Not that I think this is happening but IF Ziplock, Mobile 1 or Prestone made a deal with Walmart to defraud the public, why would you continue to purchase that brand in any store?

 

Jo, one reason is that out in the country, there aren't that many stores.

I've had a suspicion that some of thre OTC health care stuff eg H2O2, alcohol, some vitamin pills nt the equivalent quality found in the pharma department stores. Can't prove this to my satisfaction but do believe there's merit to this lead post.

 

I don’t think so. I think the reason places like Walmart or Costco can sell stuff so cheap is because of the volume of the product they will buy and sell.

This is a story I read years ago that shows the problem places like Walmart can cause for manufacturers. It talks about a deal Vlasic pickles had with them and how Walmart was selling their product much cheaper than Vlasic wanted because they thought it took away from Vlasic being seen as a Premium brand.

The Wal-Mart You Don’t Know

The giant retailer’s low prices often come with a high cost. Wal-Mart’s relentless pressure can crush the companies it does business with and force them to send jobs overseas. Are we shopping our way straight to the unemployment line?

www.fastcompany.com

 

Walmart and their suppliers consistently answer “no.” They state they do not supply/receive products of lesser quality.

 

Walmart is king when it cones to negotiation. Hell to sell your product in their stores you must have a vp and office in North West Arkansas. That way Walmart doesn’t have to pay for all the flights for meetings and such.
Walmart gas the upper hand in negotiations. If mobil will not sell at the price walmart wants, walmart pulls any and all mobil products off their shelves and replaces it with Havoline. Etc etc.

 

My brother is a C level employee of a walmart supplier. They do not have any employees in AR. But god knows he’s flown back from Europe to make a meeting with Walmart. But it works both ways- when Walmart wants something other than cost concessions, it is assumed Walmart knows the market better than they do, particularly the lower end of the shooting/ hunting/outdoor market.

 

They probably do this by selling their store brands.

 

Used to be that the big box stores had the manufacturers make a discount version of the same product, anyone else remember "Western Field "?
Same basic products just lower quality finish.

Right now, any difference in quality of ziplocks for example would fall into the supply and demand problems and the rapidity of manufacturing.

Look at .22 ammunition, a couple of times recently, because of the demands, production was ramped up to 11, and the quality dropped from what we have been used to for decades.

All manufacturers have a set of standards for each product, sometimes you just get the low end even in the good times of plenty.

 

As stated above, they deal in high volume, even with name brands. As far as the pharmacy and grocery items, they have their Equate and Great Value lines. If you compare ingredients they are identical to the name brands in most cases. They need the name brand there in all of its glory so that they can sell their high margin in house brand next to it. It doesn't help them to have name brands that are diluted or lesser quality compared to when purchased elsewhere. If they did, both companies would face legal action from the FTC.

 

I certainly can't speak for all brands but as a man who sells welding supplies, I can tell you beyond the shadow of a doubt that some welding machine manufacturers will sell one version of a welder to the big box stores while providing a higher quality unit (by the same name or similar name) through my dedicated welding supply center.

So selling cheaper substitutions can and does happen. Just keep you eyes pealed.

 

I certainly can't speak for all brands but as a man who sells welding supplies, I can tell you beyond the shadow of a doubt that some welding machine manufacturers will sell one version of a welder to the big box stores while providing a higher quality unit (by the same name or similar name) through my dedicated welding supply center.

So selling cheaper substitutions can and does happen. Just keep you eyes pealed.

I used to work for Jackson welding safety, we sold the same items to home depot as we sold to snap-on or the welding retailers. the only thing different was the cheap safety glasses, the bulk HD came from china instead of the usual suppliers. we had to buy them by the container to get the discount. around the time I left, most of the brands we had outsourced to China. the welding clamps and electrode holders were being knocked off already by China, with better quality, so it was easy to switch for the cost savings...they actually made better ripoff products than we did in many cases. most want to believe everything made in the US is the best quality. I guarantee you it is not...

now I work for a private label health/OTC company. we sell walmart and other stores the exact same product formulations for their private label as we do the name brand.

AFAIK, the only difference for Walmart on many items is package size usually...

 

They do it with power tools and lawn equipment. If you look close enough there will be a # or letter of in the model number, they have them made to cut corners, i.e. plastic gears, cheaper motors, etc.

The guy that services my stuff can tell a Chinamart or Homodepot John Deere or Cub Cadet, lawn tractor from one that came from the dealer just by looking at it, I have had bad luck with name brand power tools that came from big box stores that failed, to many times, when the same brand from a real store has lasted me for years.

 

What do you consider a "real store"?

