I'm sure selling a handful of video game consoles at a reduced price is going to result in any significant loss of revenue for any single Walmart store. Not saying that justifies it, but this small incident isn't going to have any serious repercussions.
I'm sure you've gone into Walmart and seen missing price tags, stuff knocked over, etc, and remarked to yourself "Why doesn't anyone fix that, it would only take a minute!" The answer is that there are thousands of things that would take a minute to fix, in a constant state of being screwed with and destroyed, many that were fixed and fixed again not long ago.
Everything at Walmart is death by a thousand pin pricks, and their losses are no exception. Each individual item that gets stolen, returned, destroyed, or sold for a loss at Walmarts every day may be a drop of water, but they combine to form a vast ocean.
TomShoe said:
I don't see why people are demonizing savvy consumers taking advantage of a loophole in the system rather than being outraged that Walmart pays their employees so little.
One hand feeds the other. Customers taking advantage of Walmart constantly and without remorse only helps validate paying diminishing returns to their workforce. One bad turn deserves another.
And "savvy" is an uncomfortably aggrandizing label for this act. It's a fraudulent price, the customers taking advantage of it are aware it's a fraudulent price. "Mercenary" is about the most complimentary term you should feel okay with using without squirming in your skin a bit.