

My Comment on Walmart’s Facebook Page





Walmart Deleting my Comment on Walmart’s Facebook Page

Update: I asked Walmart why the censored my post and they deleted my comment simply asking for an explantation as well.

Update #2: story on reddit here. To be clear — I am not blaming Walmart that my wife was mugged. I just sort of feel that having a conversation about putting a security guard in front of a problem store with a known parking lot issue for a company that made over $4 billion last quarter is not unreasonable. I also think the store manager could have handled the situation better. I think if Walmart wanted to delete my comments on their Facebook page about public safety at one of their stores that they could have at least taken 2 seconds out of their super busy day to explain why and their rationale.



Update #3: In hindsight I feel pretty lucky actually. I googled the Oakland Walmart store and found this article where a guy was shot and almost killed in a robbery in a Walmart parking lot a few miles away less than a year ago. No wonder why the store manager didn’t want her to call the police.

Update #4: Walmart never responded directly to me over this incident although they did repost my deleted comment on their website and explained to a reporter at MSNBC that they “accidently” deleted the comment because it tripped their profanity filter. They said my use of the word assault had “ass” in it, so it accidentally was deleted.

I came home from a wonderful day at the waterpark with my two boys earlier today to some terrible news. It turns out my wife was assaulted in front of the Oakland Walmart earlier today and had her iPhone stolen. My two girls ages 6 and 8 were in the car when it took place. My wife had her hair pulled out and tried to fight with her attacker — someone stepped in to try to help (who later said he didn’t want to get involved because you never know who her attacker’s friends were) but the woman took off in a car with a group of her friends with my wife’s phone.

“We’re never shopping at Walmart again,” my six year old daughter told me as I hugged her when I came in the house. She was still shaking even though all this had happened hours earlier. They never did end up getting the lunchbox they went there to buy for my 8 year old. My wife said Walmart was the cheapest place she could find the box my daughter wanted. School supplies for four kids are expensive these days.

I think what upset my wife the most about this whole ordeal was that this happened right in front of Walmart in broad daylight. She was within 50 feet of the store entrance. She told me that it took Walmart over 15 minutes to get involved. She said that they only got involved because someone came inside and went to the customer service area to tell the manager that there was a problem outside the store.

My wife said that the assistant manager told her that she didn’t know if the security cameras in front of the store even worked. The manager apparently didn’t want to involve the police and my wife said it was only after she insisted that the manager call the police that they were called. According to my wife the police viewed Walmart’s security camera footage, but the footage wasn’t clear enough to get a license plate number on the attacker’s car.

Apparently this Walmart has quite a reputation for being a bad place to shop. It’s review on Yelp has 2 stars with 178 ratings. Way more people have rated it 1 star (worst) than anything though. It’s reviews are littered with words like sketchy, seedy, scary. The reviews mention the problems in the parking lot over and over again. You’d think Walmart would consider putting a security guard in front a store with such problems.

I guess what especially bothers me though is that when I posted about this bad experience in a comment on Walmart’s Facebook page, how quickly it was censored away. It didn’t last more than about 10 minutes (see screenshots above) before they deleted it off the page. Did they try to contact me? No. Did they respond to my complaint in any way? No. Instead they just deleted it. They certainly had time to read it, delete it, but not the time nor care to even acknowledge that something terrible happened to one of their customers at one of their stores today.

Social media is supposed to be about having honest conversations. It’s supposed to be about customers and companies interacting in real and meaningful ways. Simply deleting comments by anyone who does not tell you how *AWESOME* Walmart is the opposite of this.

I guess maybe my six year old is right after all. Maybe we really aren’t ever shopping at Walmart ever again. Thanks for the censorship Walmart, it felt really great after today’s wonderful experience at your shitty Oakland store.