 

IT seems all companies do this. I am a Rep for Domestic Shrink Warp Equipment and Over-wrap equipment plus some foreign stuff.
When one needs a non Mfg part but a Purchased Inventory to use on the machine said Motor or whatever will have a Part Number on the Name Plate. Take that Name Plate to a Motor Distributor and give that number and they will say they can not sell that as it is an OEM, they aren't even allowed to give me the equivalent that is made. So I have research and Find the Motor that matches except the Lead Wire or some else that is minor has been Changed for the OEM. Now I buy said Motor with a different part number on it but it preforms like original. It cost me 1/3 of what the OEM is charging and I can charge OEM price to end user and make a decent profit. When you have office personal and shipping you cannot make a profit on a 20% markup. I have gotten good at sourcing a lot of foreign parts. With the Duty and BS and time it takes now days.

 

At least on my lawnmower (Simplicity) they haven't prostituted themselves.
Although they did hold the line on price by not offering the Vanguard engine which would probably outlast 2 mowers.
I have one of the last Vanguards.

Here's an anomaly, Costco though sells their brand called Kirkland and states its equal or better than name brand and in my experience it is.

Plumbing fixtures are a good example of you get what you pay for regardless of brand.
Plumbing supply vs big box stores ...big difference.

 

At least on my lawnmower (Simplicity) they haven't prostituted themselves.
Although they did hold the line on price by not offering the Vanguard engine which would probably outlast 2 mowers.
I have on of the last Vanguards.

Here's an anomaly, Costco though sells their brand called Kirkland and states its equal or better than name brand and in my experience it is.

Plumbing fixtures are a good example of you get what you pay for regardless of brand.
Plumbing supply vs big box stores ...big difference.

The box store is partially true. Now a days jif you buy delta go to wherever the price is cheapest. Both are made to crap standards.

 

When you compare prices, check model numbers. I am typing this on a computer that has a slightly different model number than others of the same description. I bought it at Costco. So far no problems, but it is a different model and I do believe that is somewhat bait and switch since most people will look at the brand name and not the model number when purchasing. Particularly on clothing, appliances and electronics it's not unknown to have different models for different markets.

 

I have heard it said that Walmart sells factory seconds on a few items, such as bathroom towels and some clothing items, but that is about it. That being said, that was only hearsay and my source wasn’t exactly what I would call reliable. I highly doubt they are doing that. If they are, they sure are doing a great job of keeping it under wraps.

I don’t shop at Walmart, but my reason has nothing to do with their products. It’s all about horrible customer service and employees that don’t give a rats behind whether I spend some money in their establishment or not. The horrible customer service at the Walmart’s around here may not be what you see in your neck of the woods. At least I hope that’s not the case, if you are spending money there.

 

1911, I spent the better part of today busting my butt for the Walmart customer. Admiittedly some are burned out but there are plenty like me.

I don't buy a lot of name brands except laundry detergent, and mine works just fine.

 

1911, I spent the better part of today busting my butt for the Walmart customer. Admiittedly some are burned out but there are plenty like me.

I don't buy a lot of name brands except laundry detergent, and mine works just fine.

Sorry purplekitty. I sure hope I didn’t offend you. My comments were a little short sighted. I can’t paint everyone with the same brush.

 

I find a lot of Walmart employees here are newer immigrants or seniors and are very helpful . We live in a smaller town so not a lot of choices but I have no qualms about Walmart except when I go looking pathetic like I just crawled out of a barn like "The People of Walmart" . That is scary.

 

I don't know if they still do it, because I don't buy anything locally that I can buy on line due to my state's monster sales taxes, but Walmart used to sell consumer electronics like DVD players that had the same manufacturers part number with the letters "wm" appended to the part number. I read about it on line. After buying a DVD player online, I found the same model number except for the "wm" at a thrift store. From the exterior they looked exactly the same and the date code showed that hey were made within a few months of each other.
When I took the top cover off, the wm version looked like one of those little plastic DVD players that stores used to give away during the holidays. It was crap compare to the one I bought on line.
The article said that Walmart would sell junk, and when the stuff stopped working after a week or so, Walmart employees would try to up sell customers more expensive non wm stuff.

 

It’s 100% true that Walmart pressures makers to create cheaper models, so they can sell more volume.
IIRC, Snapper lawnmowers was one company that told them no.

I don't know if they still do it, because I don't buy anything locally that I can buy on line due to my state's monster sales taxes,

Huh. Where are you finding online vendors that aren’t charging state taxes? Pretty sure it’s a law that they do, and if they don’t, it’s probably a state law that you claim the purchases and pay your taxes yourself.

