Why did Walmart.com ban me?

QI’m having two problems with Walmart.

When I order food online, Walmart has repeatedly delivered expired and rotten food. Also,

I’ve had problems with Walmart. com. I’ve been getting error messages on the site for the past 10 days when I try to check out. I can’t make a purchase.

Walmart customer service has given me all kinds of insane excuses for these issues. It continues to engage in unethical antics that insult and ridicule me as a homebound disabled person.

For example, Walmart customer service has repeatedly advised me to “go to the store” for my groceries, since the website is not working. I have explained that I am disabled and cannot physically get to the store.

Walmart.com also claims its Electronic Benefit Transfer system is down. Now it is telling me that I am under investigation by the Walmart billing department and that my account has been deliberately deactivated.

I have documented many of these chats with Walmart customer service as well as taken pictures of the rotten food they delivered in the past. I have been charged for items that were said to be out of stock without receiving a refund and am subjected to demeaning and obnoxious treatment by Walmart customer service, managers and other Walmart associates.

I wish to be treated like every other Walmart customer and to be afforded equal access to the public services that this giant retailer provides every day to tens of millions of Americans, without discrimination against me for my class or condition of government oppression. — Diane Robinson, Albany, New York

AI’m sorry about your troubles with Walmart.com. There’s no excuse for delivering expired food. Walmart ought to welcome your business with a fully accessible site. But it should also be clear about any irregularities you’ve experienced and explain what, if anything, you’ve done to violate its terms and conditions.

This isn’t the first or the last case involving mysterious error messages on Walmart.com. I’m looking into a similar problem involving a customer who was banned from the Walmart.com site for questionable reasons.

Of course, Walmart has the right to refuse service to anyone it wants, as long as it’s legal. But I think it owes you a clear explanation. Why are you under investigation? And what about the error messages — do they have anything to do with your account being investigated?

To find out, you can do your own research. Switch web browsers or try to buy items in “incognito” mode without signing in. If the error still happens, then you can eliminate the possibility that your problem is just a browser-related glitch.

According to Walmart’s terms of use, however, the company owes you no such explanation. It says it may terminate your account “at any time and may do so immediately without notice, and deny you access to the Walmart sites, if in our sole discretion you fail to comply with any term or provision of these terms of use.”

To fix these error messages, you might have tried sending a brief, polite appeal to one of Walmart’s executives. I list the names, numbers and email addresses of Walmart’s customer service managers on my consumer advocacy website, Elliott.org.

I contacted Walmart on your behalf. A manager called you within 15 minutes of receiving my query and promised to “make some phone calls” to determine the cause of your error messages. However, the error messages persist.

I’m sorry Walmart won’t help you, even with my advocacy efforts. I think you might be better off buying your groceries elsewhere.