
Walmart Plus takes on Amazon Prime - jbredeche
https://www.cnet.com/news/walmart-plus-takes-on-amazon-prime-with-98-a-year-membership-fee/
======
indigodaddy
So. I’m a little surprised that if Walmart has had this plan in the works for
some time, why did they sell off Vudu? Why not leverage that somehow into a
service included with Walmart Plus, if not only to include just the Vudu free-
with-ads stuff initially. Just rebrand it into Walmart Plus.. Wouldn’t this
have helped to compete with Prime more? Then they could include the paid Vudu
stuff just as video results-to-purchase inside of Walmart.com, much like
Amazon does, to drive more users and purchases of the Vudu paid content, but
basically all rebranded to Walmart Video content inside of Walmart.

They must have explored this idea yeah? How could they not have? I guess that
Vudu was just too valuable for cash and was a good time to sell?

~~~
gurumeditations
If you’ve ever worked for Walmart, you’ll realize they’re #1 because they’re a
monopoly, not because they’re particularly smart.

~~~
pathseeker
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monopoly](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monopoly)

Walmart has competitors in every market I've seen. Small towns seem to be more
likely to have chain dollar stores than a Walmart.

In my small city of 50k, Walmart doesn't exclusively cover any category other
than maybe toys. There are other grocery stores, other automotive stores,
other clothes stores, jewelry, drugs, blah blah. You go to Walmart because
it's cheap, not because it's the only option.

~~~
InfiniteRand
It's not that Walmart is the cheapest place, as you mention dollar chain
stores are usually available, but Walmart offers a wide selection of goods, at
reasonably cheap prices, at a level of quality which is typically not
terrible.

So if the question is where do I go to get some random item where it won't
break immediately and I won't overpay, Walmart seems like a reasonable choice.

Of course, Walmart is not alone in the category of wide selection, reasonably
cheap, not terrible quality, Target comes to mind, and I think Kohls too,
although I rarely go there so I might be wrong about that. Anyone know any
others?

So I agree Walmart is not a monopoly, even if you are looking for apples-to-
apples comparisons it is not unique.

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zhobbs
The coverage of this has been misguided IMO. The headline here should be,
"Walmart Plus takes on Amazon Fresh".

The benefits you get are really just delivery of in-store items to your house,
it seems your walmart.com experience doesn't change much. Based on what I've
seen on Amazon fresh, you'd probably make up your $98 pretty quick if you
moved all your grocery shopping from fresh to WM+.

~~~
JMTQp8lwXL
The kind of household willing to regularly pay the premium for same-day/1-day
groceries and/or shipping is an upper middle class household. How is Walmart
going to shake the branding of being cheap and low quality with the segment of
price insensitive consumers? Your middle middle-class household is not a Prime
member, and the services Walmart and Amazon are competing on will only expand
their TAM (Total Addressable Market) if costs go down. Median households don't
have the budget for these services.

~~~
thursday0987
its weird you assume that upper middle class households don't shop at walmart.

Walmart is cheap, but often high quality for staples. They have a good to
great organics food section, their toiletries section carries high quality
diapers, their toy section has legos and other luxury toys etc etc etc.

even their clothes are of good quality (although no luxury brands).

Walmart actually has nicer stuff than Target a lot of the time.

~~~
JMTQp8lwXL
It's not weird, it's a fact. Different income groups skew towards different
stores.

"Target-exclusive shoppers are more likely to be female, younger and richer.
For example, Target-exclusives had an average household income of about
$85,000, compared to $57,000 for Walmart-exclusives, according to a 2005
survey."
[https://www.jacksonville.com/article/20111104/ENTERTAINMENT/...](https://www.jacksonville.com/article/20111104/ENTERTAINMENT/801241670)

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portmanteaufu
Even at the slightly lower price point ($98/yr for WalMart Plus vs $119/yr for
Prime), this new offering feels rather anemic. It gets you fast (sometimes
same day) delivery of a popular subset of their catalog. Prime has music,
video, reading, twitch, grocery delivery, etc in addition to fast delivery.

