they used frozen water bottles to cool perishables, got fresh bread for the first time since the pandemic started. Now if the liquor stores will just deliver - there are 19 liquor stores within a three mile radius of me, only three have web sites, only one delivers (and only through Drizly), selection is limited. Amazon UK ships alcohol, hopefully US will too one day.

donw 6y ago
> Amazon UK ships alcohol, hopefully US will too one day. You can thank the Progressive Era[1] for giving the US Prohibition[2], the legacy of which is the insanity of present-day US drug and alcohol laws. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progressive_Era https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progressive_Era [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prohibition_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prohibition_in_the_United_Stat...
- zxcvbn4038 6y ago
  Yes, that is a whole topic in itself. My sister-in-law lives in Utah where not only do you have to buy all alcohol from the state owned stores, the state waters down all alcohol over a certain ABV. It makes her very easy to shop for on the holidays - grab some bottles of the good stuff from another state on the drive over, but still crazy stuff like that still happens in this age.
  - exclusiv 6y ago
    Yeah I saw some dumb laws in Colorado when visiting. I think it was just the grocery stores with the 3% stuff. So ridiculous. Looks like Colorado allowed > 3.2% in grocery stores starting in 2019. [1] Not too long ago you couldn't buy beer in Indiana on Sunday. Archaic. [1] https://www.5280.com/2019/10/are-grocery-store-beer-sales-killing-colorados-liquor-stores/ https://www.5280.com/2019/10/are-grocery-store-beer-sales-ki...

bloomingeek 6y ago

Twenty years ago I wondered why WM didn't dedicate a section in their store to computers and put Best Buy out of business. Or for that matter, any competitor of theirs. Sure, they must have thought about who shops in their stores, but if the prices are good enough, the BMW's will show up. Right?

smileysteve 6y ago
In my hometown, Porsche put their dealership right next to Walmart. 15 years ago.

canada_dry 6y ago

> Walmart will face an uphill battle against "subscription fatigue" So much this. I'm guessing the next phase of this will be subscription aggregators who will package these services into bundles e.g. netflix, prime, uber eats along with a bunch of fringe services for the low-low-monthly-price of just $199.99.

anonymouswacker 6y ago

I have grown weary of supporting Bezos' empire and ordering as much as I can from Walmart in recent months once I noticed that his media arm (WaPo) was fueling the flames of COVID hysteria and BLM's destruction, which only helped Amazon and other Big Tech players strangle small American businesses in favor of offshore, mostly Chinese companies. Next step is moving my company's cloud from AWS to Azure. Not sure yet what to do about the surveillance devices (Alexa) as I want something that can run without an internet connection to a Big Tech company.

dominotw 6y ago

walmart is dirty, gross and depressing. I don't want some horrible crap from walmart delivered. Your life has take a serious wrong turn if you shop at walmart. Walmart has lost the plot, Seriously just look at what target is doing and try to keep up. Walmart needs to stop dreaming about competing with amazon, they are not even the same orbit. Walmart sucks!