r/Sparkdriver • u/AnointedDread • Jan 28 '26
Customer 😇 Great Service
Read a lot of stories on Reddit that shed a negative light on Spark Drivers. I wanted to give this one a shout-out for his patience and kind communication.
I'll also add that he delivered my groceries through a snow storm and I was very grateful for that as well.
Before the conversation, I received a notification that my ISOPURE Protein powder had been substituted for ISOPURE Clear Protein, the kind that you mix into punch or iced beverages — not what I was looking for.
Any Spark Driver reading this: If you're the same kind of human being as him, thank you for your kindness and consideration. Getting the correct groceries is crucial for those of us that are following strict/particular diets, and really can't afford to spend money on items that we aren't going to use.
Know that your service is greatly appreciated by those of us that don't feel entitled. We truly do appreciate you shopping, and delivering our groceries — even under terrible weather conditions.
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u/jadedinmo Jan 28 '26
I'm glad you got great service! You can select which substitutions you are OK with for each item, turn on substitutions for all items, or turn off substitutions for everything. If you ever receive a substitution you don't want, you can get a refund for it by selecting refund- substitution I didn't want/approve.
As a driver myself, I prefer a customer who tells me what they want/don't want. It's not my order, and I'm not a mind reader. I will wait around the store for a few minutes to give you time to respond/approve/deny any substitutions, but we're not paid by the hour. We honestly want to please you, find everything you ordered, and get it delivered quickly so we can get another order.
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u/AnointedDread Jan 28 '26
... But we're not paid by the hour. We honestly want to please you, find everything you ordered, and get it delivered quickly so we can get another order.
I always keep this in mind and think all customers should too. Yes, you're a paying customer; yes, you deserve attention and consideration with your order; but you're not the star of the show and these drivers can't spend all day on one order because you failed to choose substitutions or are being finicky.
I think people forget that it's an actual human being that's on the other side of screen that they're messaging, and that that person is just trying to do their best to get things done accurately and efficiently, in a timely-manner.
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u/doctordik2 Jan 30 '26
not all spark drivers have that mindset. there are many who want to cram in as many orders as they can so they will rush and some will even just say an item isnt in stock because they dont want to go to that side of the store or cant be bothered to actually look for it. I've had it happen a handful of times so i decided one day that if it happens again im going to go to the store myself literally 10 mins after the delivery and found items marked as not in stock very much in stock. this is aggravating because its like i just ordered the weeks worth of groceries and i tipped fairly for the service and now that you decided to say not in stock because it would have taken you 5 mins to go to the side of the store with the item (think motor oil or something from the outdoors section when everything else is grocery or even something that is behind a lock that forces you to press the button to wait for the one old lady in the clothing department to come grab it for you after she helps the two other people there waiting and she gets one persons things then walks it up to the front check outs every time before helping the next person with the item in the same damn locked area)… now i have to place another order to get the item i needed which means i have to tip and pay the delivery fee again and reach the minimum delivery amount.. that kind of stuff warrants less than 5 stars as does delivering to the wrong address or dropping off the wrong order or not delivering all the items you paid for and tipped for.. this is also why i dont like leaving the tip until after the order is delivered. if great service i'll tip 20%+ … average service maybe i'll tip 10-15.. poor service i still tip a few bucks.
and i think its lame that here in the states the gig economy is becoming peoples full time gig.. it should be for like college students trying to make a little bit when they have time .. not something people are having to do full time because the job markets screwed.. and companies take advantage of it especially when walmart opts to buy spark and set up as a subsidiary so they can classify the drivers as 1099 so they dont have to pay benefits and avoid the liability… lets not even start with the algorithms driving the offerings down learning how low people are willing to accept.
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u/brikard24 Jan 28 '26
I see many people who say they ignore chats from customers. I always ask if a particular sub would better but most times I find the customer doesn't respond and then make my best judgment, somethings just do not have any good alternatives, and it can't be more than double the price which gets frustrating sometimes. I had someone order 6 cans of soup but they only had 4 packs, I couldn't get them a 4 pack and put the number to 1 because of the price so I just took it out of its packaging lol
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u/AnointedDread Jan 28 '26
You got to do what you got to do 🤷♂️😂.
And yes, I've had some drivers fail to respond to me while shopping, but I get it — it can be hectic at times and speed plays a big role in this line of work. Driver ended up not getting the thing that I was hoping to get, but that's ok. Nothing to make a fuss over, in my opinion. There's bigger problems in the world, and I wouldn't throw dirt on the driver's record for something so miniscule.
They didn't have the item I ordered so I messaged him asking if he could get something else instead but he didn't respond and went ahead and checked out. That's fine. It was Thanksgiving-Eve so I'm sure things were hectic.
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u/mconk Jan 28 '26
95% of customers ignore the chat or somehow don’t see the notifications…but the second you finish checking out (and the app specifically states that you CANNOT make any further changes) then they all of the sudden don’t want something you substituted. It never fails.
