u/johnshonz

Customer wanted to make roast beef sandwiches / beef on weck…so they ordered rolls, au jus dipping packets, cheese, etc.

So I picked all that stuff and more, and then get to the deli — for the roast beef they wanted Walmarts own prima Della brand.

I tell the guy at the deli to get it for me, tell him it’s for spark … he comes back two minutes later and says “sorry we don’t have it” — I asked, you don’t have it already sliced or you don’t have it at all?

Not at all. And not any other London broil style rare beef either that I can replace it with.

So I messaged the customer and explain the situation, and the customer initially said that’s no problem, but please refund the rolls, the jus, etc. since they obviously won’t be needing those items now.

I couldn’t believe it, but apparently the spark app doesn’t give you (the shopper) a way to do this.

IF You’ve already picked the items and marked them as found, that’s it.

IF you haven’t already picked them, you can mark them all as “not found” — but that counts against your metrics! HOW ABSURD!

So I think to myself, OK they must not allow the Shopper to do this for reasons of fraud or something else… but they must give the support reps a way to do this when this situation comes up…. Right?

So I contacted support and I explained the situation, and the support rep explained to me that there’s nothing that they can do about this.

They don’t have the ability to refund individual items either, and have it not count against your metrics, even when the customer directly requests it due to a situation like this.

So then, I finally said to the support rep, what specifically should I tell the customer so that I don’t look like this is all my fault….

And do you know what the support rep told me?

They said I should tell the customer that if they don’t want the items after they have been delivered to them, they can drive them back to Walmart themselves, and wait in line at customer service and return them in person.

That left me speechless.

I honestly don’t see how anyone can maintain a high customer rating metric on this platform.

And why is it that Walmart can’t keep their own in-house branded products in stock!?!

I just shopped a BJ’s order — several of the items were not physically even carried at the location Instacart sent me to

I verified this by both checking the BJ’s app / website, and by stopping by customer service and asking them to look at their own internal inventory systems, just to confirm

Even more annoying is the ridiculous “This item is in stock, keep looking” nag boxes

So here’s my question — if BJ’s is supposed to be a partner of Instacart’s, why doesn’t Instacart have access to the information that is available in their own public facing apps / websites…

I’m thinking about this mainly from the perspective of how found items are affecting Shopper metrics now, like even if you replace something, just the fact that you didn’t find it automatically counts against you now with the new metric and ratings system

How diabolically unfair is that?

Also for customers who order from BJ’s, I would implore you to actually check the BJ’s app to see if the items that are advertised in the Instacart app are actually available in your area! It seems that many of them are not!!

Now that every single batch is either a double or a triple, is there really no way to just view the item list by customer?

Even when delivering. it seems like there’s no way to be able to tell who ordered what with one quick glance… you have to sit there for minutes scrolling through the lists.

Also when you’re delivering, as far as I can tell, there’s no way to even see any order besides the one you’re currently delivering to….And it doesn’t even give you the option to show you the item list either, until you hit arrived.

Almost like they designed it specifically to get people to screw up orders.

It’s pretty clear that the people who make this app don’t use it themselves.

Is anyone getting their stuff tested by a lab before ingesting?

I was about to do that, when I came across this:

https://wonderland-labs.com/sr-17018-biased-opioid-agonist/

The beginning is just AI slop, but the chemistry stuff at the bottom is useful information re: lab testing.

I found a free service in Canada (GetYourDrugsTested.com), but they only use FTIR at their lab…which is more or less useless for testing for small amounts of contaminants, and for detecting potential peak masking issues related to left over precursors, and as such — is incapable of telling us what we really want to know:

IF our sample is actually 99.9% purity, and if not, what the actual contaminants are, and at what quantities are they present.

Unfortunately, the lab from the above URL is quite expensive…the information is great, their SR testing procedure is spectacular, but overall it’s probably not a good solution for individual users, either.

Any labs capable of actually testing this properly, and at affordable prices, or possibly free…?

On Friday, I got an email saying it was out for delivery and should be delivered by 5:15 PM

Nothing actually arrived; and at 5:15 PM the “Out for delivery” status turned into “On the way”

Saturday got another email, saying it should be delivered that say, but the status never actually changed back to “Out for delivery”

Same thing with Monday, and then Tuesday

Today they stopped sending the emails and it’s just sitting there stuck with “On the way” status, last scan at 9:45 AM on Friday

Does Walmart still only show good batches if you’re in the parking lot of the store?

Or if you’re down the street, does that matter….will you see the same batch offers if you’re 2 miles away?

I’ve been in situations lately where I really want to cancel one of the customers from a multi, but am afraid that in doing so will get me the T&S email or whatever

Some of these orders are just not worth the headache especially when you can just move on to service someone else who will be more reasonable, even on another app

Two of them resulted in one star ratings, and I could absolutely see the red flags WAY BEFORE leaving the store

How are shoppers handling this nowadays?

I honestly don’t even care if it counts against my cancel rate, but what specifically do you tell support when cancelling?

And how do you know support is going to actually cancel the correct order and not screw you over?

I’ve been using service this for two years now and it just keeps getting worse

This last order is now 12 days out (script issued July 22) and still “processing”

Texted the number on Saturday, no response, texted again this morning, no response

What should I do?

Again I had a loader bagging up in the parking lot, putting customer items from multiple different orders into the same bags…

I had to go through everything myself and rebag / relabel

What is even the point of this?

Why isn’t everything bagged and labeled and checked BEFORE it’s brought out?

I’ve not seen any other store where they are bagging up the items and labeling the bags in the god damned parking lot

It’s almost like they’re deliberately trying to introduce problems like this, I mean what other explanation is there?

Some other posts are saying that they are doing away with these kinds of pick up orders… and my thoughts are: good fucking riddance!

Anyone have this happen to them, ever?

Any general suggestions, other than to go to care clinic?

I am normally on the dog’s side, but this one was 100% NOT on me at all

The little fcker lunged at the back of my leg and scratched / bit me for no reason at all, I had my back to it, and didn’t try to pet or engage or anything

Wegman’s has this system where for some orders you can skip the checkout line, they have a section of the store that just has a bunch of self bagging stations, and then there’s ***supposed to be*** an employee there that scans the barcode and does a cart check

Well, yesterday was super busy, and I was waiting there for 10 mins, and no one showed up…

I look in the shopper app and there’s a link to “switch to a regular checkout line”

When you hit this, it brings your shopper app screen back to the regular checkout flow, and removes the barcode that they’re supposed to scan, with no way to bring that back or undo, AFAICT

So then I look over to the left, and there’s a free register lane right there, so I’m thinking to myself, oh great, I’ll just do that then!

So I get to the checkout — and ofc the card declines

Had to call them and have support manually override it, it appears that whatever developer added that feature, they didn’t test it, cuz it def doesn’t work 🤬🤬

Just a warning in case anyone else finds themselves in this situation lol you will probably be better off not hitting that link and instead just go to customer service and ask them to send someone down to the bagging stations

I’ve now begun taking a screen recording of the shopping list, and then upload the video to an AI model, and it spits the list out in numerical order, along with photos and item descriptions

It also tells me the total number of items for all customers like A B C, and I can sort by customer if I want to— which this function doesn’t even exist at all in the spark app

It also gives me a much more accurate route through the store, without any backtracking!

The fact that I have to do this at all, is a testament to the developers who made this app, who absolutely have never used it themselves, and never will use it themselves to actually shop an order

I hope Walmart enjoys all of their customers ordering information being shared with AI companies lmao

Anybody else have any efficiency hacks that could help other people who have been slowed down so much by this terrible app update?