Walmart medical alert systems are actually a real thing. Most of us in the medical alert system arena find it quite weird Walmart actually provides bonafide medical alert devices. So we did a little bit of research combined with a field trip and randomly picked three Walmart stores in the Philadelphia metropolitan area (one of which was located in New Jersey) The results were consistent and scary but not terrible surprising. For sure, Walmart sells thousands of different items and evidently a medical alert system appears to be one of those items. In our view, given the many thousands of items that Walmart sells, that alone may disqualify Walmart as a good provider of the medic alert device itself. Perhaps the more important component is the medical alert service itself. Walmart, as far as we can tell does not have their own monitoring center that can receive the actual medical alerts. That means they likely outsource their medical alert monitoring. There are lots of good companies that outsource their monitoring; this alone does not make Walmart bad. However, Walmart is known for its cheap pricing and the only way top get cheap pricing for the monitoring of a medical alert device is to have the monitoring done offshore. While offshore monitoring is technologically possible, the issues associated with this component seem obvious. Medical alert monitoring stations that are not located domestically have lower labor costs and are not subject to the rules and regulations that domestic companies are subject to. Maybe the best way to say it is: Use companies that support American workers.
When we went to New Jersey to find a medical alert system at the Walmart Super Center in New Brunswick, New Jersey we approached the first customer service person we saw and asked where we could find the Walmart brand of medical alert systems; she did not know what we were talking about. We repeated this three more times at the New Jersey Walmart and got the same result so we headed back to Pennsylvania to a Walmart in Northeast Philadelphia. This time we sought out six customer service people, once again we got the same result as we did at the Walmart in New Brunswick, New Jersey. We then went to the Walmart located in Wyncote, Pennsylvania and asked for information about their medical alert systems. The first two customer service reps once again had no clue. The third customer representative also had no idea about medical alert devices but paged an assistant manager for us. After approximately twenty minutes of waiting, we were greeted by a very pleasant young woman who didn’t really know what a medical alert system was but she told us to check on line.
By way of conclusion and given the apparent lack of knowledge about these important senior safety devices, Walmart as well as any of the other large retailers that purport to sell medical alert systems may not be the best choice to keep your elderly mom or dad safe. If Walmart’s employees cannot even provide basic information about medical alert systems; how well do you think Walmart can handle an actual medical alarm signal when somebody you care about is in real distress?
For more information about Vital-Link please call us at 1-800-338-4825