Cyber Monday 2018: Walmart's Nasty Surprises

The big Walmart WMT +0.99% Cyber Monday sale is live (ad scan) as it blends in with the store’s extended Black Friday deals. Walmart has some of the best Cyber Monday deals this year, but there are also some nasty surprises hidden among them and this is your guide to avoiding an expensive mistake.

This is the third in my Cyber Monday ‘Nasty Surprises’ series and you can read my Apple warnings and Amazon warnings here. Working alongside BestBlackFriday.com, I’m analysing Cyber Monday 2018 sales to help you uncover where big deals are not what they seem. My dedicated Cyber Monday 2018 store guides are also live for Amazon, for Apple, for Best Buy, for Target, and for Walmart.

My thanks go to my holiday season sales partner, BestBlackFriday.com, for assisting me in collating these sales.

Expensive Shipping Policy - Walmart’s free shipping minimum will remain at $35 for Cyber Monday and Cyber Week. This gives you two-day shipping, but its far behind rivals. Target has free two-day shipping with no minimum spend, Best Buy matches this and Amazon has free 5-8 day shipping with no minimum for non-Prime members and a free trial for no minimum order two-day shipping. Even Kohl’s has free shipping on orders $25 or higher. Walmart is off the pace.

No Big Xbox and PS4 Deals - Walmart’s sales for Microsoft's MSFT -0.11% Xbox One (view Black Friday Deal), Nintendo Switch (view Black Friday deal) and PlayStation 4 (view Black Friday Deal) were popular during Black Friday, but are currently missing from its Cyber Monday ad. This only leaves a Nintendo 2DS XL deal for $129 saving $20.72 (View Ad Scan Deal), but the big hitters remain sold-out from Black Friday. There’s no guarantee they will return for Cyber Monday and Target’s additional console discounts are looming large.  (As we wrote here, Walmart will actually have the “Nintendo Switch Console with Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle for $299 (save $59) - review deal now” for Cyber Monday. It wasn’t in the Press Release, so I forgot about it. Walmart had sent it to us in an Excel file. Probably just rework that paragraph a bit to say no new Big Xbox or PS4 deals)

Missing iPhone Deals - On Cyber Monday, Walmart will offer the Straight Talk Apple AAPL -7.69% iPhone 8 Plus for $599.99 (review deal now) and the Straight Talk Apple iPhone 8 (review deal now) for $499.99 (each saving $99.01). But these don’t come close to Walmart’s Black Friday deals on 2018 iPhones:

• $300 gift card with Apple iPhone XS, iPhone XS Max or iPhone XR - View Ad Scan Deal
• $400 gift card with iPhone 8, iPhone 8 Plus or iPhone X - View Ad Scan Deal

Walmart may launch these at the last minute, but that’s typically not how it operates. Losing the best Black Friday iPhone deals on Cyber Monday would be a nasty surprise.

The big threat to Walmart’s Cyber Monday sales is, arguably, the store with the worst Black Friday sale: Target. Unlike Walmart, Target has promised a further 15% discount on “thousands of items” and a further 5% discount on sales prices for REDCard holders. Furthermore, Best Buy is expected to return with its leading Samsung phone discounts which means smart buyers could skip Walmart’s Cyber Monday sale altogether.

If you’d like to track my daily holiday sales season 2018 guides, leaks and recommendations, hit the Follow button on my author page or follow me using any of the social media links below. You can also get more sales insight with my dedicated Cyber Monday store guides to Amazon, to Apple, to Best Buy, to Target and to Walmart.

Source: Forbes.com