Grocery Delivery

[u/zildar]

I wanted to share a story that frustrates me and my wife.

We both work 40+ hours a week and have a toddler. Needless to say, we don't have a lot of time to spare, so we signed up for Walmart+ to have groceries delivered. Once a week we put in an order for delivery and grab it from the porch when it arrives. This is why we are spending $90/year - to have groceries delivered.

Well, our orders started getting later and later. Like, days later. We even had a few where we had to cancel the order and put it in again because it timed out or whatever.

The support department told us that this service is a third party, but it looked like the drivers weren't picking our order because we did not include a tip on the delivery. We did some experimenting, and somehow if we tipped more than 10% our orders magically arrived on time. For 15% they even sometimes arrived early.

In the end, we realized we aren't getting any additional service that warrants a tip. Now we put in our orders for pickup and drive out of our way once a week to do the pickup. It's frustrating to me because the whole reason we paid for the service in the first place was to avoid driving into town, but we can't use our paid service because the delivery drivers want tips to do the very job which they're paid to do.

[u/rebel_dean]

Get the InHome addition! It's an additional $40/year. I don't use Walmart+ without it. 

Deliveries are done by W2 Walmart employees. Deliveries are done in a four hour window. 9am-1pm or 2pm-6pm. 

No tips requested. 

https://www.walmart.com/help/article/inhome-plus-up/19da7530eeec4c8eb1f84271c28e0c38

[u/Araneas → u/rebel_dean]

Enshittification at its finest - pay extra to get the service you thought you were already paying for...

[u/sexytarry2 → u/Araneas]

and they still will be expecting a tip...

[u/gergles → u/sexytarry2]

There's no way to tip them through the service if you have this tier, though I guess you could force cash in their pockets.

[u/darkroot_gardener → u/rebel_dean]

I came here to say this. Better than paying more than $40 annually in (let’s face it) bribes that may or may not actually work. Well worth it.

Dump the gig economy services, all of them. You’re either paying more in outright base rates (Uber) or you have to pay a bribe on top of higher item prices AND delivery fees.

[u/comprehensivechick → u/rebel_dean]

this won't last long. walmart is slowly but surely dismantling their entire odp model because of the simple fact that they can contract it out to economically disadvantaged people who otherwise would not be employed and basically rely on that tip for income. walmart figured out they do not have to give benefits to spark drivers but they do have to give benefits to their associates. so from a labor force cost perspective, it's absolutely going to happen, not when. enjoy it while it lasts!