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Walmart Whistleblower Claims Cheating In Race With Amazon (bloomberg.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: In its race to catch Amazon.com in online retailing, Walmart issued misleading e-commerce results and fired an executive who complained the company was breaking the law, according to a whistle-blower lawsuit. Tri Huynh, a former director of business development at Walmart, claims he was terminated "under false pretenses" after repeatedly raising concerns about the company's "overly aggressive push to show meteoric growth in its e-commerce business by any means possible -- even, illegitimate ones." Under Chief Executive Officer Doug McMillon, Walmart has invested billions to catch up with Amazon in e-commerce over the past few years, and last year enjoyed quarterly online sales growth rates surpassing 50 percent, well above peers that include Target and Best Buy Huynh claims Walmart mislabeled products so that some third-party vendors received lower commissions, failed to process customer returns, and allowed offensive items onto the site. Huynh's dismissal in January 2017 -- just a day after a retail-industry publication singled him out as one of the sector's rising stars -- was in retaliation for warning senior executives about the misdeeds, he said in the lawsuit, filed Thursday by employment litigation attorney David M. deRubertis in San Francisco federal court.
I used to think Amazon was bad because your search results shit back whatever most expensive garbage they hoped theg could sell you based on those keywords... till I had the idea to just add site:amazon.com to a google search. ... fine then sort from highest price to lowest... still cuts off any laptop under 2000. And then there is the "only in store" items and otherwise unavailable for order items that also cannot be filtered... I could go on, but I went on to a navigable site like newegg. Basically, the only way I end up ordering from walmart.com is if it comes up on a google search for a specific product...
Walmart.com is in its own league of bad. If slow loads and multiple layout redraws weren't bad enough, it lacks useful filters, has limited categories, includes marginally related accessories so instead of getting 100 useful results you hit the item limit (yes there is an item display limit) from accessories and get 0 useful results
horrible, slow, annoying
The key point here is that Amazon is no longer (or never was?) the cheapest. Often the bigger problem is finding a *reputable* cheaper seller that sell more than a tiny niche. Wal-Mart is beginning to crush Amazon at that.
I have found that the e-commerce verticals absolutely destroy Amazon on price. Examples of verticals that kill Amazon: Autoparts, Beer brewing supplies, certain types of electronics, pet food/supplies, bulky consumer products (e.x. paper towels), adult toys, etc. But unless you shop that vertical frequently it is hard to find the reputable dealers for each and then you have a new set of counter parties to deal with.