The Corner Penthouse

I have had the displeasure of dealing with horrible customer service, but I think that my current experience with Walmart.com has proven to be the worst.

[UPDATE: There has been a positive resolution to this matter. Jump to "UPDATE - 11/6/2025" to learn how I was able to achieve that. There is also a mini-review of the South Park DVDs at the end, too.]

Before I begin, let me just quickly explain (to the best of my knowledge) how Paramount has released South Park on DVD. The original Season releases from 20 or so years ago were three discs in fold-out Digipack cases (made of paperboard and plastic trays). I have Seasons 1 & 3 in this packaging. Later, the sets were re-released in standard plastic cases with new artwork and a large folded poster inside the case. I have Season 5 in this packaging. Sometime even later, the studio gathered up the discs for each set of five seasons into one of those crappy thick "all discs in one" Scanavo cases. Seasons 1-5, 6-10, 11-15, 16-20, and 21-25 were all re-released this way. While I do not like these cases, considering that there are over 25 seasons of this show, these are the least space-consuming way to own all of the same discs that are in the older packagings.

On October 21, 2025, I found three sets of these South Park thick case sets in the Walmart in Valley Stream, New York (Store #5293) for a reasonably cheap price. The Seasons 1-5 and 6-10 sets were bundled together for $49.96, as were the Seasons 11-15 and 16-20 sets. That's $25 for each five-season set, or $5 per season. The Seasons 21-25 set was even cheaper at $19.96. Sadly, I did not have $120+ at the time, so I had to pass on them. I did photograph them on the shelf as a reminder to come back for them.



The following Monday, October 27th, I walked back to Walmart with enough cash to buy all three sets. Bear in mind that when it comes to the shops at Green Acres Mall, Walmart is the furthest from my point of origin; in this case, the bank on Merrick Road where I withdrew the money. The point being, that it was a VERY LONG walk. So, you can imagine how pissed I was when I found NONE of the South Park DVDs still on the shelf. No, they weren't sold. The electronic shelf price tags were changed, with none still present for South Park, which tells me that the DVDs were removed from the store; probably sent back to the warehouse or manufacturer.

So, now I had to take that VERY LONG walk back to the bank (before they closed at 4:00 PM) so I could re-deposit the money, which would allow me to buy the items on Walmart's website for the same price. Oh, were my feet so sore when I got home.

When I did, eventually, get home to rest my sore feet, I placed an order for the same items from Walmart.com: Seasons 1-10 for $49.96, Seasons 11-20 for $49.96, and Seasons 21-25 for $18.73 (about a Dollar cheaper than in-store). Shipping was free, but I still had to pay $10.23 in sales tax, which brought the total to $128.88.


All of my previous Walmart.com orders in 2025, when I was forced by United HealthCare's OTC card to buy from the website, were shipped via FedEx from warehouses. I selected that option for this order, but at some point during or after checkout, Walmart switched it to "ship from store" (which is confusingly mislabeled as "Delivery" on the site). As I pointed out in this article about the UHC OTC card, Walmart is notorious for changing the shipping method of items. Several food items that are listed as being shippable will change to "delivery from store" during checkout, which the OTC card would not pay for, thus forcing me to remove them from my cart and start over. As I look back on my confirmation e-mail now, I see that Walmart changed it to "Delivery" (from store) instead of "Shipping" (via FedEx). Oh, if only they didn't do that.

I fully expected for the status of my order to change within a few hours, as these South Park DVDs were in-stock and should have shipped out immediately. The next day, Tuesday October 28th, there was still no update on the order. That seemed strange, especially given that the site said I would receive the items on Wednesday October 29th. Surely, it would take some time to go from the warehouse to me. Well, maybe the warehouse was super close, but there still should have been an update by Tuesday evening, and there wasn't.

Wednesday morning I logged into my Walmart.com account and saw a "live tracking" link on the Orders page.


Why wasn't I sent an e-mail informing me? The only e-mail I received was, literally, 7 minutes before it was eventually "delivered" (but not to me).


This was also when I noticed that the package was going to be delivered by a Walmart driver (named Euclides) and not FedEx or UPS. I was a bit annoyed by that, as I know that I did not select that during checkout, but if everything went as planned, that shouldn't have been a problem. The estimated delivery time kept changing by the minute until it eventually settled on 12:57 PM, when I received an e-mail telling me that my package was delivered.


