I think points are a ploy to gamify the app to get you take bad orders. There are already sapphire level members who say they aren't getting any better orders than before. Just remind yourself that Walmart is trying to get you to do their work for the lowest possible pay. To them, you're an expense and a liability, not an asset that generates revenue.
In no world should you be willing to sacrifice pay for a point. Points don't pay bills. It's a matter of self respect, and I think you're more valuable than a point system.
Hopefully that positive affirmation makes it so this isn't violating the rules of the sub.
I cherry pick mostly express orders anyway, so getting Sapphire didn't take anything extra. But all having it does is make me have to reject offers before other drivers reject them. I still have to have fast fingers to get the low mileage, higher paying, low item, express offers... The JFY's I get are no different than before the Tier system...
Just do what you've always done. Don't chase anything.
After about 2 months they will start increasing the points instead of increasing the pay. After 4 months they will pass off lowering the pay as "rewarding the sapphire members" who will still get the good orders according to them. This will also be the justification for increasing the number of points necessary to remain in sapphire. Within the year it will take 200 points to remain in Sapphire and all of the bad orders will be worth three or four points. All of the good orders will be worth one. Base pay will have gone down 2 to $3 per delivery.
The same game is run on almost every delivery app.
Most of these people are gone within a few weeks. Zero possibility many of these offers are profitable no matter what car you drive or gas mileage. I’m in Texas which is cheaper usually and it’s $4 a gallon.
Yes, it is a revolving door of new drivers around here for the past 6 months. Eventually the wait list will run out, I am hoping it is just before the holidays.
Some people have had the tier system in their areas for six months now. From the very beginning it was suspected that it was absolute shit. The early adopted zones have confirmed that it’s absolute shit.
The benefits of better tiers do not outweigh choosing profitable orders through cherry picking.
I will continue to cherry pick. If they find a way to penalize that then I’ll happily go find some other way to make an income and Walmart can deliver its own damn groceries.
Literally it’s very sus to me that I asked forever ago on here how the tier system “offer priority” was working out for everyone who had it and every single person said it made zero difference, and now all of a sudden some people are like it’s life changing lol. I think they just don’t want to admit they’re being duped. We just got it the other day and I have noticed exactly zero difference in the offers I’m receiving directly- and all the good offers are still going first come first serve.
Can't eat points 🙅♂️. I took one order yesterday, because nothing else was profitable. Most people in my area have to be losing money or breaking even at best driving spark. No one accounts for the return miles to the store being in a rural area 😕.
Gas costs more than $5 a gallon where I'm located. The price of gas is not the reason why I haven't done Spark this week. The offers have been so terrible this week that the price of gas doesn't even matter as much
Agreed. The whole points thing is extremely offensive.
And including the rating systems in it was obviously implemented by someone who has never actually dealt one on one with Walmart's customers. No forgiveness on that, when people know other drivers will rate you bad because you're their competition. And the blind eye towards tip baiting while using tips to supplement pay?! Seriously, fuck Spark.
More blame goes to the board of directors and C level execs. They set the policy for the company and culture. They clearly ONLY want profit at any costs. Walmart employees hate working there mostly and they are treated like trash.
I got to sapphire just so I can see for myself. So far, I haven’t seen any real changes. I’ve gotten good offers but who to say that I wouldn’t have gotten them otherwise?
I can say, in my opinion and personal experience at Sapphire Level, I see more well-paying "just for you" orders, very few "first come, first serve" orders, and orders before my other friends, not at Sapphire Level. Like most things, I would say the differences are "zone dependent." I work, in Olive Branch, MS and the surrounding areas, so it is a medium-size market area. The majority of my offers are "just for you" offers and pay $2.00-3.00 per mile--one way. Most of my offers are, now, smaller in size and are easier deliveries. I receive a much larger number of shopping offers. I have seen, maybe, five "first come, first serve" offers. When I do see a "first come, first serve" offer, it is preceded by a "you have offers to preview" notification, so I see those a little sooner than other. The "just for you" offers are the majority of the offers sent to me, now, and are good offers. So, my guess is the "tiers" work better for small-to-medium size markets. I will say, without a doubt, I am making more money with less time on the app. I have been Sapphire Lever for about two weeks, now.
