Will Wal-Mart Steal Christmas?

Time ^ | 12/08/03 | DAREN FONDA

[Holly_P]

I think gift cards from a bookstore will probably be better for them anyway.

Better not get them from Barnes & Noble because although it doesnt say it on the card - they expire too, on a sliding scale. A $25 face value may only be worth half that in 6 months time. Within a year or so they are without any value.

[Holly_P]

The big print says they never expire. The fine print says that after 24 months, they take out $1 per month as a "handling fee

If you think only Wal-Mart does that you are wrong and you better get ready to boycott a whole slew of stores.

[Holly_P]

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[Amelia]

Better not get them from Barnes & Noble because although it doesnt say it on the card - they expire too, on a sliding scale.

Thank you. Maybe I should just give the kids cash. ;-)

[Trust but Verify]

There are still K-Bee toy stores in malls. Those are the only ones I've ever seen. Don't get me wrong, I'm no fan of TRU, either, I just despise WalMart and what they are doing with cheap chinese goods to the American consumer.

[SamAdams76]

I think Toys R Us is a horrible place for toys. I remember going in there looking for gift for my two sons and would walk about empty-handed almost every time. Nothing but cheap, plastic junk. And the aisles were so narrow and clogged that it was not fun even being in there.

I liked getting my sons things they could build with like erector sets and Legos and those "snap-on" things like "Konnex." One year I got a roller-coaster kit from Konnex that had about 5,000 pieces you had to snap together. That kept my son occupied for weeks. Never find that stuff at Toys R Us. I also got them a Lionel model train set that I had to go to a specialty store for. Forget about finding that in Toys R Us. But if you like getting your kids dart guns with foam darts that last about 20 minutes before they snap and break, or if you like getting your kids a remote controlled car that comes with a battery that lasts about an hour and then you have to stick it in the wall for 12 hours to charge again, then Toys R Us might be the place for you.

[SamAdams76]

That's not true because I actually had this experience last Christmas: During Christmas 2001, I got a $50 Barnes & Noble gift card from a relative and I put it away with the Christmas cards and forgot about it. Last Christmas, as I pulled out the old Christmas cards (I save them so that I know who to send cards back to), the card fell into my lap. So a few days later, I used it and it was still worth $50. This had to be a full year since the relative first bought the card.

[Holly_P]

Then possibly its a regional thing because I had a similar experience to yours with opposite results with Barnes and Noble. After one year it had lost about half it's value.

[Merovingian]

Steal Christmas, Hell! it will destroy this country!
[source: December issue {Fast Company} magazine]

Wal-Mart leverages its enormous sales power,
and its access to products produced by slave-labor,
to make suppliers follow its pricing decisions.

If the supplier company doesn't sell its goods at the price Wal-Mart sets,
Wal-Mart denies them shelf space at its stores, which destroys that company.

However, even when a supplier meets Wal-Mart's prices,
the prices are so low, and the supplier losses so much money,
that the supplier is forced into bankruptcy.

Wal-Mart's 2002 sales of $244.5 billion
were larger than the sales of Sears, Target, J.C. Penney,
K-Mart, Safeway, and Kroger combined.

* Textiles and Apparel: Carolina Mills is a 75-year old
Carolina company that supplies thread, yarn, and textile
finishing to apparel-makers -- half of which supply Wal-Mart.

But since 2000,
Carolina Mills' customers have begun to face imported
clothing sold so cheaply to Wal-Mart that they could not compete
even if they paid their workers nothing.

Since 2000, Carolina Mills has shrunk
from 17 factories to 7, and from 2,600 employees
to 1,200. Steve Dobbins, the CEO of Carolina Mills told the
December issue of {Fast-Company} magazine that,

"People ask, `How
can it be bad for things to come into the U.S. cheaply? How can
it be bad to have a bargain at Wal-Mart?'

{But you can't buy anything if you're not employed.
We are shopping ourselves out of jobs}." (emphasis added)

* Lovable Garments, which was founded in 1926, had, by the
1990s, become the sixth largest producer of women's bras and
lingerie in the United States, employing 700 workers.

Wal-Mart became the biggest purchaser of Lovable's goods;
in 1995,
Wal-Mart demanded Lovable slash its prices to compete with cheap imports.

When Lovable indicated it could not do that, Wal-Mart
illegally reneged on its contract with Lovable, and outsourced
the lingerie production to Ibero-America, Asia, and China.

Without the Wal-Mart market, in 1998 Lovable had to close its
American manufacturing facilities and fire the workers. Stated
Frank Garson, who was then Lovable's president, "Their actions to
pulverize people are unnecessary. Wal-Mart chewed us up and spit us out."

* Food: Vlasic Pickles. Although it may at first glance seem humorous,
there is a serious lesson.
Wal-Mart roped Vlasic into a contract in which
Wal-Mart sold a 3 gallon jar of Vlasic whole pickles for $2.97.
Wal-Mart sold 240,000 gallons of pickles per week.

