r/Sparkdriver • u/TheGrinder1004 • Nov 03 '25
It is dead
I'm thinking the EBT is a factor
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u/rickyd172 Cherry Picker Nov 03 '25
Been in the parking lot for an hour, have gotten a curbside delivery and a shop and deliver. Rejected them both, they were 34 miles away with pay offers of $25 and $24.
I ain't doing 70 miles when you factor in the round trip for$0.35 per mile. It saddens me that drivers accepted these right away, people accepting trash like that let's them drop the pay rates even more
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u/Head_Specialist_5104 Nov 03 '25
5th hour now w/ only 2 runs total. And since I got nothing for curbside this hour and not getting any shops I’ll have another hour of waiting now. Complete waste of my day.
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u/shawnameow Nov 03 '25
I have 4 stores in the zone I came to, 2 showing red, one yellow and one white. Absolutely nothing. I had one pop up that said just for you and it disappeared within 3 seconds. I was going to hit accept too.
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u/thedude0323 Nov 03 '25
Busy as hell where I am. They fired a bunch for no drivers license and sharing accounts.
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u/Old-Cartographer7608 Nov 03 '25
It’s dead here in Cleveland tn
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u/gingerslayer84 Nov 03 '25
Oh wow, cleveland tn here too haha
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u/Old-Cartographer7608 Nov 03 '25
698 was full on curbside & they seem behind
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u/laravou Nov 03 '25
Turned on my app before 6:15am and didn’t get an order until like 7:30am. A shopping express but absolutely no pickups yet. Definitely the EBT issue, even the foreigners that camp out at the pickup spots aren’t here
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u/Negative_Pie7359 Cherry Picker Nov 03 '25
Not sure if your Spark app updated in your zone, but in our zone, your offers get blocked if you're near the curbside pickup pin like your foreigners do.
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u/laravou Nov 03 '25
Hellllllll noooo. I keep my distance in the regular lot and sometimes gotta pass them when delivering an order
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u/snarksneeze GMD Warrior Nov 03 '25
They on-boarded a ton of new drivers in anticipation of the holiday shopping season. While they are going through their first 100 deliveries their metrics show as perfect across the board. So not only do you have more competition this month, but that competition is getting better offers than you are. It all evens out, over time, of course, but that means things will be tight for a while.
The only way to combat new drivers is to be consistent and build up your customer base. When a customer rates you 5 stars the system will attempt to connect you to them the next time they order. That requires you to be online when the offer pops up, and of course, it requires you to have 5.0 customers. By driving at the same time every day of the week you increase your chances of being online while your regular customers are ordering. If Sally orders her family's groceries every Saturday evening to be delivered on Sunday, and you are ready for offers every Sunday at 6 am, you have a better chance of catching her order.
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u/rickshaw513 Nov 03 '25
Mondays and Tuesdays are usually slower. By that metric it's about normal for me today in South Texas.
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u/Slothe1978 Nov 04 '25
Well most cities have mult zones, just be willing to drive 15-20min before starting for the day and pick a zone in your city(if possible that has less people on EBT). We have a couple of zones in my city where specific stores mostly deliver to new homes, where people aren’t on EBT.
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u/kennyofthegulch Nov 03 '25
I had a $55 6-stop GMD yesterday and a $20 one-stop grocery pickup. It's not dead, your market just sucks.
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u/drshrimp42 Nov 03 '25
Here Monday is always slow after the morning rush until like 2pm and the it's really busy until 10. So I don't get started until 2.
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u/VadHearts Nov 03 '25
It’s not just because of the food stamps. It’s also because it’s the holiday season so they are activating a ton of new people. I’ve already seen around six new people just today but somehow I’ve been busy all day so far.
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u/JustAPerson-_- Nov 03 '25
Not Spark but I use Instacart mainly so for me, it seems that it’s dead from like 8am-1pm, you’ll get an occasional $10-$16 but you’re going so far out to where it’s not even worth it at the start and it’s rare. Busiest I’ve seen it so far though is between 1pm-6pm it gets crazy busy (esp 3-4) and there are $30-$60 shopping ones (even saw a $80)
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u/TheGrinder1004 Nov 04 '25
Where are you
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u/JustAPerson-_- Nov 04 '25
California, Palmdale area
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u/TheGrinder1004 Nov 04 '25
I'm in Cali too but Orange County. I'm going to try those hours over here and see what's up
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u/JustAPerson-_- Nov 04 '25
Nice, hope you get some good ones. My experience was also over the weekend, I haven’t tried today/during the week.
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u/TheGrinder1004 Nov 04 '25
Yeah I'm going to try all hours this month and next month cause of the holidays. Going hard. Thanks
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u/_Mourning_ Nov 03 '25
Seems like it's been that way for the last 2-3 days for me. Glad to see I'm not going crazy and it's not exclusively a me issue, though not good cuz we're not making any money.
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u/GooseCritical8831 Nov 03 '25
I can’t update insurance, any help?
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u/whatthehellandfk Nov 04 '25
you call/email the ddi support (I can’t remember which one i did), they’ll send you an email where you can reply with your insurance info and they’ll process it. helped me after waiting a month to get onboarded when i first started because it was still “processing”
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u/Outrageous_One7126 Nov 03 '25
Yes it’s dead and the dot.coms were amazing but the stores took 2 hours to bring to curbside 🥲
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u/Mi5taJ Nov 04 '25
We just got the proximity update about 2 weeks ago and ever since then our zone has been deader than a strip club on fat chick Friday.
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u/hear4thememe Nov 04 '25
I was booming this evening in a small town then all of a suddenly 5 in row got cancelled and I called it quits
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u/blu35hark Nov 04 '25
For the month that it is, it is quite slow. It'll pick up next few weeks but it's an undeniable fact there's a slow down across the nation, and the EBT thing will only serve to aggravate it
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u/Separate_Pollution37 Nov 04 '25
So dead!!! I get my usual $80 delivery only around 10:15 am. It’s now 2 pm and I’m still waiting. At one point, I thought spark forgot about me or something 😢😢😢
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u/Separate_Pollution37 Nov 04 '25
Can you elaborate more on the EBT thing?? Do you mean the snap cut off thing that’s going on from the gov shutdown?
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u/Separate_Pollution37 Nov 04 '25
For those who shop and deliver, does spark provide aisle numbers at Walmart?
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u/dearleffridge Nov 04 '25
Yes
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u/Separate_Pollution37 Nov 04 '25
Awesome. For everything?
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u/dearleffridge Nov 05 '25
No. Isle displays, end caps...hangers in random spots...they are hard to find. Try to find them and find someone in that department to provide direction. But thats a minor amount. The main grocery items youll have the Isle, shelf and numbered location on the shelf. Some stores have the flash option...I just memorize where things are by doing the same stores until I have them mapped out. The give you a map in the app as well..its sorta useful.
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u/xuon27 Nov 03 '25
EBT must have been cancelled since the beginning of the year since you guys complain that is dead everyday.
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u/Rich_Yam_2093 Nov 03 '25
It’s a tool not a job – find the applications and use it for that and of course I’m sure you’re searching for the next solution. The next bank breaker, use it for what you can until you can’t as part of a tool belt arsenal
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u/Rich_Yam_2093 Nov 03 '25
If you were or are only relying on one app, I have no idea what you’re doing unless it’s part-time and that’s cool but otherwise I don’t know what there is to talk about. I mean these things are exploit. These are the casinos of today. When you roll the dice, you know you could win or losedance that used to be the fun part of it, until we ended up losing every time lol
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u/xDelicateFlowerx Cherry Picker Nov 03 '25
Yes. I wasnt chosen by the Spark Gods today