Though it's frustrating, it's not uncommon to encounter product shortages. For example, last year, shoppers couldn't get their hands on Sriracha after a shortage of Mexican chili peppers. And the year before, tampons were in short supply due to the rising cost of plastic and cotton. But what if you were to find out that retailers were being dishonest about the availability of the items you need? Some shoppers now claim that Walmart is lying about what's out of stock.
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Using Walmart's grocery pickup and delivery service, shoppers at many of its nationwide stores can easily place an online order. If an item is not currently available at your selected Walmart store, the retailer says it will "display an out-of-stock status." However, not having this status still doesn't guarantee the product will make it into your shopping bag.
"Even if the website showed the item as available while placing the order, we may run out of stock by the time we can process it," Walmart notes on its website. "We'll email you to let you know that we canceled [the] item or the order. We restock items as quickly as we can. Be sure to check the item listing for availability."
But a TikTok video posted to the account @_milymoly_ on May 4, which has already been viewed over 821,500 times, shows a Walmart worker finding items on the shelves that were marked as out of stock or unavailable by a previous picker.
TikTok/@_milymoly_
In the video, products that had been requested by customers—including beef broth, beef ravioli, jasmine rice, chips, and children's cough medicine—were listed as "item not found" on the worker's device despite being clearly shown stocked on the shelves in multiple quantities. These out-of-stock items are referred to as "exceptions," according to the TikToker.
"My job was to find the items my coworkers marked as 'not found' but the items were literally on the shelf," the original poster explained in a comment.
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According to other comments on the video, this is not a rare occurrence, either.
"It’s so bad at my store," one Walmart worker replied. "Just today we have over 70 exceptions at one point and 75 percent was on the floor."
But it's not just Walmart employees who have noticed this—even shoppers claim they've found the retailer to be lying about items being out of stock.
"This happens to me EVERYTIME," one shopper wrote in the comment section. "I always go in the store to get the things they said they didn't have then pick up my groceries."
Shoppers have also taken to other social media platforms to complain about this problem. "My Walmart shopper said bananas aren't available," one person wrote in a May 9 X post. "Huh? When have bananas ever been out of stock?"
Another X user wrote on April 9, "Walmart be lying—how is everything out of stock? [They] just didn’t feel like shopping."
Best Life has reached out to Walmart about these concerns, and we will update this story with their response.