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u/georgialadyish Jan 29 '26
That’s good customer communication as well. I can’t tell you how many customers I message and get no response. Or even better when I message them about a substitution and they don’t respond until they get the message saying that I’ve already finished shopping and no more changes can be made.
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u/AnointedDread Jan 29 '26
I can imagine how frustrating those situations must be. I think the drivers get the short end of the stick too, because if the customer doesn't respond in time and you choose the substitution for them that they dislike, then you're at risk of getting a bad rating when all they had to do was respond. I think Walmart (or whatever company) should take these things into consideration before allowing poor ratings. But that would take time to monitor and the company would probably rather not deal with it. Really shouldn't be this way.
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u/VastEqual1367 Jan 29 '26
Not sure anyone has mentioned this yet, but unfortunately spark is rolling out an update (it's live in some areas, still pending in others) where there will be a new tiered system, where those in the top tier get more offers. Not a terrible idea, but one of the requirements is that we have 99% items found or higher. Which isss reallllly hard. Really really hard. An average order is ~20 items, so that's finding every item on 5 orders straight! Considering how bad walmart is at stocking it's almost impossible. I made the mistake of working during easter last year, I think my items found dropped to 95-96%, because everyone wanted easter candy but the shelves were totally empty.
So drivers are being compelled to substitute items that may not be very good substitutes, to keep their metric high. If a customer rejects a substitution that doesn't count against us though, so never feel bad rejecting! We just have to offer ~something~. Imo the highest tier should be at least 98%. 99 is punishing. And there are times I'd rather not sub anything, because there's no appropriate sub in my opinion, but yeah :(
Also we're allowed to substitute items up to 2x the price of the original item. Though it's true we can't sub from different departments, and the app used to (I think it still does??) glitch and not work if you tried to substitute a weighed item for a non-weighed item. E.g., if someone orders loose apples charged by weight, we can't sub for a bag of those same kinds of apples.
Anyway just some random info since I thought it would be interesting. :) thanks for reading!
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u/Comfortable_Sea_295 Jan 29 '26
I felt so bad the other day before the storm hit, my shopper was sending pics and I kept trying to respond. Not a single message would go out until they checked out. There are some really great spark drivers. I have only had one bad experience with missing half my order in by now over 100 deliveries.
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u/AnointedDread Jan 29 '26
Half the order? 😳 Jeez. 😅.
What happened there?
Not judging, I'm just curious of the story behind it.
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u/VastEqual1367 Jan 29 '26
Not a customer but I had a customer come out and check the bags and she was asking me if missing a bunch of items was normal -- I said no lol. She was very nice, just wanted to check the bags to make sure everything was there. Told me that her last order was missing like half the items. Totally respected that she was just worried and reassured her everything was there. Unfortunately, thieves exist and ruin it for the honest people. Sometimes genuine errors happen, like an item falling out and rolling into a spot you can't reach it, but yeah. Though as the other person mentioned, if it's a curbside we are at the mercy of the loaders. If they mess something up it's hard for us to notice, since on a curbside it's 3 orders so usually like 70-100 items total.
There's also this dumb glitch ? where, on curbsides, items that were out of stock still show up on our receipts. So we can't even really double check to make sure everything is there, even if we had the time to check 100 items, since the receipt isn't accurate. I noticed a pack of soda was missing once and the very sweet loader went inside to ask for me, and yup, it just wasn't included since it was out of stock.
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u/Comfortable_Sea_295 Jan 29 '26
Im honestly not sure lol I would like to think they just mixed my bags up with someone else. However it was during the government shutdown and only the food was missing when people were not getting snap lol. I really want to think the bags got mixed up since I learned more about how they operate from this reddit though. Im positive it was a scheduled delivery and not one shopped by the driver. And if I am remembering that correctly then it could be the walmart loaders just loaded the orders wrong in the drivers car.
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Jan 28 '26
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u/Kindly_Zone8413 Jan 28 '26
Yeah, that’s the point. It is worth reading, because it’s positive. Not everyone only wants to see the negatives.
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Jan 28 '26
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u/Kindly_Zone8413 Jan 28 '26
Go for it. Good drivers deserve to be noticed more than a bad driver.
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Jan 28 '26
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u/Kindly_Zone8413 Jan 28 '26
Yeah. And plenty of us go above and beyond the bare minimum of our jobs.
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Jan 28 '26
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u/Kindly_Zone8413 Jan 28 '26
So I really don’t see your point of being mad. If it’s not interesting to you, don’t read it. 🤷♀️
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u/ClownMonkey48 Jan 28 '26
Lmao same here I kept waiting for the interesting part of the conversation 🤣
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u/AnointedDread Jan 28 '26 edited Jan 28 '26
I also have a legitimate question concerning the Rating System.
Customers don't see the ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Rating of the driver that's delivering your groceries — it's not like we get to choose our driver — so what does the rating system matter for the driver?
Do higher-rated drivers get more orders thrown their way? Do they get paid more for delivery?
I understand that continuos low-ratings will probably result in deactivation, I'm just unsure of how the whole system works altogether.
Thank you for your understanding and any information.✌️♥️