> "We're not launching Walmart Plus with the intent to compete with anything
> else," Whiteside [Walmart's chief customer officer,] said when asked about
> Prime. "We're launching it to meet the needs of our customers."

Sure.

~~~
onlyrealcuzzo
My mom doesn't care about Prime music, video, reading, twitch, grocery
delivery, etc.

And my mom shops at Wal-mart NON-STOP. There are a lot of people like here.
This is for them.

~~~
rootsudo
Agreed, my parents are the same way. She refuses target, and I don't know why.
The 5% card discount doesn't even convince her, nor the empty lines, wider
aisles, etc.

I can't handle Walmart's anymore, maybe it's pandemic times, but they're
overstretched, overcapacity, multiple of people in one place and a frenzy.
They weren't always like that too.

~~~
dawnerd
Same, can't go into a walmart anymore. They started right before the pandemic
with treating everyone like a criminal. I get they have higher theft, but if
you watch me checkout with a cashier, you don't need to go through every item
in my cart and scan them with the hand scanner. I can't imagine their scan and
go working any better.

~~~
JMTQp8lwXL
The bifurcation of where the lower middle vs upper middle shops for general
household items which both groups need is a notable trend. I typically shop at
Target, but went to a Walmart for the first time in years. Everything is
locked down. It's a demonstrably different experience, and it feels part of
the trending inequality.

~~~
dawnerd
I’ve been into some targets that were really locked up. Depends on the area,
but you’re absolutely right.

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syntaxing
I have a higher tendency to trust things from Walmart (in terms of fakes)
compared to Amazon. Though I order from Amazon more because it's just too
convenient. I would be tempted to cancel my Prime subscription if they have
good delivery and prices (I do not use much of the Prime benefits besides
shipping)

~~~
ericbarrett
Unfortunately Walmart’s in-store selection is often junk. For example, I
bought some rope to tie down furniture in a truck; they at least had some
braided nylon cable, or so I thought. When I cut it to length, it had a foam
core and the “braiding” was just a deceptive sheath around the cable. I went
back to the store and there were no other options. Given their extreme
pressure on suppliers, I don’t trust their food offerings either.

~~~
delfinom
Walmart forces manufacturers to sell them items at fixed priced points. To the
point they extort manufacturers to hand over bill of materials and demand
certain prices or face repercussions, they are in very much worse than Amazon
and literally run like a mafia. The end result is manufacturers make separate
SKUs of the same product especially corner-cut just for Walmart.

~~~
gruez
>they are in very much worse than Amazon and literally run like a mafia

...except that you can refuse to do business with them and they're not going
to kneecap you or burn down your business

~~~
CamperBob2
Arguably they do 'burn down' small local businesses through aggressive price-
cutting competition and supplier relationships, which a lot of people object
to.

I'm not among those complainers, having grown up in a small town where you
couldn't get _anything_ without mail-ordering it until Wal-Mart came in. But I
could certainly be swayed to their point of view if Wal-Mart starts selling
counterfeit or extremely low-grade crap like the rope ericbarrett purchased.

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downvoteme1
There is a whole lot of middle america that would love this. For all of
Amazon’s extensive collection, a lot of users still spend a lot more on
groceries and household goods monthly than on Amazon.

I think this will be popular in those places where Walmart is the retailer of
last resort which encompasses a lot of mid-west and even the south.

~~~
adrr
Even with the $35 min? Amazon doesn’t have a min. I can order $4 item and have
it show up the next day.

~~~
Dylan16807
In theory you can order a $4 item with free shipping. In practice Amazon is
charging $3-$4 to the seller for "fulfillment" aka shipping, plus some other
fees. An item that should cost $0.50-$2 probably costs $6-$8 instead.

Walmart has less depth but if you can get store prices you're in a
significantly better starting place.

~~~
copperx
This is nowhere more obvious than when comparing Monoprice vs Amazon.