 

From a manufacturing standpoint, that sounds like it would be a nightmare.

 

Not if its legal to do (make small changes in an otherwise identical product with the same or nearly exact same part number. Lot of money to be made when your inventory of your store has a million products or thereabouts, and sells a ton of product every year. A million nickels or dimes adds up quick for these giant stores

 

When I worked there eons ago, an old timer stocker told me this is the reason you can't find Rubbermaid totes at Walmart, only Sterlite. WM tried to bully Rubbermaid into providing an inferior product in order to meet their price point. Rubbermaid wouldn't do it because they didn't want to compromise their reputation with cheap crap, and now neither does business with the other in that particular product line. Meanwhile, everyone knows the Sterlite totes will crack and fall apart, but the price is... right?

 

What I like about Sterilite is, they're made in USA and they're all made out of food safe plastic, even the 18 gallon totes, all colors. I called the company to find this out, to see if I could store my dog food in the bins without the bags.

 

It’s the same problem on Amazon. It’s knock offs being branded as the original. China pumps out plenty of this stuff.

 

Yes, I was thinking the same issue for Amazon--counterfeits, etc and the probability that it will become increasingly difficult to buy quality products online and know for sure they are the genuine thing and not a knockoff. Fortunately the Amazon returns policy is quite good overall, but will make it challenging for the local small box quality stores as they will increasingly have to offer the same liberal return policy and with it the attendant headaches that come with those returns

 

Years ago my wife worked for Magnavox. She was friends with several design engineers. They all said don’t buy Magnavox brand at Walmart. It is cheap crap.

 

Walmart has done similar with guns, but it is never the same SKU. For instance they sold a rifle in a 22 inch barrel that standardly came in a 24 inch. There was a "W" at the end of the model number to denote it not being the same. So the manufacturer cut a deal, but not to supply cheaper items under the same sku, just to supply a cheaper version of an existing item. Happens all the time. You see a lot of this around Black Friday. The cheap laptop might be a slight mod of the standard one and have less memory, smaller hard drive, or a slower processor.

Years ago my wife worked for Magnavox. She was friends with several design engineers. They all said don’t buy Magnavox brand at Walmart. It is cheap crap.
.

I worked for Phillips for a while. Magnavox was the "cheap" line anyway. Phillips actually made a HUGE amount of stuff for stores and such under the store brand. They would meet whatever spec the store chain wanted, but did not put the Magnavox or Phillips brand on it. Heck they made in excess of 1/2 of the computer monitors on the market at that point (right as flat screens came out). I had the job of setting up warranty repair on any they sold under the Phillips name anywhere in the US. We did not have that many per year actually. I was surprised.

 

My brother-in-law worked with a guy that had previously worked at a company that made socks for Walmart. He told him that they treated the socks with some kind of chemical (acid?) that made them wear out more quickly so you’d have to replace them faster than socks sold to other retailers. 🤷🏻‍♂️

 

Now that's taking things to a whole new low level!

 

I fell into their oil filter trap years ago. They had name brand filters, too attractive a price to pass up. My issue was with a Fram filter, since I read that these should be avoided as a brand. I put one on a 305 Chevy and it took a while to get the oil pressure up, even though I pour oil into the filter. On cold starts, it would knock at times, just for a second/. After 2 days, I bit the bullet and got a AC Delco filter.

I looked up the Fram part number online. The WM filter had an A after the Fram stock number. Did some more research and never used a Fram filter again. But the light bulb in my head went off, how many other off quality items are they selling?

 

I fell into their oil filter trap years ago. They had name brand filters, too attractive a price to pass up. My issue was with a Fram filter, since I read that these should be avoided as a brand. I put one on a 305 Chevy and it took a while to get the oil pressure up, even though I pour oil into the filter. On cold starts, it would knock at times, just for a second/. After 2 days, I bit the bullet and got a AC Delco filter.

I looked up the Fram part number online. The WM filter had an A after the Fram stock number. Did some more research and never used a Fram filter again. But the light bulb in my head went off, how many other off quality items are they selling?

I'm certainly not in the know but why would Fram or any other manufacturer want to hurt their brand? It's not like there is any real savings for a manufacturer to skimp on the filter material.

What I've seen is manufacturers have a different sku number for Walmart/Target/Best Buy so they don't have to price-match, all other specs are identical but they won't pricematch because one digit is off.

 

A third of all jeans sold in the United States, are sold through Walmart, the world's largest retailer.

