Walmart recently held a Walmart Plus Week from July 10th through July 13th to rival Amazon’s Prime Day sales. During this week, a year-long Walmart+ membership was discounted half off to $49. The promotion was heavily featured on self-checkout lanes in stores as well, which hit a few snags.
While checking out, customers were promoted to add a Walmart+ membership to their purchase. While there was an option to decline the prompt was only written in English, which confused some shoppers into unintentionally buying a membership.
According to Insider, an anonymous employee said they witnessed an elderly woman who didn’t speak English unknowingly purchase a Walmart+ membership. Fortunately, she noticed the error on her receipt and was able to get a refund from the store. She is far from the only person to accidentally add Walmart+ to their in-store purchases.
“It seemed to me that this was designed that way to make it super easy to accidentally or unknowingly add a subscription to your cart,” the employee said. “There must be people out there somewhere who are accidentally paying for this Walmart Plus subscription, going home and not even realizing that they’re out of $50, and they don’t even know that they have a subscription.”
Walmart quickly pulled the promotional prompt from all self-checkout kiosks and is offering full refunds to anyone who didn’t intend to sign up for a Walmart+ account.
In a response reported by Insider, Walmart said:
“We are aware of some customer confusion with this process which is leading us to remove the prompt. Any customers who inadvertently took advantage of this offer at a self-checkout and have not activated it can get a full refund with proof of purchase.”
So check your receipts. If you see an activation code listed and don’t want Walmart+, simply don’t activate it. Instead, bring your receipt to a Walmart location or the company’s website for a full refund.
Check out Walmart+ if you’re curious to see what all a membership has to offer before deciding to opt for a refund.