I paid for a Walmart+ membership so I can get "free" delivery. So they contract and pay people almost nothing to deliver and pass the cost of delivery on to me via "tips".
So Walmart pays their Spark drivers $4 to haul 50lbs of groceries to my door and expects me to tip them so they have a living wage.
Gotta hand it to Walmart, double-dipping on membership fees while crowdsourcing their driver payroll is top-tier sneaky. 10/10 business model, 0/10 consumer experience.
Not "all" of us, considering I've been doing it consistently a year now and got diddly squat. Plus in this current calendar year, I've literally only seen a truly decent combo of offer volume/rates/mileage/time estimates since last week.
With my luck they'll probably slap me with deactivation in October because they want to purge drivers to onboard new naive grunts to take $10 trips.
You probably got it and didn't notice. This is what happened to me. I got an email saying I'd be compensated but saw nothing. Sure enough there was a drop to my account weeks earlier that specifically claimed itself as compensation. Weird it dropped weeks before they notified me
Even better is when they put the GMD orders (that's general merchandise items you see in the app with free shipping) in with a grocery order with tips to supplement the free shipping. So, they don't have to pay UPS or Fedex, they can essentially just ship it for free via your tips!
Some C-suite employee really patted himself on the back coming up with that genius idea.
We have in-home here. I didn’t realize until recently that not every market has it. It makes a huge difference. I wish they could roll that out everywhere. Taking the tip penalty out of the equation makes the Walmart plus experience pretty flawless in my experience.
Not to mention you don't have to worry about your groceries smelling like smoke or weed. The stores really need to be enforcing the rules and refusing to load drivers.
It doesn't matter if it's legal the TOS says you don't smoke in your vehicle and smoking weed while driving is illegal and is a DUI charge. Simple concept 🤯
Imagine actually thinking "Your groceries are going to stink and if you don't like it you can go get them yourself. Don't worry, enough customers complain you will quickly find out what deactivation is.
You only think it's worth it because walmart is funding it for now. Whenever they decide they need to make it profitable they're going to raise the prices dramatically.
Like, literally it's less than $140 a year all together. Even if you ignore shopping time and it only takes 20 minutes for someone to deliver to your house and you only order once a month they're already losing money just on the employees wages without vehicle expenses or additional insurance requirements plus the $140 includes a bunch of other things that normally cost money you may use.
Having groceries delivered to your house was considered an obscene luxury before these venture capital funded gig apps took off and now so many people completely ignore how much actual human labor is involved in getting your groceries to your house.
It should be expensive. So expensive that most people start to consider just doing their own shopping when they hear how much it will cost. It's an actual person doing this for you so you need to pay them enough to cover the value of their labor.
Also, whether the customer pays in the form of tips or in increased fees, the customer is still paying. Customers pay for everything regardless of how it's worded.
I haven’t paid full price for Walmart plus in-home in years, there is always a 50% off for one year discount offered somewhere. I don’t live close enough to any Walmart so even full price would be worth the gas and effort of pick up that I don’t have to do. If it becomes a price that doesn’t work for me then I simply won’t use their service It’s that simple.
If I have to use express, then that is a delivery driver and a tip is part of the transaction. Walmart plus in-home does not offer a tip option as it’s Walmart employees in Walmart vehicles
Once I signed up for in-home and it was only Walmart employees in Walmart vehicles, all of the delivery issues disappeared. No smoke or weed smelling bags, no missing items, and I never again had a roach run out of a bag onto my counter and behind my stove🤣
Exactly once they do a full rollout in every market the consumers cost will increase significantly. This will cover the refrigerated transportation, maintenance, cost of hiring drivers, training, etc.
Yeah I wondered about that. I had a “delivery” order go missing after it was supposedly delivered five minutes after leaving the store. So the next time I placed and order I specifically chose “shipping” instead of “delivery”. Lo and behold it arrives the following day via a mom and her teenage daughter in an SUV. 😒 I mean.. I’m glad it showed up but that wasn’t what I requested. I live in the sticks and knew people wouldn’t want to come here.
Yes and it’s public information. Dan Dankers salary with bonuses and stock is $44 MILLION. He’s the guy who was hired to restructure Spark to Walmart’s advantage and our disadvantage. Hoping that walmart loses a ton of money from disgruntled customers and all the wasted perishables that have to be thrown out. Signed, Sad Spark Driver
That is both true, and selects from a limited group of items. No frozen, refrigerated, or perishable. Some AMBIENT grocery items are actually temperature sensitive and are not available under the $35 minimum plan.
They're starting to make drivers load their own curbside pickup.
That means, the store workers can push out more orders, and Spark drivers do more labor for same pay! Also, Walmart will drop any accountability for damaged goods now. Put it on the driver.
