With everything that went down last week in the whole Wal-Mart back to school list controversy, there is one thing that particularly impressed me (well, one outside the amazing support I got from fellow moms when I was criticized). The same day of my Truth About Wal-Mart’s Back to School Lists post, I was contacted by Wal-Mart spokeswoman Shannon Frederick. She expressed concern that sounded quite sincere, and vowed to get to the bottom of the issue.

I’d like to reach out to the store that you visited for your back to school shopping needs. Would you mind sharing with me the address? I commit that I will circle back to you after I have done some investigating.

So I let her know which Wal-Mart store was the location where I got the back to school lists. We continued to email back and forth as she investigated the matter.

I contacted your store and spoke with the manager. He was able to speak with the associate who was charged with getting school supply lists, and confirmed that we received the lists posted in our store from the local schools in the area. In fact, the store received all of the lists via fax and can show that they were sent from the schools’ fax numbers.

We’re really trying to get down to what may be causing all of the confusion in this process, and we appreciate your cooperation with us. If you could share with us which school you are working with, we would like to be able to look into this further to try to solve the breakdown of communication which seems to be happening. We hope that if we can make sense of this situation, we can correct the problem in other stores as well.

This had me a bit at a loss, as I was specifically told by the school that they sent no lists whatsoever to any stores. I also knew that lists I had didn’t match lists I saw at the school.

So I called the school again, just to be certain. (And no, for those of you who might criticize, I am not going to share the name of the school publicly). Again, I was told that Wal-Mart did not get the lists from the school. This is what the woman at the school said:

We don’t send any lists to Wal-mart and I don’t know of any teachers who have. They didn’t get them from this office!

Perplexed, I passed this along to Shannon. I shared the name of the school, and she promised to be discreet about the name. I hadn’t shared the information publicly for obvious reasons.

This morning, I spoke with ### ### in the office at your daughter’s elementary school. ### confirmed that she shared the back to school supply lists with our Wal-Mart store in #####. She said Wal-Mart was the only retailer in the area that reached out to ### Elementary to request the official lists, and that she faxed to the store the lists that the teachers had completed.

Shannon emailed me the lists, and in there I do see the correct list for my school. I also recognize that every other list for every other teacher included those “do not bring” items from my own class’ list, and I did not see the list for my daughter’s own teacher when I was there that day. It must have run out before I got there. Shannon stated this, having reviewed my image of my list:

At this point, I’m not sure where the mix-up occurred. But I am pleased to confirm that our store is working with the local schools to gather the appropriate supply lists that are then shared with customers. This is exactly the process that we ask our store managers to follow.

So Wal-Mart did, in fact, have correct lists at my local store. I want to be sure that is clear, and that there was a mix-up after all.

Still, I do believe after all is said and done there are some valuable lessons for parents here. I heard from several other parents who said they had incorrect lists at a variety of retail stores. Here is my advice to those doing back to school shopping:

• Talk to your teacher directly if that is possible before shopping to confirm what is and isn’t needed in class.
• If possible, get only basic essentials before school starts. Wait until the meet the teacher day or after school starts to confirm which essentials you need to buy. I do know this is a balance, since many of us want to take advantage of state sales tax holidays and local sales.
• Never assume a list you see at a store is truly containing “required” back to school items. In fact, assume it is wrong and seek out a list directly from the teacher or buy only what you feel comfortable purchasing. Stores are out to boost sales during a popular time of year for spending.

And here are a couple lessons for retailers. I would take these seriously, have a board room meeting to discuss, pass around a memo, send a directive to all stores, whatever it takes:

• If you are putting out a back to school list, get it directly from the schools as the local Wal-Mart did. Otherwise, you’d better make it damn clear in bold type up top of the page that the list is a suggestion, and not from a local school.
• Know that next year, we will be watching from the beginning and we WILL bust you if you do otherwise. I will ask an army of mommy bloggers to check all their local stores, and we will all blog about it when we catch someone misleading moms. Just FYI.

And I would truly like to thank Shannon at Wal-Mart for seeing this thing through. Her promise at the beginning to get to the bottom of this all was kept. Frankly, Wal-Mart has earned my respect this past week. In my former days as a newspaper reporter, there were many times that companies and officials chose to stick their heads in the sand, or simply attach the messenger. She was polite, helpful, and kept her word to find out what went wrong.

Plus, now we know that Wal-Mart does in fact have a policy in which the lists should, in fact, come from local schools. So if you ever find one that doesn’t, contact me and I’ll let her know. Also leave a comment if you’re a mom who would like to be part of my back to school investigation next year.

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• Truth About Wal-Mart Back to School Lists (87)
• Back to School Shopping List Rebuttal (33)