Food stamp shoppers empty Walmart store after glitch leaves debit cards with no limits
16 Oct 2013
Walmart Stores Inc and Xerox Corp are trading accusations after Louisiana food stamp recipients stripped bare the shelves of some Walmart stores yesterday, following a computer glitch that loaded their debit cards with no limits, Reuters reported.
Managers of Walmart stores in the small, north Louisiana towns of Springhill and Mansfield alerted police on Saturday night that hordes of shoppers had flooded into the stores and were buying groceries using electronic benefit (EBT) cards having no credit limits, reuters reported.
EBT cards, which are debit-type cards, are issued under the food stamp programme administered by individual states to provide subsidies to low-income families.
The cards are coded to show the amount of money available to individuals, which they could spend.
When word got out Saturday that no limits were showing on EBT cards, card holders rushed to Walmart stores to take advantage of unlimited shopping.
Springhill police chief, Will Lynd, said yesterday, some people had eight or 10 shopping carts full of groceries.
On Saturday, Xerox said, its systems that processed EBT transactions were hit by an outage stemming from routine testing of backup generators that malfunctioned, affecting Louisiana along with 16 other states.
According to the Mansfield police, officers were called in to control crowds at the Mansfield Walmart store, adding the shelves were cleared out, forcing Walmart to stop selling food at 9 pm. No arrests were made, but the shopping spree left behind a huge mess.
Pictures and videos obtained by KSLA News 12 showed aisles packed with shoppers emptying the shelves in Springhill, while another video showed what appeared to be at least dozens of overflowing carts left abandoned in the aisles at the Mansfield store, against the backdrop of emptied shelves in the meat department.
A Walmart spokesperson said the company decided to continue to accept EBT cards during the outage so that shoppers could get food for their families.