This is a spinoff of my "Dear Amazon" post. If you have not read that post first, stop now and do that.
I was curious today if Walmart sold suicide cords, since I knew that they had 3rd-party sellers on their website.
Here we go again.
![screenshot of Walmart product page, suicide cord. $7.57, from seller "Lutledan Co.Ltd"](https://blog.9021007.xyz/content/images/2024/07/image-11.png)
Aaaaand there's a second one.
![Walmart product page, same thing as before except the seller here is Samdeem, $11.93](https://blog.9021007.xyz/content/images/2024/07/image-13.png)
What even is that second cord's title supposed to mean? I cannot think of a single person searching Walmart.com for a suicide cord with any of the words in that title 💀
That has got to be some of the worst SEO I have ever seen. "Americans Standard" sounds like some knock-off bathroom supply company.
Anyway, the phone representative said it would take 24 hours to have the products taken down. we're gonna test that!
Oh hey... the seller pages have phone numbers and addresses!
![screenshot of walmart seller page for Lutledan Co.ltd, Business Name: guangzhoupingguodianzishangwuyouxiangongsi, (+86) 19925407904, Yuexiu District, Guangzhou City Room 101, No.14 Zhaolin Lane Guangzhou, GD 510120, CN](https://blog.9021007.xyz/content/images/2024/07/image-14.png)
One Google Earth search later, and it looks like we've found their building.
![screenshot of Google earth, satellite view.](https://blog.9021007.xyz/content/images/2024/07/image-15.png)
Seems like an odd place for a suicide cord reseller to be based, but okay.
Wait what? ...oh.
![screenshot of Google Maps, where overlaid streets do not align with satellite imagery](https://blog.9021007.xyz/content/images/2024/07/image-16.png)
Well I guess we can't be certain that that's the specific building, but hey, there's a photo sphere just down the road!
![screenshot of Google Maps, 2 orange arrows pointing out a small photo sphere icon](https://blog.9021007.xyz/content/images/2024/07/image-18.png)
I guess they're all coming from just down this road, apparently.
![Google Earth photosphere screenshot, showing shaded road in china. Camera is next to bright red bus, white bus visible ahead of it in traffic. one way street.](https://blog.9021007.xyz/content/images/2024/07/image-19.png)
Too bad we can't call them. Oh wait...
Well too bad I'm too cheap to call them...
Fuck you Verizon, $2.49/min is insane.
![screenshot of Verizon Wireless website, titled "Calling China while in the US." For standard plans, it's $2.49 per minute to call.](https://blog.9021007.xyz/content/images/2024/07/image-20.png)
Google Voice is much better, but still not nothing.
![screenshot of Google Voice calling rates, calling a landline is $0.04/min, calling a mobile device is $0.07/min, and CHINA_SPECIAL_SERVICES is $0.70/min](https://blog.9021007.xyz/content/images/2024/07/image-21.png)
I honestly considered it before I realized that West Taiwan China would probably harass me and my family for calling.
Well, if anyone wants to give it a go, I have saved both seller pages on archive.org.
Update 2024/7/13
You know how some spiders have all their babies on their back, and if you kill it all their babies run in every direction?
Like this:
![animated GIF. Person smashes spider with broom, and hundreds of small spiders scatter from its corpse.](https://media4.giphy.com/media/v1.Y2lkPTc5MGI3NjExZjA0dmh5eHN6Ymtmc3BmcHQ1endpZnlpdHI4MHkxYTlic3lxd3N2ZCZlcD12MV9pbnRlcm5hbF9naWZfYnlfaWQmY3Q9Zw/139MICwpdsAR3O/giphy.gif)
Welp...
![screenshot of walmart item list titled "Dangerous Goods", orange arrow pointing to "48 items"](https://blog.9021007.xyz/content/images/2024/07/image-23.png)
Turns out that Walmart is just as bad as Amazon, if not worse.
Anyway apparently opening 48 product tabs simultaneously tripped some kind of spam prevention so uhhhh
![screenshot of walmart captcha](https://blog.9021007.xyz/content/images/2024/07/image-24.png)
Time to call them and annoy some poor call center employee by reporting almost 50 items.
He was able to send an email to the risk prevention team to inform them about the items. He aid that once the team reads the email, the items will be investigated. I asked how long that woul take, and he said that usually they respond in 48h, but that it depends on the volume of the team's emails.
Time on call: 22m
Oh and fun fact, one of the two I first reported is still up.
Update 2024/7/26:
This seems interesting...
![screenshot of yellow banner under the Cart tab. Cart says 19 items. Banner says "31 items in your cart have updates", with a button to view details.](https://blog.9021007.xyz/content/images/2024/07/image-26.png)
Looks like several of them are now marked "out of stock", along with changed images.
![screenshot of details view. 2 items dropped in price. 29 items now out of stock. several items now have new unrelated images or no images at all.](https://blog.9021007.xyz/content/images/2024/07/image-27.png)
While that is still 19 items left, that's a hell of a lot better than Amazon has been doing recently. I called and poked them about it, and they said they made a "technical ticket" for it. We'll see how this goes.
Update 2024/8/12:
![screenshot of walmart website, "44 items in your cart are currently unavailable"](https://blog.9021007.xyz/content/images/2024/08/image-18.png)
Looks like Walmart listens better than Amazon.
Time to report 20 more.
I'm sure the employee has to write up a report for each and every product which seems... tedious. I'd be happy to do that myself if I had the confidence that it would actually get looked at, but there's nothing quite like calling to know that a real human person at Walmart has looked into it.
Time on call: 19m30s