Walmart caught gouging customers who ship oversease to troops

Jeff Hess has some choice words for Walmart:

As a former member of our military, this revelation concerning Walmart pisses me off. Remember that snow-in-Iraq TV ad Walmart ran recently? Well the real story is that Walmart is sticking it to service members and their families if a holiday gift is shipped to an Army Post Office address.

He links to a piece in Stars and Stripes that talks about retailers gouging customers by tacking on inflated shipping costs to ship to an APO (Army Post Office), or overseas military address. Curiously enough, Walmart was the most egregious offender. They tacked on $8 to a $120 purchase that would cost $2 to ship stateside. Amazon did not tack on the extra cost, and Target was even less than shipping stateside.

Walmart uses the excuse that there is additional transportation costs associated with shipping around the world. That would wash but for the fact that things shipped APO get shipped to one of 3 addresses within the United States where the Department of Defense picks up the tab to get it the rest of the way. There is no additional transportation cost to retailers to get stuff to those stationed overseas. They only need to ship it as far as New York, Miami, or San Francisco.

The military mail system is designed to be subsidized so troops can easily get and send mail that is not prohibitively expensive. We pay for this service as taxpayers and Walmart is abusing it for their own ill gotten gains.

I’m assuming most with yellow support the troops magnets on their vehicles will continue to be oblivious to this and shop at Walmart thinking they are doing a patriotic duty. Sigh…