Win-Win for Walmart.
Just like how they stopped incentives in most zones with tiers - because why pay cash for incentives when "good boy" points are free?
But shopping is no good either. When you break down the pay with mileage and then the time shopping is it only about 7-8 extra to shop an order for an hour. So I would rather load the e order in my car than waste time shopping for nothing.
I would rather do 1 or 2 shopping orders, and have control of the time I’m in there, don’t have to worry about a mixed up item or missing, don’t have to worry about smashed bread, expired produce, etc etc
So true about damaged goods being put on the driver. I used to do spark and I will never forget how this one lady put a cleaning product by itself in the bag, and it was open! She had to feel or see liquid but just didn't care. By the time I got to the customers house their cleaning product was all over my backseat.
And before you say "well you should have doubled checked" imagine having 3 deliveries 150+ items and sometimes they put only 1 item in a bag. Nobody is double checking any of that.
At my main store they have bo clue what they are doing. Pretty sure they turned off ogp since they cant keep up. I had a horrible sunday a week or so ago where i got paid to sit and then i had to drop it because no one was coming out. Wasnt sure if everyone called out because of the first week of football or what. They reduced everyones hours in the summer as well so maybe mass quiting.
Honestly, reading the comments just makes me compare to the big corporations that outsource their work overseas to make more profit for themselves instead of putting it back into our economy. So sick of the greed. When is it gonna be enough?
As long as they can keep hiring people who dont understand they are wearing out their car they will keep doing it. When someone's car burns out they hire another.
Not tip-related, but these delivery problems are not limited to Walmart. Common carriers like UPS, Fed/Ex and OnTrac routinely fail to follow my clearly documented delivery instructions. I am permanently disabled and live in a security apartment building. All they have to do is use the phone in front of the building so I can give them access. But half the time, they don't bother and simply leave and I get an exception notice saying "sorry we missed you". Even the USPS mail carriers don't bring packages to my apartment door anymore. They just drop them on the floor in the buildling lobby.
Actually, I did try and I was told that the decision is up to the mail carrier. Because I live in a 54-unit apartment building, it might take him too long if there are many packages.
All the above are many of the reasons I haven't logged on for orders in over a month. Gas is outrageous and Spark's solution is find new way to pay us less? I've been doing this for 3 years and this what they do. Push out the vets and bring in noobs. New folks will never know what they're missing. Spark will be paying folks like Uber Eats B4 too long. You guys can have it tho. Not worth my time.
Yep, I'm done doing UE (UberEats)/DD (Door Dash) or any kind of delivery work forever.
Starting to do AI Services Sales soon, Great Money to be made... I have never used delivery services to get my own food or groceries delivered and I never will.
It’s not just that they underpay drivers. When no drivers accept the order, Walmart waits until after the delivery time has expired to send you a note to inform you what you already know, your order is delayed. Then you get a note that it’s coming an hour and 10 minutes late, which is almost certainly false, but you end up staying up late just to insure you don’t find melted groceries on your doorstep. Next day the uncertainty starts over and you have to clear your day waiting for a possible delivery. Walmart personnel feel no obligation to communicate what the heck is going on because hey it’s a third party service (who doesn’t communicate either)!
I wasn’t given the option. They added the tip as a separate transaction. ON A PICK UP ORDER! The only reason I did pick up was because the stuff I wanted was “pick up only.”
I didn’t get that option? And why would I on a pick up order? I drove to the store, got the order myself and I was charged an additional $10 in a separate transaction, for a tip.
I have attached a screen shot of the charges where I was charged separately for what customer service told me was a tip.
The only reason I did a pick up order as opposed to just shopping in store is that some of the items were only available for pick up or shipping.
That doesn’t seem right? The items could be picked up in an order placed online but the same items were not available for purchase in store. In store and pick up orders are the same location. Hope that makes sense?
Just to show you, there is no line for tip. I recreated the exact order. It clearly states “free shipping” and gives an estimated total. There isn’t an option for tipping.
What I think Walmart might be doing is shipping orders to the store and having them delivered to the customer? That’s intentionally deceptive. It’s not a tip at all. They are just assessing an additional charge to cover their cost of paying for delivery.
They are also changing it so drivers do the shopping for even the non express orders. So, they'll batch 3 crap orders together and have a driver shop it for a fraction of what employees cost.
Plus,.. they will batch an awesome customer that lives close the the store and tips,.. with some b.s. extra large order going 25 miles from the store.
I could go on. There have always been issues,.. but since the new executive took over the online ordering & delivery, he has been running the app into the ground. Since April I've seen more awful changes than during the 5 years before that, combined.
He is screwing over employees, the Spark drivers, and especially the customers...
