I love the thought of secret Santa, have in fact added that to my bucket list as something I want to do in the future before I die. After saying this, I ran into an issue this year with Walmart layaway and wonder if anyone else has and what exactly happens with all of that donation money when they cancel a layaway.

I emailed Walmart my concerns and received a generic email back saying my concerns are being looked into. Nothing else since then. So I decided to write about it. Something about this just doesn’t seem right.

In November while shopping at my Walmart in Rockport, Texas, I noticed the spider-man car that my daughter mentioned wanting to get her son for Christmas. It was on a display on clearance marked down from 199.00 to 120.00. So after calling her and discussing it we decided I would put it on layaway and she would pay me so much each week till it was paid off.

So weekly it was paid for. Then on December 12th I get the text message that it was canceled due to unpaid balance and not picked up ON or before 12/12/17.  I had been paying weekly on it and knew it needed to be picked up by December 12th. See the text message below.

So I go to Walmart on the 12th to pick it up, I wait in line while those ahead of me are picking theirs up. Each one is told, you had a secret Santa pay for yours and received their layaway. So by the time I get up there, knowing I had a balance, I show the text and say I need to pick mine up. I fully expected her to say the secret Santa had paid but really didn’t care either way, I just wanted the car. Instead I got oh your layaway was cancelled and you may lose all of your money. I stood there and said I can show you the text I just received this morning. Of course a manager had to come and “allow” them to pull up my layaway only to tell me I hadn’t made the payments and owed almost the whole amount. Thank goodness I kept the receipts from where I had made the payments.

My big issue is what happens to all of those layaway’s that were canceled because of their errors or date errors that secret Santa had paid for. I couldn’t prove secret Santa paid anything on mine just people in front of and behind me when picking up their layaway’s had secret Santa cover it.

No way to prove it and no way to know but now I am leery of doing the secret Santa, since I truly believe Walmart deliberately cancels layaway and keeps the money!

I finally received my item after about 30 minutes of waiting, no they didn’t apologize, in fact I was told the were going to “allow” me to pay the rest and get it.