Walmart trying to force RIAA to lower CD prices

[MultimediaMan]

Actually, Wal-Mart does sell edited CDs that would otherwise be classified "racy" in content;

Typical examples: Usher and 50 Cent are usually edited for content; Hip Hop tunes with coarse language are edited.

Most mainstream Top 40 stuff that is sold is what you would get everywhere else. There will be major changes to the Music Distribution system in Wal-Mart in the near future, if what I hear turns out to be correct.

[Dilitante1]

PLAY NICE, enough personal attacks.


Wal-mart sucks, it is no longer a family oriented company it was when Sam was alive. Get over it. Corporate philosophy rules nowadays, "more for less, cheaper is better for profits" is all that is spewed in board rooms. Screw your employees, and make as much as you can cutting benefits. Visit http://walmartsucks.org/ for more info.

[Jon P. Inghram]

This thread was doomed from the beginning, shoulda been posted in the Temp Forum.

[Helevitia]

Originally posted by Jon P. Inghram
This thread was doomed from the beginning, shoulda been posted in the Temp Forum.

No, people just need to learn to behave. Some people can't do that.

[Jon P. Inghram]

I know, I fully expected KvH and MM to get into a full blown brawl, last time Wally World got brought up it wasn't pretty.

[KvHagedorn]

Originally posted by Dilitante1
Visit http://walmartsucks.org/ for more info.

You can find many of the "logistics" MMM is talking about which fuel Wal-Mart's success here. A few are:

...I was a owner operator trucker who ran
out of the wal-mart food dc in Tomah
Wisconsin #6085. I started a short time
after the distribution center was
opened . If you aren't aware wal-mart
uses major national truck load
carriers to truck food to their stores
from their food distribution centers.
Tomah uses Werner Enterprises out of
Omaha neb. Other carriers from other
distributions centers are schneider and
swift carriers. Wal-Mart not wanting
to expand there fleet of equipment and
deal with thousands of added drivers
(insurance ect) has employed this
system. Also by doing this Walmart has
built a barrier by which the drivers
have no recourse in resolving issues of
routing, load handling, safty, and many
other related activities to the
shipment of food from these
distributions centers. The drivers are
locked
in pay to the contract these major truck
lines signed with Wal-Mart. Up to
the day of my dismise at Walmart we were
never given a penny raise. To
complain would have meant a swift
removal from the account. Also Walmart
has
built these distributions centers close
enough to reach to major
metropolitan areas yet far enough away
so as not to have to employ unionized
help in the distribution center or
truckers such as myself to deliver the
goods. At #6085 we now deliver groceries
to chicago, milwaukee, st .Paul,
Minneapolis, Des Moines, and many other
smaller cities and towns. This is
also happening in other areas of the
country. This is why Walmart can sell
groceries many times less then there
competitors. Also at these
distributions centers incoming fright is
charged a lumper fee. Tens of
thousands of dollars a day is collected
by
Walmart to unload the freight they buy!
Many Times I was given loads; which
because of weather; could not be
finished in drivers legal hours of
operation This is an occurance which
can happen in the upper midwest during
the winter. But to be late on delivers
would be grounds to be terminated
from the account...

and..

I was an associate in the Klamath falls store in 1995 aside from the rude treatment
most of the associats recieved from management here and the stolen overtime many
of us did not get paid for the main thing I dislike was being let off shift at 1:00am and told to be back at work by 7:00am the
same day this being against labor laws part of the reason for my termination was being late
for work on these 7:00 shifts upon recieving my pay checks my hours had been shorted
to make it look like I hadent even been working at this time

Does walmart treat all of its associates this way?

My favorite:

Wal-Mart Profits From Employee Death

My husband of 27 years was a Wal-Mart assistant mgr. for l0 years. The last 4 years of his life he was working 75-80 hr weeks not the 52hrs he was hired at. Wal-Mart had started seriously short staffing their stores and the workload became horrible. The last 3 days of Mike's life I didn't see him as he had worked close to 48 hrs . On Sept. l999 Mike called 3 times for assistance with a large tv for a lady customer, no one was available to help. Mike took the tv out and loaded it by himself. He got 20 feet back inside the store where he had a massive heart attack from over exertion. Mike was only 48 and had passed a physical and stress test just 5 months earlier. I took Wal-Mart to court under NH workman's comp laws and won showing his death was work related. Last spring my attorneys told me that WAl-Mart had a secret life insurance policy on my husband with Hartford Ins. in the amount of $300,000 which they had collected on shortly after my husband died. In l993-94 Wal-Mart took out 350,000 secret life insurance policies on low level employees who also had their health insurance with them. They called these policies dead peasant policies or dead janitor policies. When an employee died WAl-Mart collected, not the families. I was shocked and outraged. My husband never knew Wal-Mart had a large insurance policy on him. If he had known he would have been so scared. He would have said they hope to kill a few of us off and profit from it. This is immoral and wrong. The # l Fortune 500 company had to help get there by profiting from the deaths of some of their employees. Sam Walton would be so ashamed of what happened to his company. My husband was a wonderful man, a king, not a peasant. Just the words dead peasant and dead janitor tells you what Wal-Mart thinks of their low level employees. The American public is becoming aware that Wal-Mart has a dark side, a very dark side, which is fueled by their greed and wanting control of the retail world. If you know of WAl-mart employees who died from l993-Jan. 2000 their families should contact the union to see if there is a classaction suit in their state on the dead peasant insurance policies. There are families out there who lost loved ones and Wal-Mart made money on it. I am now the lead plantiff in a NH classaction suit against WAl-Mart and the life insurance companies involved. My sons and I are upset and feel betrayed by WAlmart. Please let Wal-Mart know that it is wrong to put secret life insurance policies on employees and profit from deaths. Thank you