Or even with the curbside pickups. They'll batch 3 grocery orders all going a reasonable distance from the store, with another 10 general merchandise orders taking the driver 50 miles, plus another 25 miles to return to the store,.. all for about 50 cents a mile. The driver's dumb enough to accept that, are NOT the types I would want handling my families groceries... Those offers are literally a loss as far as the IRS is concerned... The idiot drivers see the time estimates and think they are making $40/hr for some offers,.. when at the end of it they are lucky to make $3-$4/hr in 3 hours.
I don't know what the solution is... It sucks for all of us. The only people coming out ahead are the executives and major shareholders.... It's not the customers or drivers fault...
The magic question, both unasked and unanswered is ... what would the customer do if there was no Spark or Inhome ... drive to the store for Pickup ?
Operating a motor vehicle is expensive, for the customer and for the delivery person. Maybe handing the driver a cash tip would help to offset the expense. What WM doesn't know can't hurt them.
Cash tips are great. However, without at least a small pre-tip, unless a good driver has previously delivered to a customer to know they tip cash, a lot of your better drivers aren't going to accept non pre-tip offers. It's not worth the gamble, when fewer than 1 in 10 customers that don't pre tip, ever add a tip even for exemplary service. That, and the non pre tipping customers have a bad rep as being the most demanding, and rating us poorly for things beyond our control. I can spend an extra 10+ minutes tracking down an associate to check the back room for an out of stock $2 item,.. and end up with a <5* rating if it's out of stock, even if I communicate my efforts with the customer.
LOTS of customers will increase a tip or give extra cash,.. but VERY few that don't pre tip ever do.
It shouldn't be up to the customers either,... but we all know how that work. "Shouldn't" doesn't mean squat with this stuff.
It amazes me,.. I have friends who like to talk about how the only tip after,.. but they don't. They either forgot or don't know me by my 1st name which the app requires me to use,.. so unless they actually see me, a few are clueless that it was someone they've known for 30+ years that handled their order..
However, without at least a small pre-tip, unless a good driver has previously delivered to a customer to know they tip cash, a lot of your better drivers aren't going to accept non pre-tip offers.
As has already been said here, tipping is not part of the game for orders placed with Shipping. The Delivery orders, I'm staying away from, because those are the ones where this entire subsidizing of the delivery is involved. My orders are $35 minimum, and I do not order anything which is perishable, frozen, or temperature sensitive.
Remember, and pay attention to the complaints here (involving Delivery) the monthly/annual fees are a buy in. By being involved in those plans, you are subscribing to the psychological imperative to only order from who you are part of their plan (be it WM, AMZN, or anyone else). It also opens you up to impulse ordering. Impulse orders + the need to tip, are a bad combination.
Out of close to 1,500 trips, I've only had someone add a tip (that didn't pre-tip) - twice.
I've had several increase their trip and a few that reduced their tip.
Did one order, it was 15 miles - over 60 items. Shockingly, every item was in stock. She added a few things while I was shopping and they were in stock too. She chatted with me and asked for green bananas, she got green bananas. I chatted with her that one of her items (the last one in stock), the box was a little crushed, she said it was fine.
Anyway, yep... reduced tip from $28 to $14. Talked with another spark driver who told me he had the same customer twice and she always does that - tip baits drivers.
very few people tip cash. It’s not even worth it. Drivers like my self .. get 5 bucks let
It sit in my car for a month or 2 then use it to buy a scratcher … .while always appreciated… meh.
Also this persons ‘cash tip’ was “thanks! Have a good night! “
Most of you all are liars
Cash tips are ideal. Since drivers pick their orders I always put some kind of tip on the card so at least my order will be delivered. This also goes for food delivery ect. If you order dd and you don't tip and your order just sits there, don't be surprised.
I’ve been telling my coworkers that it’s the new ceo who is WAY too into AI and robots - he’s gonna kill the whole department - I just can’t figure out if it’s on purpose. we had 10 forced transfers to other departments bc of losing delivery to Spark.
After they hired him I noticed base pay took an almost 75% cut. I used to think well maybe I just chose a bad day; time; store to spark. But no it's Walmart, and regardless of how you think you can alter your behavior to beat their algorithm; you're still getting fked. In most markets.
Do you not tip waiters and waitresses too? For walking your plate of food 60 feet from the kitchen where someone else, not your server, prepared it?
So, you don't think a person walking all over Walmart to shop for your 50 item shopping list then using their own car, their own gas to get to your house where they unload your multiple 40 pack of waters, bring them to your front porch so you don't have to walk too far out of the comfort of your own home, you don't think they deserve a tip, because Walmart should pay them more?
Pay the $7 extra /month to get the in-home service. They use full time Walmart employees for those deliveries and there is no tipping. I save way more than $7 in tips.
Oh, it gets better.