I rushed downstairs and checked the porch, and there was NOTHING there! Was my package stolen within a minute or two of being delivered? I came inside and checked the Walmart website again, this time clicking on Euclides' "official" Delivery Photo, which is embedded below.


That is NOT my house. Anyone with common sense could see that house is numbered "01", while mine is numbered "120". How anyone could confuse the two is beyond me. Hell, just look up my address on Google Maps' Street View and you'd see that it's a completely different house.


In the 13 years that I have lived in this two-family house, I have had packages misplaced at the back door, and various USPS shenanigans, but NEVER have I had a package delivered to a completely different house! I don't even know where the house in the photo is. My block doesn't have an "01"-numbered house. This house may not even be in my town. For all I know, Euclides could have kept the package and submitted to Walmart a fraudulent photo he has stored on his phone to aid him in his thievery.

Now fuming mad, I searched Walmart.com for customer service contact information. Of course, they don't provide any. No e-mail address, no phone number, not even a "Chat With Us" link unless you wait two business days! Thankfully, a quick Google search revealed 1-800-925-6278 as the right number, though as I would learn, and this isn't a surprise, Walmart uses a call center in India. Putting aside how scummy it is for American companies to use foreign call centers instead of American call centers (just so they can save a little money), it's always better when the customer support reps speak without an accent because the customer can understand them better.

On October 29, 2025 at 1:30 PM Eastern, I spoke with Walmart (Indian) rep Lesly. A recording of the call is below (personal information redacted, wait times removed), in which you will notice that she did a lot of parroting back what I said, which comes off as really rehearsed because no one does that (at least not that frequently) in normal conversation. Anyway, after I explained the situation, she asked if I wanted a refund or a replacement. I paid for the DVDs, I want the DVDs. I told her that I wanted replacements to be sent out. She told me that it would take TEN BUSINESS DAYS! WHAT... THE... FUCK! Ten business days is roughly two weeks. There is no reason that I should have to wait that long. If this was Amazon, the rep would have placed a new order IMMEDIATELY, and I would get an e-mail notification about it within minutes.


I let the mention of "ten business days" go in one ear and out the other, as I was more concerned with getting details about the replacement order. I asked her if the replacement package would come from a store or be (properly) shipped via FedEx or UPS. Lesly said that I would get a confirmation e-mail with that information when the package is shipped. Seeing that there wasn't much more I could do with Lesly, I politely ended the conversation. I figured that I would give it 24 hours - certainly NOT ten business days - before I inquired about the matter again. Hopefully I would get some e-mails during that time giving me some insight as to the progress.

I should note that a few hours later, around 4:30 PM, my bank informed me that Walmart's $128.88 pre-authorization was changed to debit. So now Walmart has my money, but I have nothing in return. Also, no e-mails about this replacement order followed. The ONLY e-mail, or anything, that this call yielded was an e-mail at 3:26 PM asking me for feedback on my call with Lesly. Maybe I'll leave feedback after I publish this article, though they certainly won't like what I have to say.


The next day, Thursday October 30th at 11:20 AM, I called up Walmart's Indian customer service call center again and spoke with Mohammad. A recording of the call is below (personal information redacted, wait times removed). He confirmed that a replacement order had been placed, and that I should receive it either "today" (Thursday 10/30) or "tomorrow" (Friday 10/31). Hmmm... why didn't I get any e-mails notifying me of this replacement order or its status of possibly being "out for delivery" that day?


As the recording shows, I tried to probe him for information on the phantom replacement order. For starters, I asked for an order number. He said that it had the same number as the original mis-delivered order. WTF! Walmart's site didn't show anything changed on the page for the original order in my account. I would think that there would be something on the page to show replacements being sent out.


There wasn't even a new order listed on my Orders page in my account. There was (and still is) NOTHING in my account to show the existence of a replacement order!


When I asked him how this new package would be shipped, he said that it would be "delivery from store" again. After Walmart fucked that up the first time, why would they do it again?!? I asked him for some way to track this new package, but he could not provide a tracking link or number. No matter how much I tried to probe him for information, all he could say was that I would received an e-mail from the store when the package was on its way. He did say that I would likely receive the package "today" (Thursday 10/30) before 8:00 PM. Given that there was a torrential rainstorm going on, I certainly hoped it would not be delivered that day. Of course, I kinda knew that it would not be delivered at all.

