Saturday, February 13, 2016

The STORE



Back in Silicon Valley when you told someone "you were going to the store," they would probably then ask "which store?"  Food shopping would be at Safeway or Draegers (having not yet accepted Whole Foods as my personal food savior), clothing at Stanford Mall or Santana Row, hardware at Los Altos Hardware or Orchard, furniture at Macy's or Scandinavian Design, you get the picture.

In LaGrange, "going to the Store" almost always means you are going to Walmart.  Regardless of what you are looking for, most likely Walmart has it.  From clothing to furniture, from food & vegetables to televisions, from hardware to guns and ammo, from sporting goods to cosmetics, Walmart has it all in one convenient place and it is all available 24/7.  

The LaGrange Walmart is immense, it is not just a Walmart, but a Walmart Supercenter. According to Walmart it is somewhere between 178,000 to 260,000 square feet.  To give you a sense of scale, my old Los Altos Safeway was 41,000 square feet.  

It turns out that being able to get everything in one place is great.  No more arguments over which grocery or market has the best produce, or which department store has the best jeans selection; in LaGrange the answer is always Walmart.  Walmart always has what we need.  To our great amazement, we discovered even if we didn't find exactly what we wanted, we could actually live with a substitute item carried at Walmart.  Who knew?  I will admit that black truffles and caviar (which were often available at Draegers) were not in the grocery aisle, but then again I never bought them  anyways.  Now, if I really need them, there is always Amazon Prime.

One of the cool things Walmart offers is their "Savings Catcher."  Using the Walmart app, you simply scan your receipt when you leave the store.  Walmart maintains a comparison price database and compares the prices you paid to prices at other local stores.  If an item is available at a lower price at another store, the app give you a credit ("reward dollars") for the difference. 

Since we are setting up a new home, there were always things we need, so we end up at Walmart at least once a day, and sometimes even twice.  I guess we are too good a customer.  After the first four or five visits, we exceeded the app's weekly limit, and could not enter any more receipts till the next week.  I guess from now on we have to ration our Walmart trips to only a few times a week.  As of today our total reward dollars equal $4.98!

4 comments:

  1. $4.98 probably goes further in LaGrange than in Los Altos Hills. Your mother would be so proud.

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    1. Every penny counts, actually it is more of an indication of Walmart's low prices, it means that of all the stuff we bought there were lower prices on a few items which added up to $4.98.

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  2. I stopped my Costco membership in favor of Walmart. Usually go to the Mountain View store but Gilroy has a huge superstore with an excellent bakery.

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    1. We will see how it goes, we are already going through Costco withdrawal, the nearest Costco to LaGrange is about 90 miles away in northern Atlanta. We will see if we can live without Costco as you have :)

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