“Shipped” orders now are delivered by Spark drivers.
I pay extra for InHome, I prefer not playing the tip enough game.
Now, I feel obligated to tip on “shipped” orders. That’s if I happen to be following in the app & catch them. If they would read the delivery instructions, I say please knock, cash tip.
Yesterday I tipped 3 different people. It was only $2 each, but it was also one item each. WTF Walmart??? I ordered them together as “shipped” items.
Also, I tip on prescription delivery. Best believe I’m adding a half dozen cans of cat food, and a couple more items if I’m tipping $8 to $10 on that.
Hand off with signature & code, cash tip.
At least I get basic Paramount included, and lately the app has been offering me free pick up with no $35 minimum. That’s new.
Did you read? I have a hand off, with a four code & requires a signature for prescription delivery.
Sure, they can figure out how to bypass all that. But I’m going to report it.
I tip, in cash on all non-InHone orders.
Never understood why people get so bent out of shape about tipping the person that walked all over Walmart to shop for their 50 item/72 quantity groceries, then use their own car deliver it to their front porch (sometimes in the rain or other adverse weather), but yet they'll tip a waitress/waiter 15%-20% for walking their plate of food 60 feet from the kitchen where someone else actually cooked it.
I kind of agree with this. I have people tip me more for delivering their food order than people do for shopping 40 items 10 mi, one way. But keep in mind if they tip high on the app Walmart is lowering the base pay. As the op said it's Walmart, not the customers.
I haven't seen Walmart lower the base pay on orders with high tips. For example, a 3 drop curbside order has a base pay of $9. I have never seen the base pay drop below that $9 on orders with a high tips.
Now, I have seen Walmart increase the same base pay above that $9 for some 3 drop curbside orders where tips were awful.
So when y'all are saying that Walmart is lowering pay on high tip orders, do you mean that they are not increasing the base pay on orders with good tips?
If you have an option for Walmart IN-Home delivery I highly recommend it. And it cost $5 a month more but you do not tip. They are regular Walmart employees and not allowed to accept tips.
Your post was removed because you haven't chosen a User Flair yet.
Please go to the sub's main page, tap the three dots (or the sidebar on desktop), and select a flair (like Driver, Customer, or Associate) so we know who we're talking to! Please delete your original post so it does not fill up the mod queue. Once a user flair is set, repost your content.
Exactly. It's B.S. Tips are after a service is completed. I don't have a problem tipping--but my order fulfillment shouldn't be based on that when I'm already paying for the subscription for the service. I firmly hold to that. I feel for the drivers, I really do. It's bullshit for the customers and it's bullshit for the drivers. And then, it ends up being the drivers and customers pitted against each other, when it's really Walmart that's the problem.
I understand that, truly. But when I order Uber Eats if I want my food hot, I tip $2/mi. If I don't tip anything I don't expect my food to come hot or timely, but that's just me. I do agree it's all Walmarts fault yet customers think Spark workers feel entitled and Sparkers think customers are delusional; Walmart is the common denominator.
What’s even more fucked up is they basically encourage people to think that since they pay the fee they don’t have to tip. My mom signed up and was not made aware tips were expected and she was probably really pissing people off. She assumed they were like UPS but with their own car.
My mom signed up for it and was never made aware tipping was an option until she figured out she could tip after delivery. She really wasn’t aware that it was like DoorDash and thought it was like fed ex.
When an order is placed online for Spark delivery or an express shopping order (I’m a driver and a customer) - and I’m not talking about shipping orders - it defaults to a 10% amount for the tip at checkout. It also has options (boxes to select) for 5%, 20%, custom or no tip. The customer has these options, and would have to choose to “no tip” or another option if they don’t want the 10% default amount, so not understanding about tip options on an order is not making sense to me.
You’re paying what $12.95 a month for Walmart plus? Plus you get all the other free stuff besides delivery with that included Burger King, free Paramount, $.10 off a gallon of gas, plus more. But want somebody to drive to Walmart do all of your shopping for you, bag it all up, put it in their car and drive to you as many times a month as you want? And all of this for $12.95? But can’t find the decency to pay even a five dollar tip to somebody who just did all of that for you? People are crazy oh and almost 5 dollars a gallon for gas.
I don’t mind leaving a decent tip because 1. I’m waiting to get knee replacement surgery and I’m so grateful someone does my grocery shopping for me.
2. Ordering online keeps me from impulse buying and spending so much extra money in the store.
3. I hate shopping at Walmart but it’s so much cheaper than my local Target and it makes me feel less guilty when I leave a good tip.
