I will have to rethink this... my lawn mower battery just crapped out (almost a dozen years old) and what should have been a simple thing, wasn't. Walmart really needs to get their ducks in a row.
OLD WAY OF BUYING A BATTERY:
- Drive to store, bring old battery to counter, grab new battery off rack, pay, leave.
NEW WAY OF BUYING A BATTERY:- Go to Walmart's website, find what you want, then comparison shop other sites to find a good price.
- Go back to Walmart's site, can't find same battery again (their site search is terrible), but need battery so pick lesser battery for less money. I thought about checking my browser history but then thought they'd probably sold out of that model.
- Put lesser battery in cart and a popup shows products other customers also purchased, including the battery I wanted in the first place. Grrr.
- Add wanted battery to cart, remove lesser battery.
- Checkout. Had to lookup unique password, saw battery price plus core charge $12 plus tax, made the purchase.
- Batteries have curbside pickup, but they don't tell you that they want you to use the app until you're done. So, went to google play to get app, and checkout instructed to use app to tell them when you're on your way and parked, but there is no place found in app to do that, only later you realize the info appears after your order is ready.
- Walmart wants to text you when order is ready but this old account still had an old landline phone # when the order was placed, so I had to wonder if they'd try to text that and would I ever get a notification, so I went into account to change the # to a cell #.
- Walmart's site sends me an email verification code to input on their website to validate the email, in order to change the phone #.
- Walmart's site gets cell # and then texts a verification code to input on their site to validate phone #.
- Drive to store, where met by teenage girl carrying a flooded lead acid battery sideways, oblivious to the potential for acid to leak out and run down her arm.
- Girl can't take the old battery for core charge refund. What good is curbside if this can't happen?
- Instructed to drive around to the automotive dept, went in, waited in line because only one clerk on duty
- Clerk states she needs receipt (even though I picked up the other a few minutes ago). I left phone in vehicle, went out to get it.
- Pull up purchase on phone, clerk scans bar code, can't get the system to issue a core refund. The purchase shows up as $14 in tax on a $30 battery, instead of $2 tax plus a $12 core charge!
- Clerk instructs me to go to the customer service counter, on the other side of the huge superstore.
- Customer service counter can't do anything, states they could issue a refund but I would only get back the $30 battery price and the $12 extra charged as tax would disappear.
- Told to call 1-800-walmart. Drive back home with both old and new battery.
- Called walmart, waited in queue, spoke to foreign accented person who was barely understandable, but managed to get a $12 credit issued to me after a series of interrogation questions to determine my identity.
- Now I just need to take the old battery somewhere to dispose of it, roughly the same amount of effort as the whole process of buying a battery the old way!
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