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Dozens of shoppers crowded into Wal-Mart stores in the towns of Springhill and Mansfield, Louisiana on Saturday October 12, after receiving word that their EBT cards spending limits were not showing. EBT cards are the way that food stamps are dispersed among those receiving government assistance. After swarms of shoppers began entering the Wal-Mart’s, filling multiple carts and clearing out whole isles in the grocery section, Wal-Mart managers became concerned that there may be a problem. Police were contacted, but were not required to diffuse the crowd.
Reason for the Glitch
Xerox is the company responsible for the glitch. On Saturday, Xerox was performing routine testing on back-up generators, and one of the generators failed. This resulted in outages in 17 states, of which Louisiana was one. Although Xerox takes responsibility for the glitch, representatives say that there is a process that stores such as Wal-Mart are supposed to follow in the case of such a glitch. This process was not followed by some stores, and the overage from the EBT card limits is being returned to Wal-Mart as insufficient funds.
It is unclear at this time whether Wal-Mart, Xerox, or the shoppers will be paying for the unauthorized spending. The outage was corrected at around 9pm on Saturday, at which time an announcement was made. Some shoppers simply abandoned carts in the middle of the store and left after realizing that the glitch had been fixed.
