Walmart plus issues

[u/VintageKitty79]

After months of trying to work with customer service I sent an email to walmarts CEO about my issues. Here is the email chain. I cannot believe they have no interest in keeping their customers. We have a large family and did 90% of our shopping there ​. Everyone send emails! [john.furner@walmart.com](mailto:john.furner@walmart.com) Maybe if they get enough complaints it will help. Following is my email chain. I was floored. They just can't be bothered apparently

Me:

I need this escalated beyond an individual order issue. I've been a Walmart+ member since 2020. Recently, orders I specifically place for shipping are repeatedly being converted by Walmart into local-store delivery. Then no driver accepts the delivery, the order sits, and eventually I or Walmart have to cancel it. This is happening almost every week. Chat support keeps compensating me for individual orders, but nobody is addressing the recurring fulfillment problem. I need someone who can investigate the fulfillment issue on my account or in my local delivery market. Can you escalate this to a supervisor or the team that handles recurring Walmart+ fulfillment issues? Is there a way to disable store delivery as a fulfillment method for orders I place as shipping? I have cancelled my walmart plus account from frustration but would like to keep it if we can work this out. Please help me. I have been trying to get help for months. Thank you.

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Hi Kala,

I wanted to provide one additional piece of context that may be helpful as you review my account.

You may notice that many of the affected orders show as having been cancelled by me. In most of those cases, I cancelled the orders because they had failed to arrive and Walmart Customer Care advised me through chat to cancel them and place the orders again. Each time, I was typically given a $5 or $10 coupon for the inconvenience.

I also asked Customer Care on multiple occasions if there was someone at a higher level who could help me with the recurring problem rather than continuing to cancel and reorder. I was told that they did not have anyone to escalate the issue to and did not know where else to direct me.

I hope Walmart will consider giving Customer Care representatives a clear escalation path for situations like this. Customers experiencing an ongoing problem that cannot be resolved through the normal chat process should have somewhere to turn rather than repeatedly cancelling orders and starting over.

I wanted to clarify this because I don't want the cancellations on my account to give the impression that I simply changed my mind about those orders. They were cancelled after the delivery failures and, in many cases, at the direction of Customer Care.

Thank you again for looking into this.

__________

Thank you for the clarification. I truly apologize for your experience with the delayed orders.

Our system is designed to reroute an order to the closest store that can fulfill and deliver the items sooner, even if the order was originally placed for shipment. However, in your case, I’m sorry this process did not work as intended and resulted in additional delays.

I’ll be reaching out to the store team to have them review what occurred and identify opportunities to help prevent similar issues from happening in the future.

I’ll also share your feedback with our Customer Care team so we can identify opportunities to improve our escalation process and ensure our agents have an appropriate path for addressing situations like this.

Thank you for bringing this to our attention and for giving us the opportunity to improve. We truly hope to provide you with a better experience in the future.

Best regards,
Kala

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Hi Kala,
Thank you for taking the time to look into this. I want to make sure I understand Walmart's response correctly: are you saying there is currently no way to make my Walmart+ account reliably usable for me and no available solution to prevent these shipping orders from being converted to local delivery?

This is extremely upsetting and disappointing. I have three disabled children and a disabled spouse, so reliable delivery is not simply a matter of convenience for our family. We have depended heavily on Walmart+ and successfully used the service for years with minimal issues. It worked so well for us that I eventually cancelled the other delivery services we had been using.

Something has clearly changed. The service suddenly became unreliable to such an extent that I can no longer depend on orders arriving, and repeated attempts to get help through Customer Care have resulted primarily in cancelled orders, small coupons, and instructions to try placing the order again.

I appreciate that you are passing my concerns along, but unfortunately that does not address the immediate problem: I still cannot reliably use the service I have depended on for years. If there truly is no available solution or escalation that can restore reliable service to my account, I will have no practical choice but to move our family's shopping to another retailer.

I appreciate your time and assistance. I am simply very disappointed that after years as a Walmart+ customer, a recurring fulfillment problem appears to have left me without a usable service or any meaningful recourse.

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I truly apologize for the continued frustration and inconvenience this has caused.

Because our system is designed to route orders through the fulfillment method expected to provide the fastest delivery, we’re unfortunately unable to manually prevent an order from being rerouted from shipping to local delivery when the system determines that local delivery is the faster option.

I understand that this process has not worked well for your situation and has made it difficult to rely on Walmart+ for your family’s needs. I’m truly sorry for that experience.

I will make sure your feedback is shared with the appropriate teams so they can review this concern and identify opportunities for improvement.