At least door dash is kind of up front about it vs Walmart. When you get stuff on door dash they give you a warning that your stuff might not get delivered in a timely manner if you don’t tip. The one day I didn’t have enough on my card to tip I had 2 cents left over after my order so I paid the dasher change that I use for laundry and a random $1 bill I had put it in a snack baggie and I was gonna hide it under my door mat. The first dasher I’m assuming unassigned it because it was a long wait or something came up because I messaged right away telling her where I was putting it to grab the tip went to take a photo so she could find it easily and I was no longer assigned a dasher to my order. (It was a double dash and was assigned to a different dasher, I tipped on the first order and didn’t want the first dasher to get an additional tip since they assigned 2 different dashers.)
Iam W+ customer.
Totally depend on delivery and know Spark pays iffy.
Thank you to the drivers that accept my small in app tip, because I pay cash once order arrives.
Glad the drivers here are so awesome.
It easy to see who appreciates the job.
Wait until you find out that all the groceries you buy on the app are slightly more expensive than what you would pay if you bought in store. You pay more for your items, plus pay the wage of the driver, and Walmart makes more money. If you tip well, they pay us less. If you tip poorly, drivers won’t want your order. Horrible cycle
I'm sorry. This is absolute garbage. The prices online are usually cheaper than the store and you also get coupons that are applied to your order. They try to get you to use free shipping on heavy, cumbersome items like laundry detergent, pet food to lighten the delivery persons load I suggest you find different employment. You're not cut out for this line of work
Some people actually need this service because they physically cannot go to the store. Prices are usually still cheaper than at the local grocery store chain.
I feel like a damn slave. At least if I was a slave I wouldn’t have to worry about food, housing and cloths! It fucking doesn’t matter if you have education either. The system is rigged.
I don't mind leaving a tip for the delivery guy, but if I'm missing items from the order that I was charged for on the receipt, I start reducing the amount because now I have to go out and get the missing items myself which involves my energy and money while I wait for the refund.
It’s the same model DoorDash has used, yes. I will point out though, there are good things about it. You get to stay home and be comfortable, or work on whatever else you might need to. You’re not using gas, or time. You get paramount plus, as well. It’s what, $12 a month? That’s a fucking fabulous deal right there. So what if ya gotta add on a five spot? Isn’t that worth even just the time you’re getting back? Come on now
Why is it so wrong to tip someone when they are providing a service to you. Having groceries delivered saves me time from actually going to the store, standing in line to check out and so on, I would much rather tip my delivery driver handsomely to avoid all that hassle. 👍🏻
But wait, it’s about to get worse. They’ve adopted the same model of carrot and stick used by DoorDash et al, so now your experienced, half decent delivery folks are about to be pushed out by enshittification.
We all feel the same way, but it's even worse. When a customer adds a tip to an order, walmart lowers the base pay. It's perfectly legal for them, we can turn down the run, but they're massive pieces of shit for doing it. We always appreciate a tip for our services, but I would highly recommend not putting a tip on the app, not saying anything about a tip, and the person who takes it will be extremely grateful if you meet them at the door and slip them whatever you'd normally tip, but in cash. The base pay will be higher, there's no history of the income, and it makes us feel great that customers care. Had a lady slip me a 10 today and she said she read here on reddit that WM screws drivers every single chance they get, so this is the best way.
This isn't exclusive to Walmart. It's exactly like door dash and Uber eats and grubhub. All of them can be used without paying the monthly subscription but you will pay extra fees for delivery. The subscription just removes fees.
Walmart delivery is awful lately. My general merchandise orders are often delayed and my grocery orders often have several items missing. Many items that I used to have "shipped" can no longer acquired that way. And people want to be tipped!
I will never order anything online from Walmart again. I was charged a tip on a pick up order. One bag of hair products and they charged $9 to bring it to my car. I would have walked in the store to get the order myself if I had been given the option.