But the price
of the 3 gallon jar was so low, that it vastly undercut Vlasic's
sales of 8 ounce and 16 ounce jars of cut pickles; further,
Vlasic only made a few pennies per 3 gallon jar.

Its profits were
tumbling. Vlasic asked Wal-Mart for the right to raise the price
per 3 gallon jar to $3.49, and according to a Vlasic executive,
Wal-Mart threatened that if Vlasic tried to back out of this
feature of the contract, Wal-Mart would cease carrying any Vlasic
product. Eventually, a Wal-Mart executive said, "Well, we've done
to pickles what we did to orange juice. We've killed it," meaning
it had wiped out competitor products. Finally, it allowed Vlasic
to raise prices. But in January 2001, Vlasic filed for bankruptcy.

Wal-Mart forced the price of Huffy Bicycles, which is the
third largest bicycle maker in the U.S., so low, that today 98%
of Huffy's bicycles are imported from overseas.

[Source: Nov 20 {Observer} article, "Buffalo Moves Closer to Extinction"]

Today's London {Observer} carries an
article that focusses on the destruction of the City of Buffalo,
New York, mentioning the role of Wal-Mart.

Buffalo had been a premier U.S. city:
it was the first city to have widespread
residential lighting, and was a center of heavy industry.

But Buffalo's Bethlehem Steel plant, which once employed 22,000
workers, is virtually empty; its unemployment rate is officially
10.2% (and in reality closer to 17%-18%); its population has
shrunk in size by 40% since 1970; and the city is bankrupt and
under the direction of a control board.

The article tells the story of Buffalo Color, a
manufacturing plant where indigo dye for denim was produced. Once
employing 3,000 workers on its 63-acre site, Buffalo Color lost
business to plants established in China, which produce the indigo
dye at half the cost that Buffalo Color does.

Although the
article's author David Teather does not draw it out, the indigo
dye dyes denim, most of which is used in clothing, and Wal-Mart
has driven down the price it will pay for clothing, and thus all
its constituent ingredients must be cheaper.

Buffalo Color now
employs 12 people, and functions strictly as a resale operation.

The article concludes by reporting on the Made in the USA
group, which consists of many small- and medium-sized
manufacturers, whose chairman states that its primary enemy,
which causes destruction, is Wal-Mart.

[Beenliedto]

The best Wal-Mart's competitors can hope for this season is that they'll get some of the spillover from Wally World's over packed parking lots...

Watch for who's standing at the end of the season.

Wal Mart wins...

IF..

Wal Mart doesn't run out of inventory.

[beezdotcom]

Then possibly its a regional thing because I had a similar experience to yours with opposite results with Barnes and Noble. After one year it had lost about half it's value.

That's because all year, junior was sneaking it out without telling you and using it to run out to buy the latest issue of Spiderman Comics...

[Holly_P]

No junior around. Barnes & Noble told me that it was on a sliding scale it loses so much value each month after a certain time.

In my case I had the card for about two years not one as I originally stated, because I forgot that I had it. It started out being worth $25 and by the time I found it, it was worth about $2.00.

They may have changed their policy by now. This happened to me a couple of years ago.

Now if Wal-Mart doesn't have the book I want I deal with Amazon. Don't laugh at Wal-Mart books. I bought "Treason" there for $6 less than Amazon had it.

[Cooter]

Some gift card links:

Gift card rules
For gift cards sold in California, Massachusetts and New Hampshire expiration is prohibited by law.

California Bans Most Service Fees on Gift Certificates
Gift cards, a form of electronic gift certificates, are proliferating. The Wall Street Journal estimated in Feb. 2003 that $36 to $38 billion in gift cards were sold in 2002, and that the amount of money left unused on gift cards is $2 billion a year and growing. Some retailers now impose a monthly service fee on gift cards which are not fully spent after a specified time, such as one or two years.

A new law going into effect January 1, 2004 in California bans nearly all service fees on retailer gift cards and gift certificates. The new law bans service fees, with one limited exception. On a rechargeable card with a balance of $5 or less, the issuer may charge a dormancy fee of $1 per month after 24 months of inactivity. Even a balance inquiry counts as activity that prevents this fee. All other service fees are prohibited.

The new law applies to gift certificates sold on or after January 1, 2004. Under preexisting California law, gift certificates may not expire.

[discostu]

Oooh, dueling big box stores. Kind of funny actually. I love how everybody blames WalMart for being smart at business, that's like blaming the lion for being a meat eater people.

[Amelia]

Dang, I should have bought them in California!

Thanks for the information.

[PAR35]

That is where I disagree with the Country Club Republicans - I favor fair trade over open borders. I'm more of a social conservative than an economic one.