Another 24 hours pass and it's now Friday October 31st; Halloween. Would I get a "treat" in the form of the South Park DVDs that I paid Walmart nearly $130 for, or would I get a "trick" in the form of nothing? That's a rhetorical question. Since I wasn't getting anywhere with Walmart's phone support, I thought I'd try other venues. I noticed the help@walmart.com address on the original order confirmation e-mail, so I gave that a shot. The message instantly came back with a "We're not monitoring this email address" message. Such a shame that Walmart doesn't want to have e-mail support.

On October 31st at 1:35 PM, I used the "Chat With Us" link on Walmart.com and exchanged messages with NovieAnn. As you can see from the near-complete slightly-redacted chat log (only a tiny bit is missing as I was screen-capping live), most of what she had to say were disingenuous pre-written messages. Seriously, no one in real conversion would respond with stuff like the quotes below? None of it even feels like a natural response to what was written before it.

I truly understand your frustration. Personally, I know how you feel and I cannot blame you for that. I would feel the same way too if I were in your shoes. If I only have that option on my end here, I would really love to do that right away for you. I completely understand how disappointing it is. At the end of the day I am also a customer like you and I know how it feels having this kind of inconvenience. We'll do our best to get to the bottom of this.

Thank you so much as well for being so kind and understanding despite going through such inconvenience.

I hope I will be able to encounter more customers as good as you are. May you have a brighter days ahead.

Anyway, as it relates to the matter of the mis-delivered package, and the phantom replacement order, this is what NovieAnn had to say:

Upon careful review, we've verified that the item/s you confirmed in your order are unfortunately missing. We deeply regret any inconvenience this may have caused. No worries, allow us to process a full refund for the missing item/s. This option will allow you to conveniently place a new order according to your preferences. Would that be okay?

You will notice that there is NO MENTION of the replacement order that Lesly supposed created two days earlier, and that Mohammad had told me the day before would be delivered to me yesterday or today. The word "replacement" isn't even mentioned as an option; instead going straight to "refund" as a solution. Seeing how useless Walmart reps have proven themselves to be, I did not push back on the matter and agreed to the refund. Another pre-written response follows...

Paul, We're working on your refund. You'll get an email within 10 business days from when the request was initiated with more details.

What the fuck is with this "10 business days" shit?!? Lesly gave that timeframe (for a replacement order) when I made the first call about the mis-delivered package, and now I get it again from NovieAnn. Does Walmart, seriously, want me to wait TWO WEEKS - "business days" are Monday to Friday - to get my money back? Walmart didn't wait 10 business days to get the money from my bank. The payment cleared after TWO business days.

So, let's recap how bad the Walmart.com customer service is. Walmart's own driver delivers the package to the wrong address (or steals it). Common sense, and good customer service, would have Walmart IMMEDIATELY ship out new items; maybe even bringing them from the nearest store that day or the next. After making TWO phone calls and ONE chat, NOTHING is changed in my Walmart account. The ONLY thing that happened as a result of those two calls and one chat is that I received that "How was your call with Lesly?" feedback e-mail! Walmart is fucking pathetic!

[UPDATE - 11/6/2025]
In the past, when ever I would get nowhere with a company's low-level reps, such as with various insurance companies, I would look for e-mail addresses for the executives, namely the company CEO. In the case of Walmart, the President and CEO would be Doug McMillion. (I wonder if that's his real last name.) After I originally posted this article, I did a Google search for the exec e-mails, and sent an e-mail briefly explaining the situation, and pointing to this article for the full details, to doug.mcmillon@walmart.com, executive.communications@wal-mart.com, cacssee@wal-mart.com, cacssee@walmart.com, wmcc-ecc@walmart.com (the last three might not be necessary). That was on a Friday night, so of course, I wouldn't hear back until the following Monday at the earliest.

On November 3rd around 2:00 PM Eastern I received a call from Jenna in Walmart's "Elevated Care" department. I was not home at the time, so she followed that up with an e-mail at 2:12 PM Eastern. The call came from 1-855-559-5603 and the e-mail came from walmart.customer.care@walmart.com (KEEP THAT INFO IN MIND SHOULD YOU HAVE A PROBLEM, AS YOU DON'T WANT TO WASTE YOUR TIME WITH THE LOW-LEVEL INDIAN CALL CENTER PHONE & CHAT REPS). As can be seen in the below screenshot, Jenna acknowledged my e-mail to Doug McMillions and the executive teams address(es).


