Florida woman places Walmart pickup order. She ends up doing the shopping herself after items go missing
She ordered Walmart pickup to save a trip through the store. Instead, missing items sent her back inside.
A Florida woman ordered her groceries from Walmart pickup because she didn’t want to walk around the store. Then Walmart told her some of her items were unavailable, so she went inside and found herself shopping for them anyway.
Brenda Joseph (@rodwaveandcocacola) posted the experience on TikTok, where the video has racked up more than 2.4 million views. In the video, Joseph shows herself inside Walmart putting items in a basket after seeing that several products from her pickup order were unavailable.
One of the substitutions wasn’t exactly what she had ordered, either. Joseph said Walmart substituted kale for parsley, so she went into the store to find some of the items herself instead of making the quick pickup trip she planned.
Why can an item be unavailable for pickup but still be on the shelf?
Walmart says its pickup service helps customers skip a trip through the store. Shoppers place their orders online, choose a pickup time and wait for an associate to gather everything before bringing the order out to their car. Other shoppers, though, have also shared stories about pickup taking longer than expected.
Walmart’s own help page, however, notes that inventory can change between the time a customer places an order and when Walmart processes it. An item may appear available at checkout, then go out of stock before an associate fills the order.
That also means an item marked unavailable isn’t necessarily going to stay unavailable all day. Walmart says it restocks products as quickly as possible, so something could potentially return to the shelf after an associate has already finished picking an order.
That may be one explanation for why a customer could see an item marked unavailable online and later find it inside the store. It isn’t enough to say that’s what happened with Joseph’s order, though.
Walmart can also substitute another product when something from an order isn’t available. Customers can accept or reject the suggested substitution, choose preferred substitutions while ordering or turn substitutions off.
For Joseph, the problem wasn’t just getting a different item. She had used pickup specifically so she wouldn’t have to go through the store, only to end up doing some of the shopping herself.
Other Walmart customers have run into the same problem
Joseph’s video isn’t the only time a Walmart shopper has gone into a store and been surprised by what they found on the shelves. A quick Google search turns up plenty of shoppers discussing the same issue.
One Reddit user described ordering mayonnaise through Walmart pickup and seeing it marked unavailable, then finding plenty of it on the shelf inside the store. Other commenters suggested the store may have restocked the product after an associate picked the order, although there isn’t enough information to confirm that happened.
That is part of what makes pickup inventory confusing for shoppers. Walmart’s help page indicates availability can change between ordering and processing, though that doesn’t confirm what happened with Joseph’s order.
So an “unavailable” notice doesn’t necessarily mean a customer won’t find the item anywhere in the building. In Joseph’s case, though, the result was pretty simple. She ordered pickup to avoid shopping at Walmart and ended up grabbing a basket and shopping anyway.
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