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kevindong
From the press release [0]:

> In-store prices as fast as same-day on more than 160,000 items from tech and
> toys to household essentials and groceries.

For people who live in dense urban areas without Walmarts (e.g. SF, Chicago,
Seattle, NYC, etc.), there's a genuine value prop there. Walmart sells pantry
items for less than basically everyone.

[0]: [https://corporate.walmart.com/newsroom/2020/09/01/walmart-
in...](https://corporate.walmart.com/newsroom/2020/09/01/walmart-introduces-
walmart)

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stonogo
A lot of comments seem to be from people who aren't aware that Amazon's
delivery network kind of sucks in huge swaths of America. If you're not in a
major metropolitan area, Prime delivery took about a week pre-Covid, and
things have only gotten worse since then.

Compare Walmart store locations [1] to Amazon fulfillment centers [2] and
you'll see that delivering from their stores enables them to cover a lot of
rapid-delivery territory where Amazon just isn't.

1 [https://www.scrapehero.com/store/wp-
content/uploads/maps/Wal...](https://www.scrapehero.com/store/wp-
content/uploads/maps/Walmart_USA.png)

2 [https://truthout.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/02-Amazon-
Wa...](https://truthout.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/02-Amazon-Warehouse-
Map-courtesy-of-www.freightos.comG2018google.png)

~~~
adolfojp
That's really it.

I live in Puerto Rico which is one of those places where Amazon kind of sucks.
Items used to take over a week to get here and I was OK with that because I
understand geographic limitations. Now they often take a month, which I'm
willing to accept because of current circumstances. But what puts me off is
that they flat out refuse to sell me many items. I have a Prime subscription
but my last phone didn't come from Amazon. It came from Walmart online. Even
eBay serves my region better.

About Walmart, I have a Walmart owned supermarket within walking distance of
my house, a Supercenter about 9 miles away, and there's a Sam's club right
next to it. My groceries and my medicines come from a store owned by Walmart
and they're everywhere. If I didn't have the time or the energy to buy my
parents their groceries I would get them delivered to them from Walmart.

Now, I don't expect to use their service (if it becomes available here)
because most of my online shopping consists of items that I can't find
locally, but for people in areas like mine who can't visit or who don't like
to visit physical stores this service would be great.

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RcouF1uZ4gsC
This is actually something I am very interested in. There are certain
categories of items, I am worried about buying from Amazon due to
counterfeits. I don't want to have to worry if my phone charger is actually UL
certified or not and if it will electrocute me or burn my house down. If I can
get free delivery from Walmart, and not have to worry about counterfeits, it
would be huge for me.

~~~
Mvhsz
I prefer walmart for the same reason, I have a lot more trust in their supply
chain. And the free delivery times are about the same, coupled with easy
returns to the store. I would guess my Target and walmart online orders are
10x my Amazon orders. But I wouldn't pay for prime or walmart plus simply for
the faster shipping, the free tier is already plenty fast

~~~
turtlebits
IME, Walmart has the worst in store returns experience in any retailer, which
I why prefer not to shop there.

Every time I've had to return something, it has taken at least 20 minutes as
there is either no employee or is understaffed with a 5+ person queue.

~~~
bombledmonk
My experience has been quite good recently. I start them through they app and
they have an express returns spot in the customer service area. I'll start the
return before I even set out to the store, sometimes they'll just comp it and
refund my money without returning.

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bombledmonk
I've used mint.com for over 12 years so I have purchase history going back
that far from both WM and Amazon. I consider myself a relatively heavy user of
Amazon for small ticket items with a few big ones mixed in (with 65 orders
YTD) and I'm in Smalltown America so no Whole Foods grocery delivery.

It's actually an interesting exercise to look at long term spending at stores.
In the past 12 years I've spent $37k @ Amazon compared to nearly $50k at WM.
Big numbers, but averaged out that's not all that much. Most of my grocery
spend in recent years has been at WM due to it being the closest grocery store
and is within walking distance of my house.

