In the last few months I have found myself going to Walmart more and more often. It is not because we enjoy shopping at Walmart more now or enjoy Target less. It is (mostly*) because of Free Site to Store Shipping. Also due to an error on Walmarts part on one item I ordered online, their customer service rep not only offered to match the price we ordered at (the price had gone up since) but also offered to to ship it to our house instead of the store for free. *I said mostly because now there is a new attraction to going to Walmart – their 3$ wine. So far I’ve tried two of the white wines and they were both pretty good, far better than the one I got for $3.29 from Trader Joes in Richmond. (IMHO)
Also with the site to store shipping, you can completely avoid all store lines, go directly to the Site to Store pickup and take whatever you have ordered. Walmart.com’s prices have also been lower than anywhere else for the things we were looking at buying (mostly baby stuff) even after counting in taxes.
After creating our baby registry at Target.com, we realized that Target.com is operated like a completely separate entity. Items that are available in store are not always at Target.com and it was not easy to find only items available in store on the website. Also since target doesn’t offer free site to store shipping, it made no sense to add online items.
The other issue with Target is their “no price match” policy. Walmart will pricematch even items that require store cards and they will also price match sales prices of local stores.
Even in this bad market, I don’t understand how Target cannot offer simple things like Price Match, free shipping to Store to attract more traffic. But then they can’t even get the store and the website in sync completely. What can I say, Walmart is doing everything right. Maybe I should replace my Target stock with Walmart stock?