Walmart promises to have "Always low prices, always", but using their services has its disadvantages. Sometimes I just feel like Walmart really doesn't care about the consumers who shop there. I recently bought some Duracell batteries at Walmart, and on the cover said to see inside for a code to receive 20 free prints from their photo center.

I open the pack of batteries, and there it was: A code to enter to receive the free prints. I go online on the walmart photo center website to order the free prints, and they tell me that the page cannot be displayed due to some internal error. This was AFTER I had entered my code.

I try again, and they say that the code had already been used. I doubt that someone could have guessed my code to get free photo prints from walmart, so I decided to write to customer service.

I explained my problem on their customer service page, and up to this day, 5 days later, I haven't received any sort of feedback from them.

I plan on going into my local Walmart and asking the manager if I could receive my free prints. I don't know if it will work, but I could have just gotten my batteries at Target where customer service is alot better.

I guess the lesson is if you're willing to shop at Walmart, then be willing to get bad service.

Best,
Trinifawk

Hi trinifawk,

That really sucks. From my own experience, writing to support online sometimes takes very long; maybe due to the nature of the media itself. Your mail may get put-off, or just sitting there unprocessed.

Whenever less-than-par service happens to me, I make it a point to actually call them or appear personally. It almost always guarantees faster service.

What do you think?

I guess that this could be faster solved by the commercial guys instead of the online support.
I guess that online support people don't really know if you are not cheating, trying to use twice the same code.
I think that if you try to reach the sales people, and explain them "your site destroyed my free print codes without giving me the prints", and ask them to give you another working code ("please"!), they will probably agree.

While I'm normally the last person to defend Walmart, I have to in this case. While I agree it sucks that it happened to you, and I hope you get a response soon, your blame seems a little harsh. I mean, a technological error caused your code to be wasted after it was listed as 'used' which is understand, poorly designed maybe but understandable that it could hypothetically happen if the connection died at the worst possible time. Furthermore this is only a tiny aspect of the photo center or the store as a whole, so calling them down because of it is a little much Hopefully you get your free pics but I've used walmart for photo printing lots of times and have yet to have any problems.

I also agree that Walmart has its limitations, but what it does provide is valuable. I use their online photo entry for prints both when I am in a hurry (1-hour service) and when I am not ($0.09/ 4x6 print), 1-week turnaround. Either way, it costs less than color printing on high-quality paper!

I have learned to live with their limitations. For example, their "crop" tool reformats arbitrarily to fit the geometry of 4x6, 8x10, etc. It seldom does what you want. So instead, I use Picasa from Google to do the cropping. It lets you configure the crop exactly as you wish. Then I upload the result to Walmart and the print comes out as I want it.

The value is a good point, I've recently started looking at even sale prices of photo printing paper and ink and the prices rarely will allow it to be more cheaply printed at home. Further the quality is suspect if your printer isn't of a proper quality level so at least with Walmart you get consistent results in a relatively fast manner as you said.

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Walmart Photo Center

I'm very stressed. I've had pictures developed by Walmart and always been pleased. I usually get a cd, in case I want to make more prints. Recently I started just getting the cd. I had 5 grandsons 8 and under visiting with me for a week, so I took 3 Scandisks full of pictures of the little ones playing. I now go to look at the cds and NONE of them are readable by any of my 3 computers. I'm very upset. What is the problem. I use PhotoShop. I also went tot he Walmart site and tried to upload them to their site - no luck. Someone please help me. I cannot reenact this opportunity of having all the boys from different states come to play at this age. My heart is broken.

DVD transfers from videotapes
Walmart Photo Center

I've recently been sending my home videtapes to be transferred to DVDs. I sent some through Walgreens and got great quality DVDs back. One day they were out of the ordering envelopes and so I thought I'd try Walmart. I sent 4 tapes. They took forever to get returned. Not only that but the DVD cases were broken and dented. I noticed the packaging was just a plastic envelope. Walmart doesn't compare to Walgreens at all as far as this service is concerned. I will never send another tape via Walmart.

-reply by Emma