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graton
I just don't see how this will compete with Amazon or Amazon Prime.

You only get free shipping with orders $35 or more. I haven't checked recently
but I thought you get that at Amazon without paying for Amazon Prime.

~~~
JaggedJax
I think the cnet article may have that point wrong, or at least confusingly
worded. I can't find anywhere where Walmart says the order must be $35 to get
free delivery with this program, and I know that without subcribing to
anything Walmart already offers free shipping on orders over $35. However even
on Walmart's own pages it really isn't clear what exactly you get in regards
to shipping costs with this program.

~~~
graton
I've seen multiple articles mention $35 minimum order.

For example: [https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2020/09/01/amazon-
prime...](https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2020/09/01/amazon-prime-
walmart-plus-membership-subscription-free-shipping-perks/3448879001/)

If that isn't true then they aren't getting their message out on why this is a
compelling service.

~~~
JaggedJax
Yeah, it's definitely not clear to me why I might sign up for this even if I
always bought from Walmart. Seems to more of a donation to Walmart at this
point.

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disown
How can walmart compete without the ecosystem tie-in that amazon prime has?
Amazon prime has movies, music, twitch, etc. What does walmart plus offer?

It's incredible that amazon's market cap is now 4X walmart's. Amazon is well
on its way to becoming the 2nd 2 trillion dollar company after Apple. Bezos
and his ex-wife's shares are now worth $260 billion. Bezos is the world's
wealthiest person and his wife is the world's wealthiest woman. Of course it's
mostly all on paper at the moment, but the run the big tech companies had in
the past 5 years is breathtaking. Is it substantive or a gigantic bubble?

What's interesting is that it took AAPL and AMZN decades to become a trillion
dollar company. It took AAPL a few months to add another trillion to their
market cap. AMZN is on track to do the same.

~~~
x87678r
Amazon movies and music are junk. You can use twitch without prime. Photo
storage is probably good but I dont trust them enough to spend the effort. I'm
regularly surprised how many people pay the Amazon Prime tax. Its easy to live
without.

~~~
vamsipk
I don't listen to music but Amazon Prime video is not junk. They make high
quality tv shows and have good international content. It's comparable to
Netflix.

~~~
tssva
We must somehow have completely different Amazon Prime video services because
the one I have only has 1 or 2 ok original programming shows and a limited
selection of mostly at best B tier movies.

~~~
dragonwriter
> We must somehow have completely different Amazon Prime video services

Or different tastes.

~~~
x87678r
Hey I like B grade movies, but most of the ones on Prime dont make that cut.
:)

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code4tee
I honestly don’t get the point of this. It’s nearly as expensive as Prime but
gives you a lot less.

Their inability to explain the value proposition when asked that question by a
reporter isn’t showing a great deal of confidence in the offering.

~~~
kube-system
Or from another perspective, it's the price Prime used to be, with the
features Prime used to have.

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mdoms
Americans sure do love giant mega corporations. It doesn't have to be this
way, guys.

~~~
colinmhayes
As far as delivery goes I'm pretty sure it does. To compete with
amazon/walmart you need billions of dollars of capital to invest in logistics.
Small companies just aren't efficient enough.

~~~
mdoms
Why do you need absolutely everything delivered? Have you ever stopped to
consider the environmental effects of having everything you purchase delivered
in its own individual package?

~~~
jakearmitage
Have you considered that he might have a disability? Or people that live with
him are in a risk group for COVID?

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canada_dry
> Walmart will face an uphill battle against "subscription fatigue"

So much this. I'm guessing the next phase of this will be _subscription
aggregators_ who will package these services into bundles e.g. netflix, prime,
uber eats along with a bunch of fringe services for the low-low-monthly-price
of just $199.99.

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brightball
Is it weird that Amazon has gotten so big that I cheer for Walmart just to
make sure there’s competition?

