Shopper Reveals Significant Walmart Price Increases

It’s no surprise that most things are more expensive than they once were. Inflation peaked at a record-tying 9.1 per cent in 2022, and while rates have fallen since then, they remain elevated, adding heat to consumer budgets everywhere. But how high have actual prices gone at some of your favourite stores? One Walmart shopper, sick and tired of looking at increased prices, took to TikTok to settle the debate.

In a video posted on 25 June 2022 to his account on TikTok, a video-sharing social network, the musician and creator @sewerlidd tells his followers to ‘guess how many items I got’ in his latest purchase at Walmart. Swiping to his order history on the retailer’s app, the creator reveals that he ordered a total of 53 items for a grand total of $126.67 back in June 2020.

“A whole month of groceries, just for me basically,” he recalls.

He says that in the midst of it all, he took a moment to examine that order and noticed that Walmart’s app had a ‘reorder all’ button.

“And I wanted to see how much it would cost now,” @sewerlidd tells viewers.

The results were worse than my client could have imagined. The app calculated that his two-year-old order at $126.67 would now cost a grand total of $414.39.

‘That is four times more,’ he says. ‘How? I feel like will vomit.’

@sewerlidd’s video is already causing a stir on TikTok. It’s onto nearly 2 million views in a few days – and it looks like a lot of other shoppers are as unhappy as he is with the current leap.

‘Life is no longer affordable!’ wrote one. ‘I don’t know how my family of four eats these days!

A second wrote: ‘I knew it was going to be bad. I didn’t know it was gonna be this bad.’

Others commented that Walmart was ‘gouging’, citing that the retailer has been raking in unprecedented profits at the same time that it’s also rising prices; others are not the first to claim as much. In March, Robert Reich, who served as the US Secretary of Labor under President Bill Clinton and is currently professor of public policy at the University of California, Berkeley, took to social media to zero in on the retailer.

Walmart raised prices on its lower-priced Great Value food brands. Its net income jumped 93 per cent to $10.5 billion at the end of 2023. As Reich wrote in a March 23 X post, ‘This is what I mean when I say price gouging is causing inflation.’

Nevertheless, some members commented that @sewerlidd’s original TikTok shouldn’t have been enthusiastically accepted as a clear-cut case, given that he doesn’t show the full list of either order including the amount of each item ordered.

Or did you double‑balance accidentally (3 re‑orders)? $414/3=$138 It’s $12 more. That’s what 2 years ago looks like. If this is true, you must be crazy.

Walmart hasn’t responded to the TikTok, which has now gone viral. Best Life reached out for comment, and we’ll update this story with the company’s response as soon as we hear back.

Meanwhile, the retailer responds that it is also looking to cut consumer costs. In May, Walmart announced that it had recently lowered prices on almost 7,000 store items, according to CNN.

‘Our everyday low prices plus a massive number of rollbacks is hitting [with consumers]’ Doug McMillon, CEO Walmart.