[zaphod12]

There is one single really key difference. Walmart takes responsibility for the products they put in their store. That they are genuine and represented as they are. They squeezed sellers, encouraged moves to china and all of that, but they aren't a marketplace - they are a store. Amazon has abrogated all responsibility in that area and pretended they are the equivalent of the open field on which a flea market is set up.

[phil21]

> Walmart takes responsibility for the products they put in their store.

Amazon also did this for it's physical stores. Walmart does not do this for it's web presence - it has a third party marketplace you need to actively avoid.

I have both Prime and Walmart+ due to credit card benefits, and honestly don't see a huge difference in either experiences. Amazon is more spammy but faster shipping, Walmart less selection and slower but more reliable shipping. Walmart is more curated, but you still need to ignore the third party crap.

[rkagerer]

Walmart third-party is a dumpster fire. Every single thing I ordered through it here in Canada arrived late or not at all, replacement orders sometimes arrived eventually, products were often damaged (a jug of glasses cleaner was leaking right through a soaked outer shipping box), vendors take zero responsibility, and it took multiple calls/emails/delays to get refunds from Walmart.

I avoid it like the plague. I don't even use their website because it's hard to consistently filter that crap out. And their site wasn't great to start off with in any case. Good riddens.

[rascul]

Doesn't setting the retailer to Walmart filter the third part stuff out? Or am I missing something?

[rkagerer]

I think I have to repeat that after each search (at least back when I last used the site). And it usually took many searches to find the product I sought.

[makestuff]

Walmart now operates a marketplace (https://marketplace.walmart.com/). However, I am unsure if they take those same validation steps as they do in their physical stores or not.

[klyrs]

Came here to make that point. I know that newegg and bestbuy have done the same. And, much like amazon and ebay, I expect pretty much zero verification and Sisyphean dispute processes.

[user3939382]

Yep. For the curious, go search Amazon for "1 TB USB" for a good laugh.

[vel0city]

Sadly walmart.com is the same kind of trash. I searched 1TB USB and the top non-sponsored result was this:

https://www.walmart.com/ip/Jonephe-USB-Flash-Drive-1TB-Metal...

Which has some obviously fake reviews along with probably a real comment stating:

"Only problem is the transfer speed sucks and it causes errors in half the files I transfer to it."

Truly emblematic of how these scam USB drives work. And its the top organic result on walmart.com!

[seanmcdirmid]

Ya, and if you report or comment on the scams, Amazon acts to protect the scams. They have to know what is going on and simply don’t care.

[wardedVibe]

they have done a bad enough job that fakespot has a viable business model vetting their products.

[rileyphone]

Another really key difference is that Walmart operates retail locations that compete with (more realistically, undercut) smaller local businesses and gut small town America. Let's not paint a rosier picture just because it happened a while ago.

[Retric]

Amazon has killed plenty of small businesses that survived Walmart. Walmart didn’t go after the hobby shop style niche business the way Amazon’s million product warehouse could.

People worked out you can compete with Walmart by having a deeper selection as long as the population density supports it, but it’s not clear what small retail can do to survive Amazon.

[mtnGoat]

On the flip side Amazon created hundreds of thousands of small business, it allowed them access to a global market. The ones that died could have done the same and remained competitive, they were asleep at the wheel instead. I see Walmart as more of a monopolist by going into small towns and selling at a loss. Whereas Amazon was an equalizer allowing anyone to compete in a global marketplace, those that opted not to, got their lunch stolen.

[Retric]

Hardly, the vast majority of physical stores don’t manufacture anything they simply aggregate merchandise from wholesalers and operate a physical location. There is no way to transition that model to Amazon marketplace because they don’t have any way way to differentiate themselves. Attempting that transition would have simply lost them a great deal of money.

There are a mix of ways to profitability operate with Amazon both legitimately or via various kinds of fraud. However, suggesting that transition is often as reasonable as telling a barber to open a veterinary clinic, it’s just a completely different kind of business.

[mtnGoat]

But that’s changing the measurement to fit your argument, most sellers on Amazon aren’t directly manufacturing their goods either, yet still have margin. We are talking about retailers switching how they offer their goods. Rely less on the store front and just ship more stuff, isn’t a major change to business model. Adding a shipping center isn’t hard.

But either way business is dog eat dog and you have evolve to survive. Don’t blame the competition for building a better mousetrap. This is free markets and capitalism operating as intended.

[Retric]

You’re the one suggesting these companies could have made the switch.

I have no problem with capitalism crushing companies, as long as it’s head to head in a free market rather than based on fraud or avoiding regulations. I am simply pointing out Amazon has been a huge net loss for small businesses, which it objectively has.

[hnbad]

> Amazon created hundreds of thousands of small business

Based on my experience most of those small businesses are reselling uncertified whitelabel shovelware (especially electronics) from Ali Express. That's a bit like praising cancer for rejuvenating the body by reducing the mean age of all cells.

Of course you could also say it created a lot of businesses via "self-employed" last mile delivery drivers but I think we're all adult enough to acknowledge that the gig economy is a scam to skirt labor laws, not an actual net positive for those working within it.

Pretending small businesses could have kept up with Amazon by "doing the same" is absurd. Small businesses lack the infrastructure to offer one day (or even same day) deliveries and free returns with full refunds. We've reached a point where buyers take these things for granted to the point of balking at shipping costs for goods privately sold on eBay classifieds because they have no idea what delivery companies like UPS or DHL charge.

Even as a marketplace, Amazon cannibalizes its sellers via its "Amazon basics" brand which copies products if they get popular enough and often undercuts their pricing while also benefiting from the Amazon branding.

> Whereas Amazon was an equalizer allowing anyone to compete in a global marketplace, those that opted not to, got their lunch stolen.

Saying "allowed anyone" makes it sound like it was optional, yet that "those that opted not to" died off demonstrates that it wasn't. It's nearly impossible to start a small local retail shop but it's also nearly impossible to be a small retail seller on Amazon. There's a reason white label shovelware dropshipping is so ubiquituous: by creating your own brand to resell white label products you make it harder to compare you to your competitors selling the same garbage and you no longer have to directly compete on price. This is effectively the only kind of business on Amazon marketplace that doesn't directly suffer the race to the bottom.

> This is free markets and capitalism operating as intended.

Yes, that's the problem. Free markets accelerate monopolization by forcing local small businesses to compete globally with international megacorps on those megacorps' terms.

The benefits of small local businesses are externalities to capitalism so they get sanded off eventually. Free global markets just rapidly speed up that process.

[mtnGoat]

Exactly, don’t hate the player, hate the game.

I’m not saying it’s right or wrong, nor fair, more pointing out that attacking them for using the levers and dials available To them to return value to shareholders, is short sighted. literally every other company is doing the same, just not as efficiently.

[tcmart14]

I do agree with your point on Walmart, what is on the shelves at a physical location. However, Walmart's online store is just as bad, if not worst, than Amazon.