$75.00 Wal-Mart Challenge

 

Happy Friday, my loves!  How are you today?

If you know me, you know that I am a vehemently a NOT Wal-Mart shopper.

No, not because I believe myself to be "too good" or anything like that. ( I excitedly shop at plenty of discount retailers.) There are a plethora of ethical reasons that motivate me to not shop at Wal-Mart. I'm not going to get into those here. This is a bloggette about beauty and fashion, not me getting on a soap box and lecturing you .

Another key reason as to why I do not shop at Wal Mart is that in my opinion, they have such a blatant lack of care for their customer's time. At least at the Wal Mart in my town, they will gladly allow their customers to wallow in lines 20 people deep without even considering opening up an additional register or two.

Anyhow... a couple of weeks back I was having a conversation with a good friend of mine. She is aware that the majority of my shopping is from places like Nordstrom. She asked if I would even be able to find anything at Wal Mart that I would wear. I said "Hell if I know, but let's see!" I set a budget of $75.00 and went onto their website.

First things first, the website takes its cues from the store its self. I found it to be SO inefficient and not customer oriented. 

Regardless, I purchased the 4 items in the blog graphic. Here are my honest thoughts on each of them.

First up was this black sweater. I'm thoughts on are that its "perfectly acceptable". The quality and fit were fine. The style certainly is not super current, but I can get a season out of it. Overall, it didn't impress or disappoint me.

Next up, are these snake print combat boots. These were a pleasant surprise. The quality of these boots is much higher than I was expecting. Style wise, they are very on point and very on trend.

Disclaimer, things go down hill from here.

When I saw these sneakers, I got excited. They are an exact dupe for a pair of Adidas sneakers that I wanted but were sold out in my size. I ordered these in a women's 7. When they arrived, I pulled the box out of the shipping box, just what I ordered...YAY!

Or, so I thought. As soon as I opened the box, I saw that it was a bigger size in there than what was labeled.

 

Hey, mistakes can happen-no biggie. The problem was how Wal-Mart makes it next to impossible to contact customer service. I finally found the number, got an electronic run around and waited on hold for 25 minutes before hanging up. It was simply not worth wasting any more of my time on $16.00 shoes.

Last and certainly least is this hat. It looks 100% better in the photo than it does in real life. It feels as cheap as it looks. Yet again though, the real problem was from Wal-Mart directly. They shipped it in a bag.

An ounce of common sense would tell you that shipping a hat in a bag will result in it being crushed during the transit process. That is precisely what happened.

I did my best to attempt to push it back into shape. It was to no avail. The hat is permanently damaged.

  I learned from the sneakers that attempting to call customer service is a lost cause. Purchasing this hat was tantamount to lighting a ten dollar bill on fire. It was that wasteful.

Final verdict, will I give Wal-Mart another chance in the future?

No, not on your life. There is a drastic difference between a bargain and cheap.

I'm all for getting a bargain.  I have no desire to acquire cheap articles of clothing, or anything else for that matter.

My hubby is a finance guy. In the past he calculated out our household spending at Target. On average, our savings at Wal-mart would be between 20-46 cents weekly. That is hardly worth the extra time that it takes just to checkout at Wal-Mart. That along with the utter lack of basic customer services, generates a hard NO from me.

With that said, if you do shop there and have had better experiences, that is great. Again, this post is not shaming or condemning anyone who does shop there. This is simply a recap of my experiences and an explanation as to why this store is not and will not be a place that I spend my money at.

Okay, that is that. Have a great weekend, babes!

XO,

SheShe