Welcome to the 75th installment of The Wal-Mart Weekly, a column dedicated to bringing you insight, wit, facts, results, opinions, and just a bit of everything else when it comes to a very hot topic these days: Wal-Mart.
This week, let's examine Wal-Mart Stores Inc.'s (NYSE: WMT) quality control practices with the products it carries. Specifically, those items which could cause bodily injury or death due to the result of an accident. Unfortunately, an infant product was recently blamed for at least two deaths. Yes, I'm referencing the bassinet deaths you may have read about recently. As recently as last Tuesday, this recalled item was still being found on Wal-Mart shelves -- at least four full days after being recalled by the manufacturer, Simplicity.
The story of two infant deaths and the recall occurred in mid-August. So, why was this item still found on Wal-Mart shelves? Is there any excuse? It seems pretty simple: 1) manufacturer has a recall, 2) the recall is communicated to all Wal-Mart stores ASAP, and 3) a manager expeditiously removes all recalled products from the shelves. How hard can that be? If it's more complicated than that, then Wal-Mart has a broken process for recalls. this time, even two days appears to be a simply unacceptable timeframe to implement a recall of this nature. So, what happened?
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