Do you buy your clothes at Wal Mart?

[Dan F]

Not trying to justify. Just pointing out the hypocrisies in the logic of the morality cheerleaders. It would be like like standing on a street corner holding a sign that says Meat is Murder while wearing a fur coat

I don't avoid Walmart because of moral arguments - the truth is that all large, publicly traded companies answer only to the bottom line.

I don't shop there because they deceitfully pass off their extra-low-quality merchandise as merely low-quality merchandise. The Power-Wheels jeep I linked to earlier ( http://reviews.walmart.com/1336/1115...rt=helpfulness ) is only one example, they do this kind of crap with consumer electronics, appliances, and who knows what else. The fact that they label it as the same brand and model while it has different features and/or internal components seems like it should be illegal, but apparently is not. When you do a Google search for a particular item Walmart often comes up as the lowest price, but only because what they are selling is a shoddy, cut-corners version of the actual item.

If they sold the same thing for less money I might shop there, but the truth is, they don't...

 

[Inglorious]

They also advertise the lowest price, and will match any competitor that is advertising a product cheaper yet if you try to use this policy they will point to a very slight change to the model # so they can claim that it is technically different and they don't have to price match. Another shady practice they pulled here-one weekend in mid-August the entire state has no sales tax on qualifying clothes, shoes, and other back to school items. The week leading up to this event WM ran a huge ad campaign that implied very strongly that they were the only company offering a tax free weekend, and that it applied to all purchases. While technically not illegal, it was very deceitful and was meant to take advantage of those without the means to do the research to find out otherwise.

 

[heatherbeast]

It's pretty presumptuous to claim that people who object to Wal-Mart for the treatment of their employees, manufacturer choice, and environmental impact haven't done the research and followed through. The topic is about Wal-Mart, so that is what people will be talking about in this particular thread. I agree with you, Wal-Mart /isn't/ the only one. No one has claimed otherwise in this thread.

I've taken a good long hard look at Hasbro's working conditions for adult collector/children's toy Transformers itch. Or ALL of Nestle's, Hersheys, Mars, etc. food products based on their child salve labor for mass market chocolate (/that's/ the hard one to stick to for me, and hell, anyone else). Ditto for coffee, as well as new smartphones that are so heavily marketed to us.

 

[dogofwar]

There's nothing hypocritical about not shopping at Wal-Mart because they treat their employees poorly (and I don't enjoy shopping there). No different than not buying gas at BP or Exxon.

I know that just about every store has an unhappy employee. Or sources stuff from China. And every oil company has soiled the environment at one time or another.

Nor do I have perfect information about every business where I shop (or could shop).

That no store or business is absolutely morally perfect (just as no person is) doesn't mean that I should abandon any consideration for the ethics of that business in my choice whether to support them or not with my hard-earned dollars.

Put another way, I choose to support businesses that tend to do the right thing for their customers and employees...and not support those that don't.

Matt

Not trying to justify. Just pointing out the hypocrisies in the logic of the morality cheerleaders. It would be like like standing on a street corner holding a sign that says Meat is Murder while wearing a fur coat