r/WalmartSparkDrivers

placed two orders last night, one has not been touched at all, pending, the other is looking for a driver since 10 this morning, and they all are small items 4 miles away from store

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!?!

Seriously I don’t know who is or isn’t a spark driver in our area. I’m friends and/or friendly with a few. But I don’t keep up with who’s who or who got what order.

I’ve had strangers approach me to tell me they know what order I got because they are spark to & they’ve been watching. Well I don’t know you, I don’t know what order you have and I’m not watching.

Then delivered to a woman who chewed me out because she was a spark delivery driver and got In trouble for leaving her baby and people were complaining about her baby. I didn’t know if she was a spark driver,or that she had a baby. I’ve never seen this woman before.

💯 % certain I’ve never called spark to complain about any other driver. Because I’m busy living my life, doing my job and making my money.

These people need to try it sometime it might work wonders for them.

Do you demand a new bread when doing a pickup and noticing crushed bread?

As a new driver, currently Sapphire, 4.9 rating for the new reward program seems a bit extreme (I think the top rank for Instacart requires 4.7+ which is easy).

200 deliveries in I’m at 4.95 having 21 5’s and 1 4. Just 1 one star would have tanked me!

Best pay is late evening orders that sat as well so high risk of lower than 5 star rating getting blamed for “late” when it’s not your fault!

I okayed a trip, went to the parking spot, and confirmed arrival. It took about 30 minutes, and the order was stuck in the packing-up stage, so I called the store. They said they couldn't see the order in their lists. I called support; they said they have to submit a ticket to IT, and it might take hours or days to clear out. It has been three hours now.

They put an $11 pre-tip, but while shopping they must have removed it, because suddenly, after completing the delivery, all I got was a $10 base pay and a slash through the $11 tip. People are scummy. Beware. Don't accept offers based on tips. I went nearly a year and a thousand deliveries without being baited, but this is the third or fourth time it has happened in the past six weeks.

Edit: turns out it was a system glitch (this time).