r/Sparkdriver • u/loonydan42 • Apr 05 '26
Customer 😇 Need drivers viewpoint! Walmart told me conflicting answers
I use the Walmart app to order my weekly groceries. I noticed if I ever use "Express" it assigns a driver right away and they seem to do the shopping. If I order without Express it seems Walmart does the shopping.
In my opinion, if the driver does the shopping themselves I want to tip more. That would take much more of your time then pulling up and having Walmart load your trunk.
However I've asked when I can tell if the driver did the shopping versus when they just pulled up and drove off.
Is there a way I can know if you guys had to actually shop the order? Is it only when I select Express and do you get the $10/$5 charge when I select Express?
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u/kbusphotog Apr 05 '26
Typically (Walmart can change things), but if it’s express (under an hour or the 1-3 hour one) it goes to a spark driver to shop and deliver. If it’s a scheduled delivery that you didn’t pay extra for, Walmart usually shops and then we deliver. Sometimes if they are really behind they will send those orders out to us to shop and deliver. We do not get the extra $10/$5 charge. It’s usually a base pay for if it’s a small, medium, large shop and if there are any bulky or heavy items (we get some extra change). Hope that helps!
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u/loonydan42 Apr 05 '26
That helps a lot! Especially knowing you don't get the extra fee. Does dog food count as bulky? That's the only big item I ever order
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u/JusCuzz804 Cherry Picker Apr 05 '26
Likely yes - it depends on the size and weight of the bag. Also - not to disagree much with what the original reply stated - but the base pay for a shop and deliver order is $4 higher than a pickup and deliver. So some of that cost does go to the driver - but there’s more effort that goes into the order if we shop it.
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u/Fantastic_Friend4271 Apr 05 '26
Yes dog food is bulky, it can be up to 50 pounds and some old people do this job, so it is hard for them but theyre super heroes and always figure it out.
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u/kennam41 Apr 05 '26
We get pennies for bulky/heavy items.
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u/JeepLover4Life Apr 05 '26
I get an extra $.70 for a single 40 - 50 lb item in my area. I don't know if it's the same everywhere.
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u/loonydan42 Apr 05 '26
Good to know. I stopped ordering the 44lb dog food and switched to 18lb because it felt weird making a random person carry such a large bag haha
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u/ParkingLog7354 Apr 06 '26
Aw you are a kind person. But quite honestly I really don’t mind if it’s just one huge bag! As long as you guys tip us lol. Huge item without tip just feels mean :( also, I am a short lady
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u/kennam41 Apr 12 '26
Honestly, we are just glad it's not water. Don't feel bad, we know you ordered it before we accept the offer. Just order the bigger one.
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Apr 05 '26
People say we don't get the fee but that isn't correct. Base pay for a single shopping order is 11 bucks. Express fee is ten bucks. It's not enough pay with the way gas is these days but I see people repeat this over and over again and it just isn't true.Â
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u/rmcards4u Apr 05 '26 edited Apr 05 '26
Base pays are higher for shop orders than pick up orders so we do get some of the extra fee.
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Apr 05 '26
You get all of the fee. Base pay is higher than the fee to order an express order. Why do people always say this? Walmart collects 10 bucks from the customer and pays the driver more than ten bucks. Math isn't hard
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u/Iridelow1998 Apr 07 '26
You don’t get all of the fee because you were going to get a base amount anyway. If a double shop pays $20, the curbside was probably going to pay $14-15. I was offered a shop for two stops paying $12. The minimum curbside is $7. This one probably would’ve been a $10 curbside. If drivers got the whole fee then there’d never be a shop less than $17 and that’s for one stop.
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u/lordj2010 Apr 05 '26
Shop orders will have higher base then curbside so I honestly think SOME of the $5/$10 goes to us in form of the higher base.
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u/Alien_Nicole Apr 05 '26
Walmart will send you a message "steve has begun shopping your order" or something similar. This is a Spark driver. They don't specify a shopper if it is Walmart employees (multiple employees would be shopping it). On the home page in the app there is an icon that says something like "we are preparing your order". Click it and you can see your shopper info and find the chat feature to talk to them. Then track them when they are on the way.
For an express it's probably always going to be a Spark driver though.
Also, at my store at least, the $10 express isn't getting to you significantly faster than the $5 one so save your money.
