It is a dilemma, kind of like in the political world., where in most cases an honest politician can't get elected. Now in the retail world, you can't compete with a dirty outfit without being dirty too. As recently as a few years ago I thought walmart was a pretty reasonable alternative to amazon, Now they've gone the route of nagging popups and walmart+ membership., and I'm looking for alternatives to them, too.
So I have been ordering more from Walmart lately, I am a bit like you a few years back did not have a great experience. One of my orders they canceled and refunded my money, like they realized they messed up on the pricing. Had that happen to me on Amazon before, third party seller contacted me saying they could not fill my order. Both cases the prices went up.
Ordered some shirts for the wife online, her first apparel order online, she did not like any of them, she is more picky than I, anyway being that we got them from Walmart, figured we could just drop them off for a refund. Being that is true there was one more step though. Had to start a Refund online, like Amazon does, but this was a simple as showing the barcode Walmart sent us to the Customer Service desk and quickly got our refund. But found out not all refunds are the same, that is if it is sold and shipped by Walmart, no problem, if third party it may not always be able to return at a Walmart store. But in our case, it was a third party but Walmart allowed it to be returned to a store.
Since no Amazon trucks run in our area, it gets sent USPS, where as Walmart seems to use FedEx or even UPS which we have found to be better.
Lastly, these shirts was online before Black Friday for those with Walmart+, we just waited till Black Friday and got the same price. I would assume with some items they may sell out before Black Friday, don't know...
Sorry for long post but one more share, had ordered some LED headlamps, they looked kewl until we tried one, they did not tilt down to be able to use when working on things, anyway, started the return with Amazon, these were 2 boxes of 3 in each, Amazon made a printing label for each, these are small 4 inch boxes, I called them and they said no problem, print out two labels, include them in one box with both items, then print out another label to put on the box. Made sense to me, heck they sent both in one box anyway and two labels on a box would confuse UPS. Well dropped off the box to UPS store and only got one box refunded. Called Amazon back, guy told me the Rep I talked to told me wrong, they need to be in individual boxes. Great, now what, he said give it a couple of weeks to see if they will credit me the second box. Well almost a week later I got my refund, so i took my boxing gloves off
Here is the Amazon number I call to get a live person on the phone, if anyone wants it:
866-216-1072