She asked if I wanted replacements or a refund, and I replied telling her that I wanted replacements. I only agreed to the refund on Friday via chat because I was getting nowhere with the Indian call center phone & chat reps. Obviously, I would prefer to get the items I paid for. To my surprise, Jenna replied in mere minutes and INSTANTLY created a replacement order.


I know this for a fact because, unlike with phone rep Lesly last week, I actually received an e-mail informing me of the creation of a replacement order. Oh, and unlike the lies that Mohammad was spewing, the replacement order has a different order number than the original one.


The replacement order also showed up in my account under walmart.com/orders. That never happened last week when phone rep Lesly supposedly created the replacement order that Mohammad was lying about on Thursday when he was telling me that it would come that day or the next.


Jenna was able to re-order the Seasons 1-10 and 21-25 sets through my Walmart account, so that order would show up in my account (see above screenshot) and I could keep tabs on it. For some reason, the system wasn't allowing her to re-order the Seasons 11-20 set that way, too. So, she had to place that order outside of my account, which meant that it would be another "phantom order". However, unlike the Indian reps, I trusted that Jenna placed the order and that I would get it, even though I could not confirm through my account the existence of the order and be able to get status updates on it.

That all happened quite expeditiously on Monday afternoon. I applaud Jenna for taking care of it so quickly. Definitely better than the "10 business days" nonsense the Indian reps kept repeating. While I would have liked for everything to have shipped via FedEx from a warehouse, as I didn't trust "delivery from store" after the fuck-up last week, it wasn't up to me. I don't think it was up to Jenna, either. It seems like Walmart's system will have it delivered in whatever manner is cheapest for the company, regardless of what the customer wants.

The Seasons 11-20 and Seasons 21-25 sets were delivered on Wednesday November 5th via local Walmart delivery. It seems that it takes two days for that delivery method, as even last week, the order was placed on Monday and delivered (to someone else) on Wednesday. I came home and found a stapled Walmart paper bag and a sealed Walmart shipping envelope sitting on my porch. The Seasons 11-20 set was in the bag, and the Seasons 21-25 set was in the envelope. Thankfully, both were in great shape.


The Walmart system/site broke up the trackable replacement order into two shipments. The Seasons 21-25 set came from a Walmart store, but the Seasons 1-10 set was shipped by FedEx from Alliance Entertainment's warehouse at 300 Omicron Court in Shepherdsville, Kentucky. I get a lot of review packages from this warehouse, so I know they package things well. The thing I don't like about Walmart's system, and why I don't like when it selects "ship from store" instead of my preferred "ship by FedEx", is that "shipping confirmation" e-mails are not sent out for the former (except 5 to 10 minutes before delivery on the day of), but they are sent out for the latter as soon as the package is shipped out. That lets me instantly know what's going on with the items, while orders seem to be in an "unprocessed limbo" for days when they "ship from store".


Anyway, for the trackable replacement order, I have no idea why Walmart's system didn't send both items from the warehouse. I don't think Walmart's system knew, either, as it said the Seasons 1-10 set was being delivered from a store, yet being shipped via FedEx!


The box - and thank goodness this warehouse uses boxes and not padded envelopes for sets like this - was delivered by FedEx on Thursday November 6th. It arrived in great shape with no damage. YAY!


Three days after I had first contact from Jenna, I had all three of the South Park sets/bundles that I paid for last week. Double YAY! YAY!


While this article isn't meant to be a South Park DVD review, I might as well write a little bit about them since other people might benefit from seeing my photos and learning about the different packagings of the first 20 seasons - as far as I am able to research them. Again, I want to make it clear that I only have four of the individual seasons sets: Seasons 1 & 3 in the original Digipak cases, Season 5 in the new plastic case (with large episode synopsis poster inside), and Season 19 in an unknown case because I can't find it right now (but it's probably a plastic case). I do not know how many sets were originally produced in Digipak cases before they were switched to first run plastic cases. I also do not know how many of the sets were re-packaged in plastic cases with the posters inside.