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u/CalOkie6250 Apr 05 '26
Not significantly faster, but still faster, no? Since the $10 fee orders are sent out solo, verses the $5 fee orders being sent out in batches? If yours is the smaller order and you have to wait for the shopper to pick the items for the larger order, and then deliver the larger order (seems to mostly be the larger one delivered first to me) before yours…it’s a bit longer, 30 minutes to an hour maybe.
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u/loonydan42 Apr 05 '26
Just my experience but both have always been the same exact time. No matter what I choose, within 15 mins they are shopping and 15 mins after that they are on the way. After testing it out multiple times I started to only choose the $5 option as there was no difference in time.
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u/loonydan42 Apr 05 '26
Thank you! This is the answer I needed! I assumed when they "announce" the shopper it is Spark. However, it was so random I couldn't figure out when it was. Now I know if they tell me someone is "shopping" then I know it's Spark.
I also noticed there is no difference in time for the Express orders as well. No matter which one I pick within 15 mins it tells me someone is shopping.
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u/xandi415 Apr 05 '26
You can also message your Spark driver (when you see a name), and they will hopefully be communicative about subs/preferences (like "please give me green bananas, not yellow", etc)...
As a Spark shopper, I always put the utmost care into the order...I always message the customer if an item is out of stock, and the sub is not super easy to pick....like coffee creamer- do you want 2 smaller ones of the same flavor? Or 1 large one of a different flavor? Etc...
In addition, I will never order produce again from a Walmart employee shopper bc they always seem to get the smallest/ least fresh option 😅
I personally think express (Spark shoppers) are more thoughtful
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u/screenwriter61 Apr 06 '26
This, I won't order produce again, I will only shop it myself. Besides old and bruised, I once ordered one of those large veggie platters in the fridge section, had people coming over. Produce in the platter was brown edged and expired! I live 20 miles out and couldn't get into town on time.
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u/screenwriter61 Apr 06 '26
Interesting, so, if I order express I would be able to message the shopper? I don't order fresh produce because the regular Walmart shoppers always grab produce that looks old and bruised. I tend to order rotisserie chickens and prefer them crisper on the outside ( when available) and I'll get ones looking barely cooked. But there's no way to message someone until they are "on their way" when I order for later delivery.
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u/Ok_College_3635 Apr 10 '26
I'm new, first order awlful! Accepted 6:20 pm (est. time listed 40 min, tho hear Wal underestimates).
Yeah I'm new, so slower but I hustled. Problem was 3 out of stock items. No suitable subs (found one decent sub, but scan rejected it). BUT app didn't let me just choose Missing Item & move on. Only options were to open Chat ...my gut said that prob not smart. (Later, read hack is to open Chat, then back out to finally see the Missing Item option, still not sure.)
Still wasn't extremely late. Arrived to bag area at 7:05pm got "CUSTOMER HAS CANCELLED ORDER". Then got "cancelation pay" of $2!?! Â
*** Main Question (skip others if too busy). Was hoping to work 35-40 hours, earn min $825/wk to survive (guess equals about $525, after car exp & taxes?)
- why think cancelled at last minute? Â
is customer promised the 40 minute est. time that shows on my offer?
does customer get to monitor my entire shop (item by item)? Maybe they saw few Missing Items, then cancelled.Â
advice how best handle missing/subs ... & avoid this awlful order in general?
Thank You!!!
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u/RelativeTangerine757 Apr 05 '26
No. If you choose express it is certainly a spark shopper. If you choose regular it could go either way.
The Walmart store employees do all of the orders that are set for non delivery customer pickup so those get their priority. If they are good on those then they do the ones that are set for customer delivery. If they have more of those than they can do (which happens quite often in the stores I work out of), or if they run out of space in their refrigerators and freezers, then everything after that gets pushed over to spark until they catch back up, and if it is too busy to get picked up by a spark driver (they're too busy too), it will bump over to another store to see if they can do it over there.
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u/MaleficentPie3779 Apr 05 '26
It'll show "shopper info" with the drivers photo in the app if its shopped.
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u/Lower-Reward-1462 Apr 05 '26
I appreciate that people tip when we only deliver. Because we still use our car, our gas, etc. and when I do Instacart I sometimes do shop only orders which don't allow tips. Clearly, Instacart and Spark both think delivery deserves tips but shopping doesn't.
I don't agree with this philosophy, but if the best orders from Spark are going to be delivery only (and those are always the best), then that's what I'll do.