In 2002, Levi Strauss had been priced out of the market by their non existent access to discount stores. So a deal was struck between the two companies. Levi Strauss began production of exclusive signature brands for Walmart, but the contractual pricing model also necessitated a reduction in perceived quality.

As such, I am sure that other manufactures reduce both price and quality, for their products to be sold by Walmart.

 

A third of all jeans sold in the United States, are sold through Walmart, the world's largest retailer.

In 2002, Levi Strauss had been priced out of the market by their non existent access to discount stores. So a deal was struck between the two companies. Levi Strauss began production of exclusive signature brands for Walmart, but the contractual pricing model also necessitated a reduction in perceived quality.

As such, I am sure that other manufactures reduce both price and quality, for their products to be sold for Walmart.

I could certainly see that but it wouldn't be under the same model number or sku.

 

The moment of revelation is a little different for every person who experiences it. For Sam Walton, founder of Wal-Mart, the road to Damascus came in the form of a pair of knickers. At the time – 1945 – Walton was in his late twenties, and was running a small department store in Newport, Arkansas belonging to a franchise called Ben Franklin. Walton had grown up in Missouri and attended the state university, then gone on to a clerical job during the war. He married Helen Robson, borrowed some money from her lawyer-banker father, then opened his Ben Franklin ‘variety store’.

The life-changing pair of panties appeared in a list of goods sold by a garment-industry middleman in New York. The pants were ‘two-barred, tricot satin panties with an elastic waist’ and their price, $2 a dozen, was 50 cents cheaper than that offered by Walton’s current supplier. This differential allowed Walton to sell the knickers at four for $1 instead of three for $1. The panties began to get up off the shelves and walk out of the shop on their own. The clouds parted, a beam of light shone down, and, as Walton reports in his autobiography, Made in America:

Here’s the simple lesson we learned ... which eventually changed the way retailers sell and customers buy all across America: say I bought an item for 80 cents. I found that by pricing it at $1 I could sell three times more of it than by pricing it at $1.20. I might make only half the profit per item, but because I was selling three times as many, the overall profit was much greater. Simple enough. But this is really the essence of discounting: by cutting your price, you can boost your sales to a point where you earn far more at the cheaper retail price than you would have by selling the item at the higher price. In retailer language, you can lower your mark-up but earn more because of the increased volume.

Wal-mart made many innovations in their supply chain that lowered their cost of goods.
Some of these included forcing companies to off-shore production and transferring costs on to their vendors.
So vendors were forced to produce goods at lower costs!

 

An this "ladies and gentlemen" is how Walmart works to bring you lower price on things in their stores. I drove truck for Walmart's only competitor in big box retail, Ryder, and we were a contract carrier for Target. Target operates just like Walmart and does everything to keep unions out of every part of their business. Almost every place we picked up merchandise there were Walmart trucks picking up the same exact products as we were. These were sweat shops in the Los Angeles metro area. Walmart has so much buying power in what they buy and who they buy it from. Walmart has a certain profit margin that they require to make an item worth their selling it. They don't need to ask a manufacture to cut corners on a brand name product unless it is made exclusively for the Walmart customer and then you can only buy that item at Walmart. The product will have fewer features because of the price point.

Everybody wants a deal and Manufactures' want to sell more of their widgets ever year and Walmart is their answer because Walmart discounts the MSRP right up front so you know when you see the price that is it, no haggling, just grab it, pay and go. Ask yourself why you buy at Walmart, answer to save money. Manufactures don't sell seconds to Walmart because they don't want Walmart customers to stop buying their products at Walmart. Walmart is the LARGEST customer of nearly every manufacture of products that they sell. The largest customer base where you can go in and put your hands on the item before you buy it or take it home and open it up and take it back for any reason with about the only question asked is do you have the receipt. The employee doesn't care why because management does not want confrontations with customers.

1911, I spent the better part of today busting my butt for the Walmart customer. Admiittedly some are burned out but there are plenty like me.

I don't buy a lot of name brands except laundry detergent, and mine works just fine.

This Lady PurpleKitty is a great person and has worked hard helping others and knows how it really is at Walmart and is an asset to the store she works at.
Walmart employees are no different than other retail employees. As a customer, if you walk into Walmart with your attitude of these employees are just low life Walmart employees that couldn't get a job anywhere else, they can smell it on you and you stink....... Walmart is there to sell you items you need and you are too cheap to buy it someplace else, "GET OVER IT."

 

Years ago when VCRs were common, as they broke down I took them apart to find the failures .
Though the out side looked different the insides were the same, and the fried components were the same as well. Many times the solder joints were incomplete no contact at all. In many cases the in put and out put jacks were never connected except for the simplest ones .