I tried to purchase a Canon ZR60 Digital Camcorder from the Farmington and Deslodge, MO WalMart Super Center locations.
I found at both locations the price on the popular camcorders to be marked up $90.00 dollars compared to WalMart's own web site and many other online stores. I went home and printed out a list of all the camcorders that WalMart has online and went back to both the stores and found that over half the camcorders in the stores where marked more than $50.00 compared to Walmart's own web site. The least popular camcorders that weren't marked where exactly the same price as the online store.
I questioned Deslodge store employee that was helping me. I asked him about the price difference and he told me that by the time that I add shipping, handeling & tax it would come to near the same price if I where to buy it from Walmart online.
So here's the math:
WalMart Online price $374.62
Shipping $1.87
Tax $22.78
Total $399.27
Store Price $497.66
Ouch! There's still a $98.39 difference from the store price. So How do you explain this other than it being fraudulent price mark up. So I left and went to the Farmington location
Now I asked the same question at the Farmington store and this was the reply the I got from the nice lady trying to help me there. She said there was an e-mail about this and we where told not to sell the camcorders at the same price as the WalMart Web store due to the web store having special offerings with the Camcorders.
Well I informed her that Walmart Web store is not offering anything extra online and that all the items are exactly the same. Some priced correctly and others marked way up. So then she said im sorry maybe you are looking at the wrong model numbers. So then I showed her the print out of the items from the web store and matched them to the items they had on display. She had no further comments after this and walked off.
So I left the store a bit pissed off because now I know these marked up items are a deliberate attempt to rip of Holiday shopping customers.
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