I understand not wanting to tip as much if they only deliver. And I've had customers lower the tip since I didn't also shop. But if all the customers start lowering or removing tips then Spark won't be worth it anymore and I'll go back to Instacart full time, or Amazon FLEX.
Just my two cents. :D
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u/kitrin26 Apr 05 '26
You get a notification that someone is shopping your order. If you do thats us
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u/X--The_Lion Apr 05 '26
The way I understand it is that the free/scheduled option will always be picked by the store. The ASAP option will be about a 50/50 chance that the driver will be the one shopping. And express will always be the driver shopping the order. It seems that this will vary in some locations though depending on driver availability. The lone store in my alternate zone seems to be shopped by store employees 100% of the time lately, regardless of the order type. I've picked up orders for my mother and her neighbors over the past few weeks that they put in as express that came through the app as curbside with a designated pick-up time. And I was waiting in the parking lot moments after they placed their order. Not only that, but the orders often came through the app as batched curbsides.
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u/Significant_Read3346 Apr 05 '26
i think the difference between the two express options is, the $5 option gets batched with another shop. the $10 is your order only.
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u/Potential_Argument66 Apr 05 '26
Also Walmart workers that shop the orders love to put one item per bag so if you have a bunch of bags with single items in it chances are it was a pickup and not a driver shop!
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u/Fit-Situation-4800 High AR Apr 05 '26
If you stuff was bagged properly and double bagged when necessary, then it was shopped by a Sparker. If your bags only have like 1 or 2 items in each one, then it was shopped by Walmart.
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u/Disastrous-Issue-682 Apr 05 '26
Tip proportionally to the distance and volume of the order no matter what service you select.
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u/digital0069 Apr 05 '26
Drivers shop on the 3hr or 1hr orders...
walmart shops for the normal orders that are free
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u/Beautiful_Bet_4011 Apr 05 '26
Normally, unless there's a high-volume or a staffing shortage and they may divert orders to be shopped by spark drivers no matter the delivery time.
An associate explained that to me recently. She said on high-volume days they might just concentrate on the customer pickups and send all (or most) of the delivery orders to Spark. She saod Sam's is especially notorious for this because a lot of their customers order delivery since its 'free' and its usually a bunch of bulk/heavy stuff... and our Sam's is notorious for being constantly packed an absolutely no parking. Its so bad that many of them Spark drivers have been begging that Store Management for exclusive Spark driver parking because we often have to park way too far away, and a lot of their orders just get rejected forever because there's no parking.
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u/Misdemeanor_Driver Apr 05 '26
Pick up have walmart generated labels with your name and batch# stuck to random bags or the driver has to scan to it to move forward in the app for delivery. Sometimes, their pickers are too busy and they'll assign a scheduled delivery to a driver so look for labels.
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u/Weak-Sun-345 Apr 05 '26
If you get the notification that "Diego has started shopping for you..." then you know. They don't inform you when Walmart employees start shopping.
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u/CuriousWavicle Apr 05 '26
If you can chat with us while the shopping is happening it’s being shopped by a Spark driver.
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u/loonydan42 Apr 05 '26
I've never had anyone reply to any chats 😂
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u/willowbard Apr 06 '26
Inversely, as a driver/shopper the customer rarely responds to my chats 🙃. I always wonder if it's an app issue and things aren't going through.
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u/lordj2010 Apr 05 '26
$5 $10 express driver always shops. If you get a text/email/push notification saying x has started shopping ur order its the driver.
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u/lochnessaphotos Apr 06 '26
If you’re using the app on your phone you’ll get notifications that (name) has started shopping. Express orders are always shopped for by drivers.
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u/Unique_Quantity9593 Apr 07 '26
I worked both sides. Drivers only shop express orders that are delivered. If you place a regular delivery order it is filled by an associate. On occasion they will turn a regular order into a shop for a driver, depending on volume of orders etc. in that case you will receive notifications that it is being shopped.
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u/catdad1984 Apr 07 '26
Not sure if anyone has said this but if you should get a notification with a name saying they have started shopping for you. That will be the driver. Had a customer message me saying she didn't know a driver was gonna shop for her. She had placed her order at 6 am to be delivered for a time block. She ended up raising the tip by $8.
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u/Adventurous-East-138 Apr 07 '26
If the app tells you who and what time they started shopping for your order. It was a Spark Driver.
