Any time saved by ordering online and picking up the order has vanished chasing customer support people to fix something that would have taken a few seconds through their website.
Any time saved by ordering online and picking up the order has vanished chasing customer support people to fix something that would have taken a few seconds through their website.
Tell me you know nothing about front or backend webdev…
Tamest comment I’ve seen obliterated.
While this is technically accurate, if this is a long-term pattern you would hope that this would be fixed pretty easily, or have a comparable SLA to other services. If your refund tool is always down, that’s a leadership decision.
Enlighten us with your “back end and front end webdev” skills. Tell me how this knowledge contradicts the shady practice of fixing issues quickly when they affect purchasing, but ignoring them conveniently when they affect users getting money back. I’m very intrigued.
It’s almost like buying and refunding are two completely different processes that are handled under entirely different protocols by credit processors, and one part working has no bearing on whether or not the other part works.
Regardless of how these protocols may be handled, they advise customers to use the refund option within the order screen on the website, which is what I did.
If it’s broken, why even direct people there? I wouldn’t expect a half-working website from one of the largest retailers on the planet.
It’s not the first company to “offer self serve” where the action involves taking away revenue and just so happens to never ever work, requiring a call to their support. It’s almost as if they know some people will just give up and they can keep the profits.
Links generally don’t know if the service on the other end of the link is up or down at that time. I mean you could have it go out and prefetch the headers but that’s a lot of overhead for every link.
“The service” in this context, would simply be another Walmart page. A page which also just happened to be one where I’d start the process of getting money back.
It was not a page to actually process any transactions, but to start the process of requesting a refund.
I don’t see how this information changes what I’ve said. Do you think if the “different protocol” that enabled purchasing was broken the website wouldn’t fix it fairly quickly? I never claimed they share the same components, but I do claim they have very different prioritization.
That being cleared, I also disagree with your premise - half of the web stores I’ve worked with used the exact same system that takes the money to refund it. Obviously the internal process made by the credit card’s operator is different, but there was no way for the payments system to be down for intake and not refunds as far as the website was concerned - and this screenshot clearly shows an issue with Walmart not loading a page, not MasterCard delaying operations.
And I never claimed they don’t have different prioritization. I’m just saying that one working doesn’t mean the other will also work.
The page may have not loaded because of a failed API call to the credit processor when requesting a refund. Charges and refunds are different API usages, and it’s wholly possible that an issue on the processor’s side can break pages on a merchant’s site. If for some reason Walmart’s site can’t communicate with Visa/MC/AmEx/whoever and their page isn’t configured to handle a specific failure, it will likely go to a default error landing page as a failsafe.
I’m not defending Walmart or anything; just explaining some of the technical reasons a refund page can break. API failures happen even to non-scummy stores, as well.
It didn’t even get that far.
This error quite literally came up when I click on the “request a refund” button within my order (where Walmart said I needed to. There should have been another page asking which item(s) I want to refund, and I would imagine ask me for a reason why. That’s well before it needs to call an API for credit processing.
In any case, this was mildly infuriating, more for the wasted time on something that should have taken two seconds.
FWIW, I can only hope that Walmart gets notified whenever these end user issues pop up on the website… so they can fix the problem. It’s been many hours already, and the page still errors out. Unless they’ve hired amateurs, this seems excessive. Would it take this long if their payment system was down?
Don’t talk to our “FRONT END AND BACK END DEV” like that.
“Take what’s coming out of your FRONT END and blow it out your BACK END!”
This guy does it all! Front and back!
top and bottom, too.
In between is the best place to be!
Tell me you ever had a dream that you, um, you had, your, you- you could, you’ll do, you- you wants, you, you could do so, you- you’ll do, you could- you, you want, you want them to do you so much you could do anything?
My friend, you’re on !MildlyInfuriating
An annoyance is still an annoyance even if there’s a reason for it
Tell me you know nothing about anti-consumer business practices…
You’re right, it could be a totally be a different service that is individually down, but dude this phrase is the heckin woooorrrrst