We get letters from supporters everyday from all over the world.  The following one, from a Japanese consumer details his experiences with Wal-Mart’s infamous customer service. 

At Wal-Mart’s latest analyst meeting, Wal-Mart’s executives told analysts that Seiyu (Wal-Mart’s Japanese brand) is a price leader in the Japanese market and that Seiyu is set to actually turn a profit over the next year—and no, that’s not a typo.  Despite noting in early 2008 that “heavy discounting of goods over the past year ate into [Seiyu’s] profit margins without the expected boost in sales,” Seiyu and Wal-Mart leadership think ‘more of the same’ will be sufficient to succeed in the Japanese market.

Unfortunately, as the following story from a Japanese customer alludes, Wal-Mart’s low prices will hardly be enough.

Dear WalmartWatch,

I am a Japanese visitor to your website and I live in Japan, where Wal-Mart finally acquired the ailing Japanese retailer, Seiyu Group, last summer. It was my first visit ever today. I wanted to share the story of my horrible experience at the Seiyu store because I believe it is truly the “Wal-Mart style”.

When I visited a Seiyu store in the evening, I had my car damaged by some reckless construction work inside the parking garage. There were many potholes in the garage and Seiyu installed no lighting or warning signs at all. The front wheel of my car and the lower part of the front bumper was damaged when it hit pothole… It is already a horror story, isn’t it? However, the Seiyu Group store’s management and the Seiyu Group’s HQ never found it horrible.... The senior managers, some of whom made several phone calls to my home with a low voice with “threatening tone”, simply refused apologies or compensations.

Read the rest of this story ...

A story out today from Advertising Age has an in-depth break down of Wal-Mart’s current business and marketing strategy. Most retailers are scrambling to stay afloat as the economy declines, but in the last month Wal-Mart has seen rises in both its stock price and profits.

Shoppers are trading down, and Wal-Mart is as low as they can go. A bad economy has always been good for Wal-Mart, and today’s recession-like atmosphere is no different. Wal-Mart’s execs claim the recent boost in sales is due to a “strategic three-year plan,” but most analysts agree: when the going gets tough, the tough go to Wal-Mart.

“But,” says one analyst quoted in the article, “there is a chink in the armor of Wal-Mart, which is these customers are not saying they necessarily feel loyalty.” Though more people are shopping at the low-price retailer, they’re not likely to stay. Wal-Mart’s only advantage is its prices: customer service, product quality and company ethics are all secondary objectives, and shoppers know that. Brand loyalty might not be a problem for Wal-Mart now, but once the economy improves the company could face the consequences for putting low prices above all else.

Wal-Mart Grinning Big Through the Tough Times [Advertising Age]

Looking for a silver lining in the economy? It’s shining brightly from Bentonville, Ark.

Read the rest of this story ...

One of the unique drawbacks of offering poor digital download services is that digital downloaders are, by definition, computer savvy and will not hesitate to lay the smack down about you on the internets. Case in point: Wal-Mart’s digital rights managed (DRM) music service. The retailer will be shutting down its servers sometime next week, leaving many who downloaded music from the site in the lurch. To say the least, Wal-Mart hasn’t won any fans in the process.

On the other hand, all of Wal-Mart’s other products fall apart eventually. We guess its digital downloads aren’t any different.

Wal*Mart shutting down DRM server, nuking your music collection—only people who pay for music risk losing it to DRM shenanigans [BoingBoing]

Hey suckers! Did you buy DRM music from Wal*Mart instead of downloading MP3s for free from the P2P networks? Well, they’re repaying your honesty by taking away your music. Unless you go through a bunch of hoops (that you may never find out about, if you’ve changed email addresses or if you’re not a very technical person), your music will no longer be playable after October 9th...Boy, the entertainment industry sure makes a good case for ripping them off, huh? Buy your media and risk having it confiscated by a DRM-server shutdown. Take it for free and keep it forever.

Walmart Shutting Down Music Store DRM Servers, Umpteenth Reminder to Not Buy DRM’d Content [Gizmodo]

Like Yahoo and MSN before them, Walmart is turning off its DRM servers on Oct. 9, effectively putting any DRM’d songs you bought from them into a cold stasis they’ll never wake up from, since they’ll become totally unmovable unless you circumvent the DRM.

Wal-Mart Pushes Customers Off DRM Fence [Wired Blog]

In other words, if you are going to spend money, please do not spend it at Wal-Mart’s music store, or any other whose backwards DRM policies may one day wipe out your money’s value by pulling the plug on its servers.

Wal-Mart’s customer service is notoriously bad: chronic understaffing, low wages, high turnover and ever-shifting work schedules mean employees are unhappy and unlikely to perform well. So it’s no surprise that Wal-Mart winds up “among the worst” on AOL’s list of favorite grocery stores.

30 Most and Least Favorite Grocery Stores [Wallet Pop]

The absolute worst place hands down is Wal-mart! Now, normally, we don’t shop there—however, my husband needed something that he couldn’t find anywhere else, so ... in we went ... and out we walked! We had about 3 items that we were carrying and they had 3 registers open with about 20 customers in each line. They were not even bothering to try to open up any other lanes. We gave the merchandise to one of the employees and told her we will NOT wait in these lines.

UPDATE: Almost as interesting, if not more so, are the comments. Wallet Pop readers weigh in on Wal-Mart, after the jump.

Read the rest of this story ...