Competition is rough these days! Retail stores, brick & mortar vs. online, are in a battle to get your dollars because there are so many choices out there. Most stores, in order to overcome the competition, will do just about anything to get your business once you’re in the store, so many of them will price match identical goods found at other stores just so they can capture your money before you walk out the door.

Walmart won’t even match it’s own online price!

Yesterday was the strangest experience I have had as a consumer in quite a while.

My daughter wanted to buy “Grand Theft Auto V” and she was going to just buy it online from the Microsoft store as a digital download for $29.99. I said she should check around first to see if she can get a better price since it has been out for a while. So she did. As it turns out, there were several stores who had it on sale – Walmart and Game Stop, just to name a couple.

So, we jumped in the car and headed out to Walmart. We located the game in their electronics section in two place, neither of which indicated the online price as seen above. One was priced at $29.98 and the other one was priced at $59.98. These are the same game, mind you…

We asked for some help, showed the employee the price on the phone, he looked in the locked case and said something to the effect of “Well, we just updated prices so that is a bit of a mystery.” He pulled out both items at different prices and we went to do a price check. Both came up as marked. Wait, what?!? So, I asked if we could get the price as indicated online and he looked at my phone again, scrolled through the listing and said, “It must be an online only special.”

I was like, “It doesn’t say that anywhere. If it were online only, it would say that wouldn’t it?”

His response was, “It usually does.”

So, again, I asked if they would honor online price.

He said, “I don’t have the authority to do that but if you want to order it online then you could pick it up at the front of the store.” REALLY???? You’re gonna go there?

I asked for a manager. He said he called one. We waited for 15 minutes and still no manager. I asked if one was coming. He said they should be but they have to do “rounds” before they can get there.

I called Game Stop, verified they had the game in stock, left Walmart, and she spent her money there instead. No hassle.

When the physical store can’t (any employee should have this ability) to match it’s own online store price, you have a problem.

Walmart versus Walmart.com – both losers in my book!