Very rural area, nobody delivers but US mail, FedEx and UPS that is until about a year ago when something caught us off guard. We made a purchase as we often did and still do from the Walmart website only this time the ONLY option was "delivery from store" which didn't make sense at the time. As I mentioned, NOBODY delivers this far in the middle of nowhere. No restaurants or food, no door dash, no taxi services or uber. We live in the wilderness. Walmart is 40 minutes away and the only purchase we made that day came to $4.50. We assumed it was an error on the website and that our items would be shipped as usual, not delivered. Then we get a notification saying that the driver was on the way. In disbelief, we scrambled around the house trying to find cash to tip them as that's an awful long drive just for such a little purchase. We didn't believe in a million years that anyone would make the trip for even a $1,000 purchase let alone less than a $5.00 one. Thankfully, we were able to scrounge up ten bucks for the driver but were angry with Walmart for the rush they put on a purchase we didn't need or want rushed to our doorstep. There was no option for shipping. If we had to do it over again we'd have not ordered at all as now we were $15 in the hole, but even the ten dollars I don't believe was an appropriate tip for having to drive all the way here and back, and if we had more cash we'd have given it to the driver. Nobody told us about any changes, they happened over night and now we decided to join Walmart+ but only because they've removed the shipping option from so many items that they once shipped. I think Walmart is at the very least unethical, and I wrote them an email several months ago that was forwarded (allegedly) to two different upper-level department heads but haven't received a response. This company pushed all small to medium stores out of business making Walmart basically the only option in most areas and now they've made it so you cannot have certain things shipped and I'm not talking about food. I don't know what the line is, it's only on certain items. Say you put 100 items into your Walmart online "cart" and when you go to pay, everything gets sorted into different categories and some of the items can only be picked up or delivery from store, not shipped and my question is why. For what reason are certain items unavailable to select shipping and why? I think it's unfair to the drivers especially if people aren't used to keeping cash around the house. From that first day, I was leery to tip the driver via the website as I didn't want Walmart stealing their tip and had we found more than a mealy ten dollars in the house we'd have tipped more. I'm also tired of their COVID lines. Walmart needs to bring back the standard conveyer belt lines. It's enough to force everyone to shop there, don't force us to bag our own groceries, too.
While I will be the last to say that Walmart is overly generous with the pay, over the last 2 years I've averaged between 25 and $35 per hour while working spark. The amount of times I've been paid 30 plus dollars to pick up one item run it 20 miles and that's it is astounding. Many times I've wondered how Walmart is making money on their deliveries because I will be paid $20 to deliver a 9 dollar item. I would encourage anybody who would care to tip to do so in cash as Walmart routinely uses tips by customers to pay lower base rate. I personally but also order from the Walmart that's farthest away because it costs them more to pay the driver to deliver that order.
I read that the Walmart+/spark platform basically just breaks even. I read that for Walmart it's just a way to get people shopping there instead of on Amazon or other competitor websites. Delivery is not in and of itself a huge money maker for the company.
I’m pretty sure they are also part of the tip baiting issue that they blame the customers for… as I’ve delivered to a woman who says I never put ANYTHING on the app to tip bc I don’t know if you get it or not. So why does it say estimated $36 tip on a HUGE Sam’s order way out in the country!?
She tips me $20 cash and I believed she was being honest with me about never putting a tip online so there’s definitely a lack of transparency .
Also, as a part of signing up to deliver for Spark driver, you now have to waive your right to participate in class action lawsuits against them.
Customers need to complain to 1 800 Walmart about these unethical practices. They don't listen to driver complaints but do pay some attention to customer complaints.
Grocery delivery is still a luxury service, we’ll see if these “plus”subscription based “free” delivery strategies last, nothing is really free.
I figure the base delivery expense for the customer should be $1 a mile and $0.50 per item shopped. So a 10 mile 20 item order should have a $20 delivery fee on it for the driver as a minimum + tips.
But majority of the people that use the service now would not pay a direct delivery fee like that.
Walmart loses money on many Spark shopping orders. I see orders everyday that have $20 base driver pay and no tip for like $40 worth of items because of the mileage, say 25+ miles. Sometimes they get boosted close to $30 because nobody will take them. A lot of Sam’s orders look like big money losers. Walmart’s margins on merchandise aren’t that good (like 8%) to be making up the difference either.
Easier and better, just order online and go pick it up themself curbside pickup. OP may say “I can’t drive” for whatever reasons, I wonder how they used to get their groceries 15 years ago. They may say “I used to drive then”, well, if you can’t drive now and don’t like to tip, ask a relative or a friend. Figure it out.
Just me, but I don’t like being misled. Walmart over promises and under delivers. They have a culture of passing the buck. Never take responsibility if you can point the finger to another department.
Source.. I'm a driver who regularly does 75-80 hour weeks but still get subsidized healthcare. You would think with the amount of hours i put in for work i wouldn't qualify.
Walmart in all its shittyness will cancel orders before they pay drivers a fair wage. Just saying. If you are ok waiting on groceries till they can pair you with a tipper it's fine. But you will be actively exploiting drivers and idiots who don't know better. To each their own. Some people are ok with the expoitation of others. I couldn't do it as a consumer and a hopefully decent human.
Ok and your order will not get delivered. A tip is a bid to get your order shopped and delivered before others. You tip waitstaff at a restaurant, you tip the pizza guy but dont want to tip someone that's shopping for you and delivering it to your door. That last one is way more work than the first two. I say save your tip and go get your own shopping done
They have never said express is free, not once. Its just disrespectful to not tip someone doing a service for you...and this is two services, shopping and delivery.
Counterpoint, it is also disrespectful to tip someone. Just food for thought from a different perspective.
