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submitted 1 year ago by L4s@lemmy.world to c/technology@lemmy.world

Some Walmart delivery drivers are buying their credentials online — letting anyone deliver goods to your door::Walmart Spark driver accounts are popping up for sale on Facebook and Instagram as the retailer's delivery service struggles to verify who is working

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[-] echo64@lemmy.world 72 points 1 year ago

This seems like a Wal-Mart problem, I don't know who any of the people who deliver goods to me are, I never have done, it's not normal for me to expect anything from the people who deliver things to me aside from they have the capability to deliver things to me.

[-] underisk@lemmy.ml 30 points 1 year ago

Yeah it’s gig work; they already were letting “anyone” do it. If they don’t like the results of the business model they should stop using it.

[-] naught@sh.itjust.works 16 points 1 year ago

It's an accountability problem. If Wal Mart doesn't know who delivered your stuff, how can they address problems? Was your stuff delivered? Stolen? Property defaced? Who bears responsibility? Are they doing background checks? How do they know they aren't paying someone unauthorized to work in the US? I personally think everyone should be allowed to work here regardless of status, but I have to think there are serious considerations and implications for the business

[-] underisk@lemmy.ml 37 points 1 year ago

You know how you solve all that? Hire them as a delivery person instead of using an app to skirt employee protection requirements.

[-] naught@sh.itjust.works 6 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Totally! I think all of them deserve a living wage and full employee status with healthcare, even. Was sort of just musing about the problem.

[-] _number8_@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago

i remember a few years ago i got blacklisted from applying to doordash because it detected i had a speeding ticket. can't blame anyone for trying to get around petty bullshit like that

[-] fubo@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago

Well, someone else wants to hold Doordash liable for the behavior they tolerate or encourage in their drivers. Taking on that liability incentivizes them to filter out drivers known to break rules of the road; which is you.

[-] RealFknNito@lemmy.world 40 points 1 year ago

Is it the item I wanted? Is it undamaged? Yeah I really couldn't care less. Nobody is getting a delivery job to scope houses to steal from, they just go steal.

[-] thorbot@lemmy.world 7 points 1 year ago

This is what you get when you order from fucking Walmart. How is this a surprise

[-] sugarfree@lemmy.world 7 points 1 year ago

This is already common among food delivery apps, probably every single gig service has this problem.

[-] RealFknNito@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago

Is it a problem though? If they do the job I really don't care that much. Not many people doing delivery to go back and rob the place.

[-] sugarfree@lemmy.world 0 points 1 year ago

Account sharing lets people who have lost their accounts get back onto the platform. If working credentials are easily available then banning malicious/useless drivers won't be effective.

[-] qooqie@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago

Isn’t this just DoorDash with extra steps?

[-] dual_sport_dork@lemmy.world 10 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

It's DoorDash with one less step. Wal Mart will hire a rando for you, and send them to your house with a shopping bag full of Wal Mart crap.

I would give it a miss, personally. If not for all the usual reasons, then certainly for this one: There is a package forwarding place right next door to my office building, so they've got parcel deliveries arriving all day and all night from everyone you can think of. USPS, UPS, FedEx, Amazon, DHL, etc., etc. And Wal Mart. The Wal Mart drivers are perpetually trying to deliver the stuff for the place next door to my business instead, apparently because their app apparently does not give the driver an address. It just shows a pin on a map. So if the location of the pin is ambiguous like, say, the parking lot of an office building with multiple businesses and addresses in it, they have no way to handle that and don't have any idea what to do. Ours is the first door they see, so they come in here. And then they expect us to figure out for them where the hell their package is supposed to go, which is not for us.

So order your stuff from Wal Mart and it will wind up wherever their system put that pin. That could be at your house, next door, on a random porch a block away, in the middle of a field, in a ditch on the side of the interstate, or possibly a nondescript patch of ocean in the Atlantic off the coast of Africa.

[-] autotldr@lemmings.world 3 points 1 year ago

This is the best summary I could come up with:


The driver declined to have his full name appear in this article due to potential retaliation from Walmart, but his identity is known to Insider.

"Drivers selling or sharing personal or account information is against the Spark Driver platform terms of use and will result in deactivation from the platform," a Walmart spokesperson told Insider, adding that the retailer uses "manual and automated tools to identify and prevent this behavior."

"Where appropriate, we request the removal of these posts from social platforms and deactivate drivers who are confirmed to be violating the terms of use in this way," the spokesperson added.

The spokesperson also confirmed that Walmart is still rolling out a third-party identity verification feature in its app that compares selfies that drivers are required to take with previously submitted photo ID cards.

The Walmart spokesperson did not directly address Insider's questions about whether the feature was operating nationwide yet.

Spark drivers around the US previously told Insider that they see their peers using two or three different names to pick up orders at Walmart.


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this post was submitted on 30 Sep 2023
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