On the other hand, they do have some good stuff, too.
For example, their "Great Value" brand LED light bulbs have been excellent for me. They would be great at their normal $2 price for 8.5 Watt 800 lumens with a claimed 18 year life bulbs. I happened to get them when there was some sort of instant rebate going on (sponsored by my power company, I think) where they were $0.17 per bulb. I got something like 30 and replaced pretty much every incandescent I had.
Only about 12 of these are in places where I use them heavily. Of those, I've had no failures [1], and no noticeable apparent dimming over the first year. I also have some Cree bulbs with similar specs that are a year older and cost an order of magnitude more than the $2 Walmart bulbs when I bought them (but now are only about 4x as much). The Crees lost a lot of brightness over the first year, and 2 of my 4 died within a couple months.
[1] I'm not counting one that I dropped onto concrete in my garage when trying to screw it into a fixture in the ceiling. The bulb is plastic and was not damaged, but it broke something on the circuit board inside.
Their LEDs have been great for me, but their CFLs were terrible. I have CFLs from Home Depot that are still going after 10 years. My Walmart versions often died in less than a year. Clothing is another thing -- I've gotten really good at supergluing their shoes back.
That said, I still buy from Walmart, but I'm much more careful about what I get. I've gotten good use out of kitchen ware, household goods, LEDs, etc.
For example, their "Great Value" brand LED light bulbs have been excellent for me. They would be great at their normal $2 price for 8.5 Watt 800 lumens with a claimed 18 year life bulbs. I happened to get them when there was some sort of instant rebate going on (sponsored by my power company, I think) where they were $0.17 per bulb. I got something like 30 and replaced pretty much every incandescent I had.
Only about 12 of these are in places where I use them heavily. Of those, I've had no failures [1], and no noticeable apparent dimming over the first year. I also have some Cree bulbs with similar specs that are a year older and cost an order of magnitude more than the $2 Walmart bulbs when I bought them (but now are only about 4x as much). The Crees lost a lot of brightness over the first year, and 2 of my 4 died within a couple months.
[1] I'm not counting one that I dropped onto concrete in my garage when trying to screw it into a fixture in the ceiling. The bulb is plastic and was not damaged, but it broke something on the circuit board inside.