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

  • echo64@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    74
    ·
    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
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      31
      ·
      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
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        20
        arrow-down
        3
        ·
        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
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          38
          ·
          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
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            7
            ·
            edit-2
            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
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      5
      arrow-down
      2
      ·
      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
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        4
        arrow-down
        2
        ·
        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
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    44
    arrow-down
    4
    ·
    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.

      • Fraylor@lemm.ee
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        14
        ·
        1 year ago

        The grand majority of instances of this happening are done by relatives. Not Joe worker delivering groceries.

        • linearchaos@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          3
          arrow-down
          12
          ·
          1 year ago

          I’ll take the rapists for 500 Alex.

          Seriously, you might be fine but there are people out there who aren’t necessarily fine.

          Single mother ordering groceries because she can’t load get the energy up to load the kids in the car to take them down to the local Wally world. Yeah, it’s an edge case, but it only takes one and then you’ve got a multimillion dollar lawsuit.

          • Fraylor@lemm.ee
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            7
            ·
            1 year ago

            It’s this kind of fear mongering bullshit that got parents scared to let their kids outside. Which then lead to parents having to parent, and they skirted that with iPads and cellphones. Kids are okay to go outside and play, take your stranger danger bullshit somewhere else.

              • Fraylor@lemm.ee
                link
                fedilink
                English
                arrow-up
                1
                ·
                1 year ago

                I think you’re the one lost in the sauce guy. You might not know this, but people lie. In fact they have a crime specifically for lying, called failure to report. The system is not compulsory, it works on the same punishment system the rest of the crimes do. Acting like everyone’s an SO is as dumb as assuming nobody is. However neither of these stances are as dumb as assuming stranger danger is the problem and not uncle kenny.

            • linearchaos@lemmy.world
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              2
              arrow-down
              10
              ·
              1 year ago

              Off I see you’ve never been a single woman and he’d someone creep on you so it never happens. That’s outstanding. I’ll have to inform the world that that’s how it works now.

              You can hold your fake apathy, I’ve seen what people like you cheer for.

      • RealFknNito@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        12
        arrow-down
        4
        ·
        1 year ago

        We have schools. Busses full of kids that get dropped off at the side of the road like clockwork and based on the age range you want, you pick a time bracket.

        Becoming a delivery driver to steal kids or property is like becoming a circus clown to pet animals. There’s easier ways to get to the desired outcome.

  • thorbot@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    8
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    1 year ago

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

  • sugarfree@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    9
    arrow-down
    2
    ·
    1 year ago

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

    • RealFknNito@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      4
      arrow-down
      2
      ·
      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
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        2
        arrow-down
        2
        ·
        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.

  • AutoTL;DR@lemmings.worldB
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    5
    arrow-down
    2
    ·
    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.


    The original article contains 677 words, the summary contains 175 words. Saved 74%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!

    • dual_sport_dork 🐧🗡️@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      10
      ·
      edit-2
      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.