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Every time an Alabama-based driver for Walmart's Spark delivery service accepts an order, a deadline for him to report to his local Walmart flashes on the Spark app. He often has around 10 minutes to pick it up.
But the driver told Insider that when he's arrived in the past, he has had to wait in the parking lot for the better part of an hour for a store employee to bring orders out to his car.
"They summon you there, and then you'll sit there and sit there and sit there," the driver told Insider. "The longest I've waited was an hour and 15 minutes just because there was a good tip attached to it, but it's just gotten really bad."
According to conversations with four Spark drivers, wait times have become an issue for the drivers as the service has grown. It's the latest challenge to the retailer's delivery service.
This year, Walmart started allowing some gig workers from Spark to pick orders in stores and deliver them, according to the drivers Insider spoke to.
The problem is also impacting customers, whose deliveries can show up later than expected. And shoppers who order groceries and other items to pick up themselves at Walmart have also found themselves waiting in the parking lots, too, Spark drivers and comments on social media have indicated. The same Walmart associates responsible for Spark orders also bring items out to customers waiting in parking lots.
"Orders are typically dispensed in 10 minutes or less," a Walmart spokesperson told Insider when asked about the long wait times that drivers have experienced. "We are focused on giving drivers an efficient pick-up experience and maximizing their earning opportunities, so we consider the time it takes to dispense orders when determining earnings for each trip."
The number of Walmart's Spark drivers tripled between mid-2022 and mid-2023, the retailer said in June. The network can now reach about 84% of US households, Walmart said. Last year, Walmart's e-commerce sales grew by 12%. That includes orders shipped to customers' homes as well as deliveries made through third-party services and by full-time Walmart associates, not just Spark drivers.
But the growth has come at a cost. In addition to delayed orders, employees and drivers say Walmart has not adequately policed the platform's significant issue with drivers using multiple accounts with different names, Insider previously reported. And Walmart's CEO, Doug McMillon, has said he wants more store associates, not gig workers, to make deliveries.
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Waiting around for orders has become a big part of the job for gig workers who make deliveries. Instacart shoppers often wait in their cars outside of stores to claim orders. The practice has become so common that Costco asked Instacart shoppers to stay out of its parking lots unless they had accepted an order.
Some DoorDash workers ask for extra tips for waiting longer than expected to pick up meals.
Spark drivers told Insider that the wait times at Walmart make it hard to know which orders are worth taking. The drivers did not want their names used in this story for fear of retaliation from Walmart and Spark. Their identities are known to Insider.
Orders with high base pay or with generous tips become less profitable if it takes longer than expected for an associate to bring the order out, the drivers said. Similarly to many other gig workers, Spark drivers are paid per order delivered, not by the hour.
The lengthy wait times can also conflict with Walmart's schedule for distributing orders to Spark drivers. Delivery orders appear once an hour for drivers, who then claim them and show up at the store within about 10 minutes.
If store employees take too long, drivers risk being out delivering an order when the next hourly drop happens, one Spark driver in Nevada said.
"I've been there," he told Insider. "I took the order at 10:35. I'm parked at 10:36, and I've left at 11:10. So, when it drops again, I'm out doing a delivery."
Some of Walmart's customers who swing by a store for curbside pickup appear to also be experiencing long wait times, and they're expressing their frustration on social media. One user, gabriellew13, recalled waiting "almost an hour" for an order in the parking lot.
One possible contributor to the wait times: Walmart employees and contractors who handle deliveries are adjusting to delivering multiple orders at once.
In August, Walmart started asking Spark drivers to deliver orders in batches of up to three orders each.
Grouping orders together is common with other delivery services, such as Instacart. Nevertheless, it's complicating the job for store associates and contractors alike, drivers told Insider.
One Spark driver in Indiana spoke to Insider recently from his car while waiting to pick up a batch of two orders. He said that he had been waiting 40 minutes for the orders.
While he described the long wait times to Insider, a Walmart associate appeared next to his car and confirmed that the batch was supposed to contain two orders.
But the associate had bad news. "We only have one of them," he said. "We can't find a second one."
"That's not unusual," the driver told Insider.
Do you work for Walmart or Spark and have a story idea to share? Reach out to this reporter at abitter@insider.com