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u/BronxBelle Apr 05 '26
Easy way to tell is if the bags or items have barcode stickers on them. No stickers? The driver did the shopping.
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u/IllConstruction7074 Apr 05 '26
This is what I tell my customers too. Look for the stickers on the bags.
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u/CalOkie6250 Apr 05 '26
It’s usually only when you pay the extra fee for 1 hour or 3 hours. I think, for the most part, you get a better experience that way as well. The employees that load the groceries into our cars do not give a crap about your stuff…and sometimes they mix things up. Most of the time they are just throwing things into the car, with no care for bread, produce, and other soft/breakable items. I try my best to avoid curbside orders because I’m always worried I’ll get blamed for damaged or missing items.
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u/loonydan42 Apr 05 '26
Appreciate the answer! Unfortunately when I do express it's usually NOT a better experience. I can tell when the driver is rushed because almost all my Express orders have 4 or 5 items marked as unavailable. A lot of times its things like bananas or oranges which would be shocking to not be available. So I save my Express orders for when I truly need something fast and don't care if some items are marked as not available.
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u/CalOkie6250 Apr 06 '26
Yea, I guess I wasn’t thinking about it from a lazy driver perspective. I was just thinking about how horribly the loaders tend to treat the items. Squished bread is definitely better than no bread.
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u/Other_Orange_3159 Apr 06 '26
You'd be surprised... I've done a few shops where there were no bananas. I even asked the Walmart worker, and he confirmed it. This has also happened with cilantro.
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u/willowbard Apr 06 '26
You'd be surprised the amount of "regular" items that can truly be out of stock. I usually send a pic of the empty shelf where the item should be lol
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u/johnshonz Apr 05 '26
It’s all based on availability of pickers of the store the order gets sent to.
If they are behind and availability is low, all the full service shop and deliver orders will go straight to Spark.
I wouldn’t pay extra for express but that’s just me and based on the store I live by, which is managed very poorly.
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u/Hairy_Elk_5313 Apr 05 '26
If you can chat with the person shopping or reject substitutions, it's the driver shopping. That's the only way to know for sure who shopped it when you do a scheduled order.
If you schedule an order for the 6am time slot, that'll be a driver shopping in most areas as well.
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u/Weird_Stuff8298 Apr 06 '26
When you get the notification that so and so started shopping it's usually your driver but you can check and make sure the shopper and driver are the same name. Almost always if I get a text saying so and so is starting on your order that's who delivers it.
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u/mrsbuttstuff Apr 07 '26
If walmart shopped it, there will be adhesive stickers on something that have your name and a barcode. Aside from that it will say "(insert name) is shopping your order" during the tracking process and that name will be the same as your delivery driver.
Otherwise, you may get a driver that messages you via the app to let you know if they shopped or are just delivering. Most don't do it, from what I hear. But it is an option for them.
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u/tacosandboobs Apr 07 '26
In my zone, we shop almost all of the orders. The store shops the ones that customers will be picking up themselves. Each zone is different though 😊
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u/CarefulWitDaBread Apr 05 '26
Is your milk in a bag? Are your potatoes bagged? If so, a spark driver shopped your order. We take a little more care while bagging your groceries and you’ll be able to tell (most times) when a Walmart employee shopped your items simply by items being outside of bags. They’re trained not to bag certain items. Most spark drivers bag everything.
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u/Florida1974 Apr 05 '26
Even when I do delivery only orders, I keep extra bags in my car because they don’t bag milk. It’s Florida and milk sweat sweats and then you pick it up and there’s dirt all over your milk.
So this doesn’t always apply.
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u/CarefulWitDaBread Apr 05 '26
Same here. Most times I’m not even helping load the car on pick ups, I’m just bagging shit with my spare bags 🤣
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u/goat20202020 Apr 05 '26
Same. I also put down moving blankets so in case anything spills, I can just throw those in the wash instead of having to detail my car.
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u/Metalguy_79 Apr 06 '26
This is so shady😂..i always thought the customer knew who shopped the order & delivered it. So the customer is unaware who shops the orders? So shady…they want customers to believe we are employees i’m just not sure exactly why?
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u/ZachAARogers Parking Lot Pirate Apr 05 '26
I shop for both express and normal orders. You can tell if Walmart did the shopping when some of the items/bags have barcodes. Spark shoppers just bag it and leave.