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chromedev
I recently ordered something from Walmart, and they will still sell stuff that
isn't stocked and then you have no idea when it will actually ship when it
appears to already be in stock. I hope that eventually they can at least
provide accurate shipping dates.

~~~
brianwawok
Is this fist party or 3rd party? They are two very different processes.

Much of walmart.com is now filled via 3rd party - same as Amazon (except
perhaps more likely to seller ship vs be marketplace fulfilled).

~~~
wolco
I am still trying to get my 12.99 product that was shipped a month ago but
never moved. Trying to get anything resolved is impossible. I regret not using
amazon.

~~~
brianwawok
Was it first party or third party?

~~~
wolco
Third party. Any tips for successfully resolving this?

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zxcvbn4038
Wal-Mart wants $98 a year to tell me they are out of stock, don’t ship to my
area code, and I need to come to them? Prime Video alone is worth the cost of
Prime, never mind that Amazon sells everything I want and need, and ship it to
my home next day for free. I did my first Amazon Fresh order recently, loved
that they used frozen water bottles to cool perishables, got fresh bread for
the first time since the pandemic started. Now if the liquor stores will just
deliver - there are 19 liquor stores within a three mile radius of me, only
three have web sites, only one delivers (and only through Drizly), selection
is limited. Amazon UK ships alcohol, hopefully US will too one day.

~~~
donw
> Amazon UK ships alcohol, hopefully US will too one day.

You can thank the Progressive Era[1] for giving the US Prohibition[2], the
legacy of which is the insanity of present-day US drug and alcohol laws.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progressive_Era](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progressive_Era)
[2]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prohibition_in_the_United_Stat...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prohibition_in_the_United_States)

~~~
zxcvbn4038
Yes, that is a whole topic in itself. My sister-in-law lives in Utah where not
only do you have to buy all alcohol from the state owned stores, the state
waters down all alcohol over a certain ABV. It makes her very easy to shop for
on the holidays - grab some bottles of the good stuff from another state on
the drive over, but still crazy stuff like that still happens in this age.

~~~
exclusiv
Yeah I saw some dumb laws in Colorado when visiting. I think it was just the
grocery stores with the 3% stuff. So ridiculous. Looks like Colorado allowed >
3.2% in grocery stores starting in 2019. [1] Not too long ago you couldn't buy
beer in Indiana on Sunday. Archaic.

[1] [https://www.5280.com/2019/10/are-grocery-store-beer-sales-
ki...](https://www.5280.com/2019/10/are-grocery-store-beer-sales-killing-
colorados-liquor-stores/)

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bloomingeek
Twenty years ago I wondered why WM didn't dedicate a section in their store to
computers and put Best Buy out of business. Or for that matter, any competitor
of theirs. Sure, they must have thought about who shops in their stores, but
if the prices are good enough, the BMW's will show up. Right?

~~~
smileysteve
In my hometown, Porsche put their dealership right next to Walmart. 15 years
ago.

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bmarquez
> to include more items and more perks, like shipping as fast as same day for
> orders of at least $35

Walmart shipping is already free with a $35 dollar order, it's just 2 day
instead of 1 day.

I hope they would have lowered that minimum order amount if you paid for their
service.

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bigmilesjr
more like walmart plus takes on target delivery

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dominotw
walmart is dirty, gross and depressing. I don't want some horrible crap from
walmart delivered. Your life has take a serious wrong turn if you shop at
walmart. Walmart has lost the plot, Seriously just look at what target is
doing and try to keep up. Walmart needs to stop dreaming about competing with
amazon, they are not even the same orbit. Walmart sucks!

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anonymouswacker
I have grown weary of supporting Bezos' empire and ordering as much as I can
from Walmart in recent months once I noticed that his media arm (WaPo) was
fueling the flames of COVID hysteria and BLM's destruction, which only helped
Amazon and other Big Tech players strangle small American businesses in favor
of offshore, mostly Chinese companies.

Next step is moving my company's cloud from AWS to Azure. Not sure yet what to
do about the surveillance devices (Alexa) as I want something that can run
without an internet connection to a Big Tech company.