Wal-Mart is nothing but a criminal organization.

[ALBPM]

Dave, you have been Highjacked

Wally World where M'erica Shops!!

[DGhost]

Originally posted by MultimediaMan
Actually, Wal-Mart does sell edited CDs that would otherwise be classified "racy" in content;

Typical examples: Usher and 50 Cent are usually edited for content; Hip Hop tunes with coarse language are edited.

Most mainstream Top 40 stuff that is sold is what you would get everywhere else. There will be major changes to the Music Distribution system in Wal-Mart in the near future, if what I hear turns out to be correct.

iinntteeerresting...

I have never seen a CD with an "Explicit Lyrics" label on it at the local Wal-Mart's... In fact, I seem to remember buying a couple of CD's from WM that were clean versions of an otherwise tame cd... in fact in one instance I would never have even noticed that it was edited except I downloaded the european music video for one of the songs...

could this vary by region/store/etc? Colorado Springs is notoriously touchy-feely-family friendly, so much so that Wal-Mart is pretty much the only thing open past 6pm on sundays.

[MultimediaMan]

These "charges" (who underwrites Walmartsucks.com? Look for yourselves and see if you'd sell them shit in a flaming paper bag) are nothing but old news and half-truths, and deal with issues resolved the better part of a decade ago.

re: Trucking Companies, you will recall we BOUGHT McLanes Trucking 12 years ago, and sold the McLanes Unit to Berkshire Hathaway (Warren Buffett) last year. We still have our Wal-Mart Trucking Company. We do our own trucking along with McLanes. The information regarding those other trucking companies is patently false.

As a matter of policy, all DCs service stores with 8 hours driving distance, preferably less than that if it is a Grocery DC. We put DCs in the geographic center of these areas. It has nothing to do with union labor and a lot more to do with a roadmap. Our truckers are well-paid, especially for Route Trucking.

re:

This is why Walmart can sell
groceries many times less then there
competitors.

That is simply not possible. Groceries are the LOWEST profit item you can possibly stock and sell in all of retail, and there ARE laws out there about having to make a profit on food items. There is no way that statement could be true. Again, actually pricing what Wal-Mart sells groceries for and other stores in the area will pretty much be the same give or take 5-10%. Don't just go on my word, check it out for yourself.

Re: Klamath Falls; It doesn't have an ounce of corroboration so I really don't have to rebut it. You should know that the ability to cook the books by removing overtime or working off the clock have been virtually eliminated by changes in procedures, added oversight, and IT systems changes (i.e. the system will not let you sign into a register or a workstation if you are not clocked-in, etc.)

RE: The "Secret Life Insurance Policy" was nothing of the kind; it was part of a voluntary program setup in the early 1990's and stopped in 1996. It involved a type of term life insurance where both the company and the insured would receive part of a claim. But, due to how the premiums were paid and changes made some laws in 1996 (Tax Code), Wal-Mart cashed-out all of those policies and gave them to another underwriter as a normal term life policy. Bottom Line: Wal-Mart never made a dime.

People thought we were making money because they saw these huge figures getting "paid" to Wal-Mart, but the money came from a trust that Wal-Mart had to create to underwrite the term life policies that were rolled over. What the benefactors saw was the money rolling from the trust back to Wal-Mart.

Again, these types of attacks are blatantly untrue, and politically motivated by (union) interests. Follow the money before listening to any source, including me. I am Inviting eveyone here to dig deeper on those "facts" that KvH has brought forth. I know the scoop, and the truth can be Googled for.

FACT: KvH continues to spew forth unsubstantiated claims from dubious 3rd. parties and has again shown ignorance by not even checking his facts first.

FACT: If we see something not right, we fix it and move on.

FACT: KvH fails to mention the over 3 Million Dollars of aid (mostly fresh water, food and tarpaulins) we had lined up before the wind stopped blowing in Florida. We also had our stores up and running within hours of the Curfews being relaxed, running on Generatora, or even out of a couple of Semi-trailers (in the case of Punta Gorda after Charley). We had food, water, gasoline and ice flowing into that state before anyone else, including the government and the Red Cross. We honored all Red Cross Vouchers, even after their reserve accounts ran dry (They run on a kind of communal checking account). Why? Because it was the right thing to do. Many times we give and don't bother to advertise that we even did it... because that is not part of our culture.