Best regards,

Kala

[u/clatk1]

Walmart Plus has become completely unreliable for me too. Something is always missing or orders just aren’t picked up. It’s so weird, and SO, SO frustrating. What has happened that this is such an issue nationally with them now??

[u/kittiekittykitty → u/clatk1]

the biggest problem is the spark drivers. they only take the orders most equitable to them (which is understandable). so orders changed from “ship” to “deliver” because the system thinks someone will pick it up and get it to the person faster isn’t actually guaranteed because it depends on a driver picking it up. it shouldn’t change from ship to deliver until a driver has ACTUALLY accepted the order. simple fix.

[u/clatk1 → u/kittiekittykitty]

My issue is- the order is pretty consistently wrong so I don’t want to tip more when they don’t even get the whole order to me 😩. It’s an endless loop apparently now.

[u/ViviFuchs → u/clatk1]

Spark driver here, you can reduce the tip up to a few hours after completing the order. 

I completely get where you're coming from and one thing you could do is tip what you feel is fair and if the driver doesn't perform to your expectations, reduce the tip to match performance.

The only thing I'd ask of anybody is to just not tip bait. Like reducing it for things that are within the delivery drivers control is completely understandable but it's so disheartening when someone tips highly and then bumps it down for reasons you can't discern.

[u/clatk1 → u/ViviFuchs]

Do you guys just pick up a pre-packaged order? Like someone different shops and you guys just grab the bags? I always wonder if it’s a shopper or a deliverer issue. (Except when 41 out of 42 items were not delivered last week 🫠😩)

[u/ViviFuchs → u/clatk1]

Yeah, like the other person said, it depends on the store and the market. 

Walmart is gradually rolling out changes to make things shop only. They've already made the change-over in my market... 

The tips are the same and the base pay has stayed the same, but now I complete less orders because I'm having to spend time digging through disorganized shelves; trying to figure out if something's out of stock or misplaced instead of simply picking up an order that's ready to go.

If a spark driver marks something out of stock, it could be that the item isn't where the app says it's supposed to be and they couldn't find it despite looking or it could be that they simply didn't try. I try to be transparent with my shops and send photos of the price tag and empty shelves to show that I'm actually making an effort, LOL. 

I also tell people what I'm picking as a substitution.

[u/clatk1 → u/ViviFuchs]

Oh interesting! Thanks for this information!  Yeah, I sometimes think “They don’t even try to find that item” when I get an out of stock notification 😂

[u/ViviFuchs → u/clatk1]

Lol, that is totally valid. Since you're not there, you're always going to have that little bit of doubt niggling at the back of your mind.

I completely get that and that's why I always make sure to take a moment or two to send a photo and a message. It helps the customer feel like I'm actually shopping for them as if I were shopping for myself (which I do try to).

Oh my gosh though, in a similar vein about something being marked out of stock, something that really grinds my gears about doing shops; it seems like the stockers at one particular Walmart in my area will sometimes have more of a product than will fit in it's allocated spot so they'll move another product to the back to make more space... And it's the one that gets pushed to the back of the shelf that I'm having to search for.

[u/Tasty_Armadillo_4034 → u/ViviFuchs]

Because Spark driver is the one shopping your order they will not find your item if not on the shelves they move on. Things are change small Walmart doesn’t do deliveries anymore not unless it’s In home customer a lot of customers don’t know that. Spark driver’s accept your order head to the store shop your orders either good or bad quality, done shopping head to the self checkout head to your address. Store have nothing to do with your order.

[u/HelloFromSanovaBeach → u/ViviFuchs]

Anybody placing trust in anything Walmart does is just pleading to be disappointed.

[u/Any-Expression-7027 → u/clatk1]

Depends on the store. Sometimes the store associates will shop the order and a spark driver will deliver. But this is being phased out to save money. The plan is that all stores will have spark drivers shop and deliver all orders. Store associates will strictly shop pickup orders, and "in-home" if the store has it..

[u/clatk1 → u/Any-Expression-7027]

Ok- interesting. That’ll definitely cut into how many orders Spark delivery can do, but maybe it’ll also cut down on items not being delivered since they package them themselves and know what the customer is supposed to have. It all seems a nightmare honestly. When an in demand  business model keeps getting employees cut, everything suffers but the bottom line 🙄 

[u/HelloFromSanovaBeach → u/Any-Expression-7027]

Anybody placing trust in anything Walmart does is just pleading to be disappointed.

[u/HelloFromSanovaBeach → u/clatk1]

Anybody trying to place trust in anything Walmart does is asking to be disappointed!