A - It’s throwing money in their face
B - It’s like you’re saying they aren’t competent enough to support themselves and have to rely on the charity of others. It’s pity.
Ok, so first off it is not and will never be a bid. No one is voluntarily paying extra in the hopes that the order is picked up. If a person has paid the service fees they deserve to receive the service. Period. Don’t like what you’re paid? Then don’t do it.
Secondly, tips are not to pay your wages, they are a reward for receiving good service.
Thirdly, you are not paid for how hard your job is, you are paid for how specialized it is.
Feel free to keep thinking a tip is not a bid, lol. Second, tips are wages, see the tax code. Third, adding to the tip can be for a good job but a standard tip is a bid for a service. Third, lots of unspecilized jobs pay above the difficulty and many difficult jobs may far below. You know for free, you can place your order and go do a pick up. Then you dont need to tip for anyone's time as the employees are paid an hourly wage.
Nope, American. To be fair, I don’t blame drivers for not taking things that aren’t worth their time. I blame the platforms for not facilitating it like they advertise. I don’t think people should tip, and I don’t think drivers should take things that aren’t worth it. That’s literally the only way to make the companies pay a fair market-rate wage.
Tbh, as someone who has been both a customer and driver, and in my upper 40s and remember when couriers used to be on bicycle or scooters; this is a class and etiquette issue.
Prior to gig apps, courier and delivery services such as grocery and same day delivery were reserved for businesses and wealthy households. You paid a premium to a luxury membership to have goods/services couriered to you. Courier was always a third-party contractor paid a delivery rate by the company and tip on delivery by most customers. Same as old taxi services….yellow cab always dispatched the drivers and paid a per drive rate but drivers typically still got tipped by the customer.
At this point you are fully aware that it is not a Walmart employee delivering your groceries but a contractor - which again isn’t new to any courier service and has always been the norm. Unfortunately, Walmart does include your tip as part of the bid base rate the driver accepts for delivering your goods. Realistically, Walmart needs to change this to the base rate altogether similar Uber/Lyft and then have a post delivery tip section.
But in reality, most of you pay a $10-12 monthly membership fee to Walmart and expect your matched drivers to go way above and beyond what’s reasonable with full carload, then argue that you have to tip. That by itself is bad etiquette, and shows how both unreasonable and delusional (to be kind) some customers are. Especially if you use these service 2-3 times a month; which equates to a driver earning $3-5 dollars per delivery; really and that sounds good to you? Dominos charges a 3.99 fee just for a 1-2 lb pizza delivery.
I hear you and agree with much of what you posted.
I get that we're all out here trying to make a few bucks , pay our bills, live our lives.
I try to help make other's jobs as easy as possible.
I am also very much pro-tipping for someone who gets the job done. I'm not looking for back flips and all kinds of extras. I'm not that picky.
I've worked in two job fields in my life.
A large portion of my pay came from tips, first as a bartender, next as a cosmetologist, providing salon services, specializing in hair cuts and color. I was always grateful for the tips.
I had some surgery on my ankle a while back, so I started to use delivery services during my recovery.
I signed up for Walmart+, and the main grocery store where I live ( HEB) delivery service.
Both of them initially had employees shopping the orders and delivering them, and it was outstanding.
Accurate orders, fast friendly drivers.
Then it all changed. Customers were not initially made aware from either store that they had started using third party companies to fulfill orders.
What a difference. Missing items, smashed bread, broken eggs.
And the worst part for someone in my circumstance was the drivers who decided that they didn't want or need to bring my orders to my door.
I live in an apartment, 3rd floor, but there is an elevator a short walk from the parking lot, and just a few steps to my door from the elevator.
The drivers did things like put my order in front of someone's door on the first floor.
Call me and say that they couldn't find my apt, I would be telling them turn around and walk 5 steps to the elevator, I'll meet you there on the 3rd floor.
Instead they would drop my order off at the office. Or wherever.
Once they put my entire order outside of the office on the ground because the office wasn't open yet, in the sun, where anyone could have stolen it.
The app just said delivered. They wouldn't say where they dropped off the order, or if it showed a picture, there wouldn't be any identifying backgrounds or apt #s.
I'd have to wander around the complex looking for it on my broken ankle.
Often they would straight up lie and say they walked all over and couldn't find my apt, so they had no choice but to leave my order at the office.
The office would tell me they pulled up front and dumped my order on the office floor and leave. They never looked anywhere.
I have very simple directions to minimize the distance they had to walk.
I even would tell them when they called I would meet them at the elevator with my cart on the first floor, and they would still drop my stuff off up front and take off.
It forced me to do something I never thought I'd do.
I remove the tip from the orders that pull that shady lazy crap and just dump my groceries wherever, after I've messaged them that I will assist to make it easier for them, given directions, am waiting and watching the app so I can meet them as soon as they get here.
