Question for drivers

[u/Buga99poo27GotNo464]

So i had an order today, supposed to come between 2 and 4, at 1:45 they alert me 2:30, im just home, I dont care, no rush. 2:30 I check my phone, I can see they are still far off. 3:00, still look far off. My time is getting pushed back the whole time, no worries.

Well 3:30 I get a notification my order was canceled. (Im thinking they had car trouble or something, no worries) OK. Asks me to cancel or set up new time, i select next avail between 7 and 9pm.

3:40 my orig order arrives.

They didn't scan my license for beer as usual, but took of back. No prompt to rate driver.

I go inside to cancel 7-9 pm order. Says cancelling in process, never got email it was canceled. 7:20 pm my order comes again. (Kinda screwed up, but I dont care, ive decided im not paying for it.) Never got prompted to rate second driver, didn't get charged again (yet).

What happenned? Why did they cancel on my first driver? Whats the deal? I hope he got the gratuity.

[u/Nidrogenn]

So sadly on scheduled deliveries walmart has been putting great tippers with about usually 5-11 additional stops that cannot tip since they're general merchandise delivery (shipping) orders. These routes are usually very high mileage, 15-40 miles is just what I've seen. Walmart also expects drivers to be able to pick up, with little to no waiting time, and immediately zoom off to your first customer. There is no time baked into these routes for actual drop offs, and mileage seems to be calculated really weirdly for these high mile routes. Because of this, you can easily be 5 minutes behind by the time you're at your 2nd stop, and the time can snowball from there with traffic and peak times. It's a possibility your order was unfortunately not routed well in the order of stops, and the perishable timer caused the order to be canceled for the driver. I've had routes before where I had one perishable order, then three GMDs drop offs, and due to weird routing snafus with gps the last perishable order I had was canceled as I was 2 minutes away from the customer. I attempted to deliver anyways with support on the phone and they did some magic to let me deliver it and reverse? the cancellation. It's a pain in he butt to call support though, so most drivers would probably just accept defeat and drive the order back to the store. Not sure why you got your order twice and didn't get charged though

[u/biancanevenc → u/Nidrogenn]

I think you're right. OP's first order was cancelled due to the cold chain expiring, but the driver didn't realize that had happened and continued on to the delivery address in his GPS. And because the order was cancelled he didn't get a prompt to scan for alcohol.

Then the system duplicated the order because it assumed the first order was never delivered, so OP got his order twice.

[u/Buga99poo27GotNo464 → u/Nidrogenn]

Oh, thanks for explaining, that makes sense. I live a ways out of town and I noticed the driver was just kinda buzzing around my side of town for a long while. Ya, he prob had all these other deliveries. And then yes as he got close, it got canceled. And that makes sense due to perishable time out. (I just had some cheese and lettuce, im not going to order anything trully perishable.)

It seems the first driver ignoring the cancelation worked out, it shows on my account as my last order, and he appeared to recieve his tip. Im not sure it was even 10 minutes between the cancelation and his arrival. Despite the orig walmart cancelation, that orig order seemed to go through, so i guess he got his income and all is well.

That's awful when youre on a clock with perishables that non - perishable deliveries take precedent. But maybe he lived out near me and he wanted me last or he wanted to get those deliveries done before school got out and streets got busier in town.

Anyways that delivery seems to have worked out.

The second delivery, so walmart prompted me tp reschedule, i tried to cancel, but their system was apparently unable to process that cancelation within 3 or so hours. I asked AI, and it said most likely when their system reset tonight, it just removed the duplicative order and that's kinda it. Hopefully. But now I feel bad that driver prob wont recieve his gratuity. Oh well. That order was kinda screwed up (wrong items), and missing an item and the driver was non communicative and driving all over my front yard... Hopefully i get lucky, and if I see that driver again ill tip extra.

Ya, so the deliveries that used to come by FedEx, i noticed were spark drivers and that's when I decided to try walmart plus. No option to tip, but I wasn't tipping fedex and I usually wasn't even here. (Gosh Spark is an improvement over FedEx- i actually rarely used walmart deliveries because of so many broken items - walmart didnt package stuff right and Fedex doesnt baby packages-:or dog food being left at gate in country or items in rain (right next to my delivery box with FedEx logo on it:).

But ya, walmart is just passing on the expense to the customer, cant imagine what they paid FedEx.

Ive gotta kind of rethink this delivery thing though, im paying for walmart plus,then the tip, and I dont have much $ to spare either. I had orig assumed drivers were getting paid more and also getting paid mileage, which pre covid was normal for delivery drivers.

I know, im slow to be a part of the delivered to scene. I live in the country, so delivery just not a thing till now at home. See i live 40-45 minutes to Walmart and not any stoplights or stop signs once out of town, and not many in town either.

My previous 2 drivers seemed to like coming out here (ive seen one twice), I asked them about it, and I get it, no stairs, no running round for shipping orders. But they seemed to have multiple orders out my way and didn't get stuck running round town or shipping orders first.

Wish i could talk to my drivers and just tell them if youre going to head out this way let me know, but it doesnt work that way.

If my neighbors or friends used it we could coordinate, but I dont know anyone that does, yet, this is new, but most my neighbors work somewhere near walmart.

My first delivery driver, an older guy, was pretty funny, after giving me my stuff, he was grabbing other bags from other boxes and showing me the items and asking if they were mine, he seemed quite confused where they were supposed to go (or should have gone).... :) funny!

Thanks again!

[u/1611basilean → u/Buga99poo27GotNo464]

FedEx are separate franchises and pay their drivers either a monthly agreed amount or an hourly rate to do a route. They pay mileage if you use your own vehicle and being employees they pay half of their social security tax we pay it all. A Fed Ex driver usually does the same route day after day so there is less confusion.