FACT: We are not part of some conspiracy to take over retail, we are a part of an idea to be the very best in retail, and so we are. We intend to keep our idea alive and well. Don't expect us to do nothing: doing nothing kills a company, any company, faster than a hard freeze kills a delicate flower.

So pick on us if we're big, that's fine. Call us a threat to society because we're big, that's fine, too. (Time will tell and people always vote with their feet.) But don't call us evil, because we're not: we are just like you, regular people.

As far as our corporate culture goes let me relate a recent event: my Birthday was last week and I got an [automated] email from our CEO wishing me a Happy Birthday: So, on a lark I responded to it, and received a prompt, personal response from said CEO; I knew by the content in the response that it wasn't any secretary or machine that wrote it. This man oversees 1.5 million people, and nearly 5000 stores; I know him only by word of mouth (some with wagging tongues attached) and, of course by Chain of Command, yet he takes the time out of his day to send me a note - that's class.

[MultimediaMan]

DGhost: Moving closer to Topic...

As far as CDs go, we sell the same stuff everywhere. This dates back to the 2LiveCrew IIRC. Some magazines we sell are "Family-safed": titles like Easy Rider and others could be categorized safely as pornography if not otherwise edited: We keep them to PG-13.

Early this year, we stopped selling Maxim and FHM periodicals for much the same reason; their content was deemed inappropriate and the publisher didn't want to make editorial/ visual content changes. We were the TOP seller of FHM and Maxim, and we let that lucrative business die on moral grounds alone.

Videogames with "Teen Violence" and "Mature" are restricted for sale as are "PG-13" and "R" rated video titles right at the register checkouts. Wal-Mart does not sell unrated versions of Titles that wre previously rated R or NC-17; I've never personally seen an NC-17 title at Wal-Mart.

[Jammrock]

My wife used to work for a company that was a WalMart supplier. You'd be shocked what WalMart gets away with. They'll do things like look at the ads and see that Kraft has a coupon for $0.25 off cheese. Then they'll tell Kraft to permanently lower their prices on cheese for them $0.25 or they won't sell their product anymore.

If someone delivers product and the paper work was wrong they wouldn't accept it. They only pay when they feel like it. And on and on...

Jammrock

[KvHagedorn]

If I were a supplier of goods and Wal-Mart gave me that. I would tell them to **** off and die, that they never COULD and never WOULD be allowed to sell my products. The problem is that too many companies/CEOs etc. are too timid to take this stand, even though it would mean profitability and independence rather than subservience and bankruptcy. Fools.

And btw, I couldn't care less if you think I don't understand how "big business" works. If you think that, you are utterly mistaken. I would rather run a smaller profitable business and sell to many smaller vendors than run a huge unprofitable business and have Wal-Mart be the single dominant account and as such have them feel they have the power to dictate to ME what my product is worth (plus suck up such a huge volume of my production at the unprofitable price that I could not supply those I would make money from.) One of the problems is that there are too many public companies out there whose management is all running scared and have boards of directors who are too clueless to allow such bold action by a CEO. They survive by virtue of momentum and size and brand recognition alone.

[DGhost]

Originally posted by KvHagedorn
If I were a supplier of goods and Wal-Mart gave me that. I would tell them to **** off and die, that they never COULD and never WOULD be allowed to sell my products. The problem is that too many companies/CEOs etc. are too timid to take this stand, even though it would mean profitability and independence rather than subservience and bankruptcy. Fools.

And btw, I couldn't care less if you think I don't understand how "big business" works. If you think that, you are utterly mistaken. I would rather run a smaller profitable business and sell to many smaller vendors than run a huge unprofitable business and have Wal-Mart be the single dominant account and as such have them feel they have the power to dictate to ME what my product is worth (plus suck up such a huge volume of my production at the unprofitable price that I could not supply those I would make money from.) One of the problems is that there are too many public companies out there whose management is all running scared and have boards of directors who are too clueless to allow such bold action by a CEO. They survive by virtue of momentum and size and brand recognition alone.

huh?

for some reason my (limited) experience in economics tells me that this is completely bass ackwards.

[KvHagedorn]

Originally posted by DGhost
huh?

for some reason my (limited) experience in economics tells me that this is completely bass ackwards.

explain why.

I can name any number of companies who do not sell to Wal-Mart yet are successful.

[isochar]

Originally posted by MultimediaMan
[B]These "charges" (who underwrites Walmartsucks.com? Look for yourselves and see if you'd sell them shit in a flaming paper bag) are nothing but old news and half-truths, and deal with issues resolved the better part of a decade ago.

Far from old news, your company's relentless pursuit of low prices has ill-effects across the board. This February 2004 Washington Post article shows just how much decency Wal-Mart has in getting the lowest possible price. There is also an article from FastCompany detailing how Wal-Mart harms companies. Wal-Mart isn't the epitome of evil, it's the epitome of a US/world corporation.