EBT Outage Sparks Black Friday-esque Run On Food Shelves at Walmart

[boozeman]

EBT Outage Sparks Black Friday-esque Run On Food Shelves at Walmart

Two Walmart locations in Louisiana were forced to call in police officers on Saturday after a glitch in the Electronic Benefit Transfer system removed spending limits and triggered a run on the stores' food shelves.

"I saw people drag out eight to ten grocery carts," Springhill Police Chief Will Lynd told local CBS affiliate KSLA. "It was definitely worse than Black Friday. It was worse than anything we had ever seen in this town."

The glitch, caused by a power outage during a routine maintenance test at Xerox, took many long hours to correct and affected millions of households across 17 states.

Around 7 PM, the Walmart stores in Springhill and Mansfield first noted that EBT cards were not displaying limits and called corporate for guidance.

A spokesman for the company acknowledged that the stores got the green light to allow customers to use their EBT cards despite the glitch — a decision which led many to load up on hundreds of dollars worth of food items, clearing out entire shelves by the time limits were restored two hours later.

Lynd said that at no point were people unruly, and officers were merely brought in to assist with crowd control.

Manfield's police chief Gary Hobbs also reported calm among shoppers, save for a few instances of "pushing and shoving."

However, a store employee told KSLA they were forced to stop selling food by 9 PM because there was nothing left to sell.

In Springhill, many overflowing shopping carts were left in the aisles after limits were restored, and employees spent nearly an entire day putting items back.

According to ABC News, Walmart will be held responsible for any amount spent over the limit by EBT card holders.

A Louisiana Department of Children and Family Services spokesman said the company chose not to adhere to the emergency policy which limits all sales during a system outage to no more than $50.

 

[Cotton]

Walmart is into additional welfare it seems.

 

[Smitty]

Sounds like theft to me.

For example, if you go to the bank and it spits out a pile of money that you didn't ask for and you don't return it, that's illegal.

Unless I'm not understanding how the system works, but I'm assuming it means that they get a certain amount of benefits to spend every period of time, but a glitch allowed them to buy unlimited amounts this time.

 

[NoDak]

Sounds like theft to me.

For example, if you go to the bank and it spits out a pile of money that you didn't ask for and you don't return it, that's illegal.

Unless I'm not understanding how the system works, but I'm assuming it means that they get a certain amount of benefits to spend every period of time, but a glitch allowed them to buy unlimited amounts this time.

Wouldn't there be a way to track the amount each card number spent? Just shut that card off until they are "even" again.

 

[boozeman]

Wal-Mart, Xerox blame each other for food stamps spree


| By Kathy Finn of Reuters


Throngs of shoppers flooded Wal-Mart stores in Louisiana on Saturday, buying groceries using electronic benefit cards that contained no credit limits.


NEW ORLEANS — Wal-Mart Stores Inc and Xerox Corp blamed each other on Monday after Louisiana food stamp recipients stripped bare the shelves of some Walmart stores when a computer glitch left their debit cards with no limits.

Managers of Wal-Mart stores in the small, north Louisiana towns of Springhill and Mansfield alerted police on Saturday night that throngs of shoppers had flooded into the stores and were buying groceries using electronic benefit cards that contained no credit limits.

EBT cards are debit-type cards issued under the state's food stamp program and coded to show the amount of money available for individuals to spend. Food stamps are a federal government subsidy program for low-income people that is administered by the states.

When word got out Saturday that the EBT cards were showing no limits, card holders rushed to area Wal-Marts to take advantage.

"Some people had eight or 10 shopping carts full of groceries," Springhill Police Chief Will Lynd said on Monday.

Xerox said on Saturday that its systems that process EBT transactions suffered an outage stemming from routine testing of backup generators that malfunctioned. Louisiana was one of 17 states affected by the outage.

Kayla Whiting, a spokeswoman at Wal-Mart's Bentonville, Arkansas, headquarters, pointed to Xerox as the source of the problem and referred further questions to Xerox.

Xerox corporate spokesman Bill McKee provided a written company statement saying that Xerox has a "documented process for retailers like Wal-Mart to follow in response to EBT outages."

But the statement left unclear who would cover the unauthorized spending, and it referred further questions to Wal-Mart.

Louisiana officials said they had no intention of being left holding the bag. "The outage was the result of failures by our contractor, Xerox," said Trey Williams, a spokesman for the Louisiana Department of Children and Family Services.

He said emergency procedures in place with Xerox allow retailers to call a phone number and receive authorization for purchases any time the EBT system is down. "Some retailers chose not to follow the process," he said. "Those businesses are only being reimbursed for the (maximum) amounts on individual cards," he said.

Related: Xerox DocuMate Scanners Now Convert Volumes of Paper Documents into Useable Business Intelligence

Williams said that amounts transacted above the cards' available balances were returned to Wal-Mart marked "as insufficient funds."

He could not provide an estimate of the total amount of overspending or say who will cover it in the end. "That's a conversation between Xerox and the retailer," he said.

CARTS FULL OF GROCERIES

Springhill's Lynd arrived at his town's Wal-Mart store at about 7 p.m. local time and found a few hundred shoppers jamming checkout lines with carts filled to overflowing.

Lynd said he told the manager that the store had a right to refuse service, but the manager said she had contacted Wal-Mart headquarters and was told to accept the cards.

The shoppers "decimated the grocery section of Wal-Mart," Lynd said.

The shoppers broke no laws, Lynd said, adding that police intervention was not required to disperse the crowd. At about 9 p.m., Wal-Mart said that the glitch had been fixed and the EBT cards were again showing appropriate spending limits.

"When they heard the announcement, people just left their carts in place and walked out of the store," Lynd said.

Mansfield Assistant Police Chief Gary Hobbs reported a similar scene in his community. He said that several other grocery stores in the area temporarily stopped accepting EBT cards when they became aware of the glitch, but Wal-Mart continued.
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How is it the shoppers did "nothing wrong"? It's basically organized looting for groceries.

 

[boozeman]

Wouldn't there be a way to track the amount each card number spent? Just shut that card off until they are "even" again.

They would never be held accountable by the government that way, are you kidding?