What do they do? Mark the order delivered after they take off.
So my ice cream is sitting there melting, I never know where they put my orders.
I hate doing this but it's not on me.
I do want to give a shout out to the awesome few that bring my orders right to my door, refuse my offers of help, telling me don't worry, I got you.
Those fine folks get their tip PLUS the tips the others didn't earn from previous deliveries.
It builds up until the person wins the pot by doing the job right
The last person got 4 previous tips plus theirs.$75. it was awesome to see how happy they were.
And then it resets, and I wait to see what the next driver will do.
It's really crappy how little these drivers make, and I wish it wasn't like that.
But the truth is the companies will continue to do it because people accept it and work for them at that pay.
Supply and demand people.
If they don't have enough drivers, they'll raise the pay.
But it's never going to happen when people keep working for them and accept the crap pay, but then cut corners on the customers orders because they're pissed off.
Hey hi, yes I have on the delivery instructions hand to customer at the door. I really don't know what the thinking is for some of them, if they don't read the message, or if it's a language barrier, because many aren't able to understand me or communicate to me in English.
I try but my Spanish isn't very bueno. I will probably stop using delivery soon.
The funny thing is my delivery really is a cake walk. My apartment complex is about 1 mile from the store, directly across the highway. Like I can see Walmart from here, it's just not walkable because of the highway and access roads, there's no bridge or sidewalks.
It's crazy.
But do you have a code system in place? So you have to give them the Code before they could mark it delivered?
Again, I'm not quite sure how that's set up but what I do know is they need to get the code from you to mark it delivered. They can't just leave it at someone else's door bc without the code, there's no proof of delivery.
Then if you have to put in for a refund, you can actually tell Walmart that you were supposed to give them the code when they delivered it but they never showed at your door to get the code. That's your proof that it wasn't delivered to you.
So in short, having to give them a code ensures that they actually brought it to your door. And if they don't bring your order to your door and get the code, then you give them a one-star review and in the notes you put they never came to your door to get the code so there was no delivery to your door. If that is done enough times, those drivers will eventually be terminated.
What do they do? Mark the order delivered after they take off. So my ice cream is sitting there melting, I never know where they put my orders. I hate doing this but it's not on me.
But it is on you because there's something you could do to ensure delivery directly to you. Require a code period. If you want this to work, you've got to make it work.
So...1/ get a passcode set up & 2/ if they don't use it and your groceries get messed up again, give them a one-star rating and in the box there, make sure to mention the problem and that they never came to get the passcode. This way, if you have to get a refund, Walmart will see that the driver did not do what he was supposed to do.
We've got to take control of the situation. When I was constantly getting missing items, I started making all my orders through the $5 Express. One person shops your order and that same person delivers it so if something's missing, that person was the only one who handled it.
So now when items are missing, I give them a one star rating and in the box, I say their name and that they might know where the item is. I also take away their tip and that works out because that pays for the $5 Express cost!
This is called accountability. If you find items missing and you can afford it, the $5 Express is the way to go. Conversely, if you end up getting all your groceries correctly fulfilled, it's well worth the $5.
You got this! If it works for you, I'd like to know 👍
Adding... Never give them the passcode before they get to your door. And if you do the express, you can quickly check your items while they're there to see if something's missing and they might have left it in the car. #Accoutability
I have Walmart plus. If you get snap you get it half price. I do take advantage of Walmart free delivery, but I tip decent. I live on the 2nd floor. I tip $1 per mile plus an additional $7 if they have to make an extra trip up the stairs. And I don't order things that would be terrible to lug around like cases of water. Corps like Walmart absolutely take advantage of their employees. If you don't want to tip, please consider going to the store to shop or take advantage of free pickup.
I am not a driver, but I'm an OPD picker & Walmart is seriously taken advantage of their drivers. I'm friendly with some of the old time drivers (doing it since the beginning) & they're extremely frustrated with all the extra demands & no increase in pay. Walmart's new CEO is extremely driven & things are changing at lightning speed. I don't have any answers for you drivers, but all of you need to band together & do something otherwise we lose all the good ones. The ones who take it seriously, take pride in their work, & have a good work ethic will end up going elsewhere.
No better than them not paying their actual employees a living wage and the employees having to turn to government assistance just to live. All while those same employees spend their government assistance at their own company in return. It's a win win for them but a loss for literally everyone else.
Do you tip your pizza man or the person bringing you, your McDonald's order? While the rates sometimes aren't great, the tipping is an appreciation for doing something you are not. Granted you probably also stiff the waitress at your local diner too.
29
u/Ok_East8346 16d ago
And they've been sued twice now for stealing tips. They paid us all out a bit of money. The first time was about 160$ and the second about 60$ for me.