Hellobee Boards

Oh my goodness, that is ridiculous.

I don't quite understand why the WalMart managers were allowing these transactions? Surely they knew there was a problem, and they're allowed to refuse service, right?

The individuals who stole the items should be prosecuted for theft.

@pui: Yeah, that makes sense. Although, essentially stealing hundreds of dollars of groceries from Wal Mart, taxpayers, whoever has to pay, could be argued as disrespectful! Haha

It just makes me sad that people can be so inconsiderate and selfish. Those programs exist to help people who really need it.

@swurlygurl: Yeah, the real horrible people are those who completely took advantage of the system.

@MsLipGloss: Yeah, I was thinking about that - what about a Mom that NEEDED food/formula at that moment for a crying baby? I rationalized that if you really needed it you would have to stick to your $50 limit (I think that's what I read? I don't know much about the system) and your card # gets written down, and gets checked against a running list to make sure you're not going back for more. BUT, that's quite a bit of work, makes the lines that much longer, and hard to enforce/staff. IDK, it was just a bad situation all in all.

I think Walmart made a big mistake by just simply continuing on as usual, allowing people to buy unlimited amounts of stuff because their cards showed unlimited funds. They must have known something was wrong. I guess they assumed they would be reimbursed because it was a glitch? I don't know what they were thinking.

It's a crazy situation but I hesitate to judge the customers too harshly. The money people get for food stamps is not guaranteed to be enough to cover food for your family for the whole month. I think it's easy to be judgmental when you do know that you are able to feed your kids, but I just don't think any of us can say for sure what we'd do if all of a sudden we realized that maybe for a little while we wouldn't have to worry about having enough to eat.

@kiddosc: yes, presumably because you could freeze items or store nonperishables to get you through the times in the very near future when you don't have enough...

It sounds like there was a procedure in place-- the $50 emergency limit. Walmart chose not to do that. It chose not to not accept cards until the limits were restored like all the other grocery stores. They allowed people to overspend, what did they think was going to happen? That the government would just pay for all that, meaning huge profits for them and a huge loss for tax dollars? I think Walmart was in the wrong here and I don't feel bad for them footing the bill.

@MrsSCB: They (Wal-Mart) knew there was a glitch and chose to honor the cards anyway because were (presumably) thinking *let's not punish those in need because the (no doubt well-fed) folks in DC can't keep/get their shizazz together* . . .

And I don't know about you, but I certainly don't have the ability to properly store *10* grocery carts full of food.

@kiddosc: I agree.

@kiddosc: I agree the people were also in the wrong, but in terms of who should pay the bill, I think Walmart was equally liable and they actually have the ability to pay. I guess if you could trace all the people you could discontinue their benefits for a few weeks because presumably they got enough food to cover them for a while. However you can't ask them to pay money (they don't have it) and I think in some cases discontinuing benefits until the full amount was paid may be tricky because they're on food stamps because they NEED them. Mostly because they have kids. Even if their parents were assholes, I have issue with kids not getting their milk and bread to punish the parents.

I am really surprised at this. Here in MA they just suspended use of EBT until it was back online. I think that Wal-mart made a poor call on this one...and shame on people for knowingly taking advantage of it. I agree with others that they should have their EBT docked. Sad.

@Ash: of course it's not supposed to cover all food, but if you have a job and have food stamps and STILL cant afford enough food, then there's something else wrong with our system. Maybe if they were paid a living wage then they wouldn't be struggling so much and they wouldn't need more help than we can give. That's getting into a whole other issue, though.

All I'm trying to say here is I understand that I'm relatively privileged when compared to a lot of people. I have NO idea what it's like to struggle and stress about having enough food for my family, so I don't feel comfortable judging when I don't really know their stories and what they're dealing with. I'm not saying I would do the same thing. I don't know what I would do.

I don't feel badly for Wamart at all. They function such a slimy business model in order to maximize shareholder revenue at everyone else's expense. It's not like this situation ultimately hurts their bottom line much/at all. I can't imagine this level of product loss is more than a blip on their corporate radar. So my sympathy level for them is nil.

That doesn't negate personal responsibility, but I'm not entirely comfortable slashing already meager benefits to a group of people who are already not getting by, especially programs whose main beneficiary group are children.

I find it absurd that people want to blame wal-mart. Everyone wants to blame big bad corporate America. Heaven forbid we hold these people responsible for the STEALING they did. If wal-mart denied them people would be bitching about how mean old wal-mart refused to sell food to hungry families.

@MamaMoose: I think both statements can be true. Wal-Mart really did screw up. And people at their stores really did steal.

I think Wal-Mart should eat the losses, but be allowed to recover the funds from the people who stole it. And those people should either agree to pay the money back (on a payment plan) or face some sort of penalty for what they did.

I don't see how Walmart could be regarded as innocent in this situation when the craziness didn't happen to other stores. If Walmart is the only place this happened, then it's pretty obvious they made a decision the other stores didn't, and now they're not happy with that decision.

@cmomma17: Oh yeah, those couponers are out of control! I've seen guys buy tampax before just because they could. Whaaa? haha

@cmomma17: It doesn't matter. Stealing is stealing. Even if you "needed" to steal you still stole.

I think the solution is simple. They spent over their limit this month (a glitch allowing them to do so is irrelevant), so they don't get any money next month, or however many months until it's all been "paid back". When it's all made up for, they get their regular balance back.

Might sound harsh, but if there was a glitch with my credit card that allowed me to spend thousands of dollars over my credit limit, I would still owe that money back and I wouldn't be able to use that card any more. I'm still responsible for it, glitch or not, especially if I spent so much knowing about this glitch.

They're lucky still, someone else has to pay back their debt.