Unwrapping everything, we find five "five season" sets (the first four with slipcovers): 1-5, 6-10, 11-15, 16-20, and 21-25. It should be noted that the 1-10 and 11-20 bundles seem to be exclusive to Walmart, as Amazon only has them as individual five-season sets. Not included is Season 26 (also on Blu-ray). The show is currently airing Season 27 or 28, depending on whether IMDb is correct that Season 27 only contains a mere 5 episodes.


Opening up all of the cases we see the discs. Based upon what I know, the discs for Seasons 1 through 15 contain completely different artwork on them than the original individual season sets. For these seasons, Paramount finally got wise and labeled them noting which season that disc is for. (Something the original season sets didn't do.) Sadly, they stopped doing that after Season 15, as Seasons 16 through 25 are just labeled "Disc 1" and "Disc 2" (and "Disc 3" for those seasons that have a third disc). Good luck figuring out what season each of these same-named discs are for. Looks like I will have to grab a Sharpie and label them myself later.


Also, as can be seen in the image above, the sets for the first 20 seasons are in those crappy stacked and overlapped "all discs in one" Scanavo cases, though at least it's not the even worse Epik Pak cases. The Seasons 21-25 set is in a thick 10-Disc case with each disc on it's own page and no stacking or overlapping. That's a fantastic case! So, I'm only going to concentrate this discussion on the cases for the first 20 seasons. I'll show how these cases compare to the earlier season packagings in a bit, but I do want to note that with only 15 discs in each case (3 discs per season x 5 seasons), there isn't much stacking going on. So, it's mostly overlapped discs and discs holders that have to be finessed a bit in order to get the discs out. I knew all that before I made the purchase, so while I don't like these cases, I'm not greatly upset about it.

As I may have mentioned, the original season DVD releases were in thick fold-out Digipak cases. These cases are made of paperboard with plastic trays glued to them. While they have lots of character artwork, they are also quite prone to wear and damage (paper isn't very resilient), and if the plastic breaks, they can't be (easily) replaced. The photo below shows the three Season 1 discs in the original Digipak case (top) and in the Seasons 1-5 case (bottom). The slipbox for the Digipak is in the lower left. As you can see, the original discs are NOT labeled as "Season 1". One positive for the Digipak is that it includes a synopsis and airdate for every episode, while there isn't even an episode list for the multi-season set. I'll have to type up and print one out for each of these sets (grabbing text from the Wiki). As far as I can see, the disc content is 100% the same in both releases.


In terms of physical space, two of these Digipak cases are as thick as one five-season case. The photo below also shows what I was saying about the Digipak cases getting worn easily. Note how horrible the corners of the cases look.


My individual copy of Season 5 is in a standard size three-disc plastic case with a large fold-out dual-sided poster inside. The photo below shows the Season 5 discs inside the Seasons 1-5 case (top) and the individual case (bottom). In the multi-season case, Season 5 Disc 2 sits under Disc 1; one of the few instances of disc stacking in these multi-season sets. As for the individual case, although there is an episode guide printed on the interior of the case...


...the poster further elaborates on the episode guide by providing additional information.



I absolutely LOVE this packaging, and I would have preferred to buy the first 20 seasons in individual Amaray plastic cases like this (as long as they come with the posters). I assume that all 20 seasons were (re)packaged like this, but I don't know for sure, and I don't know how many come with the posters. Twenty of the standard 14mm thick plastic cases don't take up that much more room than the four thick cases these 20 seasons come in. As seen in the image below, in which I have the South Park multi-season cases stacked up next to 20 wrestling DVD cases, the four multi-season cases equal the thickness of 14 cases. The point being that 20 seasons in 20 individual plastic cases wouldn't take up that much more space.


However, I accepted buying these crappy Scanavo cases for two reasons: (1) Paying $100 for all 20 seasons, in brand new condition, is MUCH cheaper than any other option that I can see. (2) While I would have preferred to find someone on eBay selling all 20 seasons in individual plastic cases, there is a high chance that the DVDs would be counterfeits. Buying them direct from Walmart guarantees that I received legitimate product.

So, in conclusion, I'm happy that I was finally able to get all of these legitimate South Park DVDs for a reasonably cheap price. I would have preferred not to have gone through the headaches with Walmart's shitty Indian customer service reps, but if I ever decide to order from Walmart again - and that's a big "if" right now - at least if I have any more problems, I have the elevated customer service contact information so I can get a proper resolution right from the start.