Incredibly frustrating experience with Customer Service and Walmart's photo services that…read morehighlights a serious lack of customer service and organization.
TLDR: CS was a disaster. Our photos were damaged, and the "managers" were unhelpful and disorganized when we tried to get a refund.
When we placed our photo order in-store, it took about an hour for an older employee to come and process the orders. There were clear frustrations by other customers but since he was pleasant, I let it go. When he got to us, he assured us that if we didn't like the photos or found them to be poor quality, we could get a refund with no issues. His exact words were, "If you don't like the photos or they're bad quality, I'll give you a refund, and you can do whatever you want with them." He then told us to wait for an email to come pick them up. We trusted this information and left, expecting the process to go smoothly. We never received the pick up email.
After two weeks of silence, we returned to the store only to find that our order had been sitting on the floor for an unknown amount of time. A younger employee we spoke to didn't seem to care, nor could he tell us how long the order had been there, even though the box was clearly marked with the date of arrival.
When we checked the photos, they were damaged--rolled in a way that caused wrinkles, folds, and scratches. The ink on the photos had deteriorated because it had transferred and smudged during transit, leading to noticeable loss of image quality. When we asked for a refund, the same young employee claimed he couldn't do anything and directed us to call a phone number that never connected us to anyone. To make matters worse, he simply left the kiosk and never returned, leaving us waiting for 20 minutes.
A second employee with an "assistant general manager" tag then advised us to get a refund at customer service. On our way there, I received an email saying our order was ready for pickup--while I was already holding the damaged products. At customer service, yet another "manager" took 15 minutes to process the refund, even after seeing the clearly damaged photos and proof of purchase, and claiming they needed to shred the photos as part of their policy--the exact opposite of what we were told before.
The ordeal continued with conflicting statements from different employees. One claimed they couldn't leave the customer service area, even though he had just done so minutes earlier. More employees got involved, none of whom introduced themselves or seemed to communicate with each other. One of them, with a name tag "Sherry", even gaslit us numerous times (emphasis on numerous) by denying everything we had been told earlier, suggesting that we were lying about our experience. She then blamed FedEx, the printers, and other factors outside of our knowledge and claimed that Walmart had no responsibility for the quality or delivery of the photos, despite us showing her our in-store order confirmation.
Adding insult to injury, we were told that they couldn't help us unless we remembered the names of all the employees we had interacted with two weeks earlier. I asked if they could look up the history of purchases and she said no. After leaving in frustration, I returned to ask for the shredded photos, only to be told that they hadn't shredded them yet but would do so in front of me. After another 10 minutes of waiting, the employee emerged with what looked like photos cut up with scissors, claiming they had just shredded them.
Walmart Heartland desperately needs to train its employees on basic customer service and internal communication. The managers were not managing. The experience was beyond frustrating; as a Walmart+ member, I will never do business here again.