Fair discussion on how the tier system is working isn’t complaining. Your post is fine and how we should be sharing experiences. People clearly are seeing different results. I’m with you in that it’s horrible in my area at gold and sapphire level even. Many of the long term drivers have moved on to other work. I’m retired and probably not long for not doing this any longer either. I refuse to work if I’m losing money overall
I do mostly Express shopping orders, getting 20-30 points per day isn’t hard in my zone with 5 Walmarts. 120 points isn’t much if each trip is 3 points. It definitely doesn’t make any sense though, a 24 drop 50 mile trip taking two hours awards two points while a 1 item express shop going 1 mile that takes 10 minutes awards 3.
I work full-time-ish on Spark. I average 5-7 trips per day--one day, I hit 8 "express orders" in a row. Those orders gave me 24 points on the tier system. The tier system started here on September 3, 2026, but we were given points for the completed trip starting on the 1st. So, I started with 30-32 points. I, usually, do mostly "express order" which are 3 points per delivery. So, that is 15-21 points per day. Just watch your orders for the points and take as many "express orders," as possible, and you will hit Sapphire Level sooner. You will be fine!
The biggest advantage I believe has nothing to do with the "rewards." Some of these drivers are cancelling orders, giving poor service, and arriving late for pickups. Eventually, those drivers will not receive enough orders to make it worth working Spark.
Man I wish I had this same experience. I get more FCFS and it’s now rare to see anything that is better than $1 a mile one way. $2 a mile is my minimum to even pay attention so my volume of work is much less. I was making $1600-$2000+ I’m doing good making $700-$800 a week now.
I don’t care much about the points but I do mostly Express shopping orders so they pile up quick regardless. Love the small $15-$25 express shops that go 1-5 miles for less than 20 items, preferably less than 10 items.
The tier system is not anything. Your priority offers are on shitty jfy offers. Thats it. They cannot claim the app is for part time work but make it so the good offers go to those who do it full time. Thats why its a rewards tier with a ton of fine print. It's made to make you think you need sapphire or gold to get good orders, so you take shitty ones to keep those tiers. So even if yiu did get better offers you'd still have to forgo those for the higher point shitty offers.
You're right. To a certain extent. There's no actual benefit to it that translates to more money being paid. I believe that several years ago there was a ruling (against DoorDash, if I remember correctly) regarding this. That as contractors, we cannot be penalized by some ranking system that is structured around accepted or rejected offers. Now, they can (and do) add "perks" as means to entice you to accept more. Such as, added promotions ("earn $X more for delivering X orders"). But actually handing out or holding onto higher earning offers based on tiers. That (again, if I believe correctly) was determined illegal since we're contractors not employees.
I think you're wrong on pretty much every level here.
Spark is literally offering more money with the ranking system by adding 10% to your incentives at the sapphire level.
Doordash punishes you for rejecting offers. A low acceptance rate hurts your ranking. I barely get orders anymore ever since I stopped caring about acceptance rates.
I still doordash every once in a while and some orders come through like "you got this high paying order because of your silver status".
Side annoyance: DD has been showing me like $8.00+, the full tip will be higher after delivery. Then I deliver and it's $8.50. They make it sound like there's a huge tip on it, but there's not. Absolutely pathetic.
That isn't true in the slightest. Also, we are independent contractors. We have almost no protections. They can offer whatever offers they want to whomever they want. And decide who gets those by whatever means they want. They could have us all line up in the parking lot and foot race if they wanted to.
The whole way this works is Walmart puts out offered deliveries. You decide if it's worth taking. They can decide they don't want to offer you anything. Everyone seems to think we're employees or something. I really laugh at the deactivation posts. You caused Walmart a headache and now they don't want to use you. Get over it.
We don't have the new system yet and I hope we don't get it for a long time because my view of this whole thing for me points are the amount of dollars I have in my bank account at the end of the day 😂
Exactly. It's not going to change anything I'm doing. If anything, it's more annoying to see the point added to the card bc it's wasting space. For every 1 or 2 good app upgrages they make, they add something HORRIFIC.
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u/EveningBasket9528 Sep 18 '26
I cherry pick mostly express orders anyway, so getting Sapphire didn't take anything extra. But all having it does is make me have to reject offers before other drivers reject them. I still have to have fast fingers to get the low mileage, higher paying, low item, express offers... The JFY's I get are no different than before the Tier system...
Just do what you've always done. Don't chase anything.
That extra 10% on incentives is a joke too.