Walmart Customer Service

Time and time again I read about Walmart's poor customer service, and really, considering how HUGE Walmart is, it's really not surprising if their customer service is lacking. Truth be told, when I had troubles placing a photo order through their site last night, I expected crappy, "big company" customer service.

I normally don't go through Walmart for my photo finishing needs. Reviews from some trusted pro photographer sources (who do recommend commercial retail finishers) say Walmart photo finishing doesn't yield very good results. I went with Walmart because after much research, they were the only ones that had what I need at a convenient and reasonable price. I needed to turn one of my kids' photos into a baseball card. I could've designed them in Photoshop myself like I usually do with most cards and it's not exactly hard to do, but Walmart had them readily available for a great price of just $0.09 per sheet of 2 cards, with free shipping (promo is good through July 31, 2010.) I had everything designed and in my cart when it wouldn't let me complete the order. For several hours, it stuck me in a perpetual loop telling me that things in my cart had changed since I entered the ordering process. Needless to say, I was beyond frustrated so I went to bed and vowed to try again in the morning during normal business hours...but not before I fired off an email to their photo customer service to not only notify them of the issue, but in hopes of getting some kind of advice on how I can get my order to go through. They were to get back to me within 24 hours, which while not ideal, it was fine since I still had plenty of time to take advantage of the free shipping promo.

I tried my order again in the morning to no avail so left, vowed to just design them myself, and pay the little extra to have it done at Costco Photo like I often do. I came back in the early afternoon to try one more time before I quit for good and behold, the problem was fixed. Soon after I'd placed my order, Walmart photo's customer service emailed me back and much to my surprise, it was not only a nice email, but what surprised me the most was the fact that they admitted to having problems...something most companies will not address or willingly admit to the customer. Here's the response I got:

Thank you for contacting Walmart.com regarding the photo order error.

We are very sorry for this issue, it is a known issue and we are told that at this time it has been fixed. We see that you did place a successful photo order today and want to follow up to ensure you received a final resolution to your concern. If no further action is needed and you feel your issue has been resolved then no response is necessary.

Why yes, thank you! Thank you for getting back to me even though I'd successfully placed my order and clearly the problem I'd been having had been resolved. Importantly, thank you for acknowledging your errors and admitting to it. We all err. We all screw up. But few admit to it. So yeah, cool and thanks for admitting things didn't go right and not pinning the error on the customer, making them feel like an idiot for something that was not their fault. Thumbs up, Walmart.