Is Doing Walmart Deliveries for Doordash Worth it?

It's been a while now since Doordash has been delivering Walmart groceries. When all of this Walmart business began, there wasn't many calls for Walmart deliveries in my area. Every once in a while a Walmart call would come in, but I am talking about once a week at the most. As the months have passed, the region that I usually work in has experienced a major increase of Walmart deliveries. There are times when I will get four or five Walmart calls in a row. It would be safe to say that the Doordash - Walmart partnership has worked out great for the two companies.

 

One very noticeable thing about the Walmart grocery delivery offers from Doordash is the pay that is offered. It seems that most of the calls, shall we say 80 percent, pays at least $9. Many of the offers are even more than that with some offers in the $15 or more range. Although the cheap and low paying offers for Walmart do come in, those cheap paying offers are a small percentage of Walmart calls.

How do Walmart deliveries from Doordash work?

When getting a Walmart offer, a dasher will receive a ping on their phone just as they would with any other call. It will show Walmart as the pick up location, show how many items need to be delivered, show the customer's location and show the driver how much they will earn.

After accepting the Walmart order, the dasher needs to find the pick up location at their Walmart. There is usually a designated area for these pick ups. In the Walmart parking lot there will usually be signs in orange that say "Grocery Order Pickup" that will guide you to get where you need to be. I never noticed these signs before until I started doing Walmart pickups for Doordash, but it seems that all the Walmarts have them.

Once you arrive in one of the pickup parking spots you can slide that you've arrived, and the Walmart workers will know that you are there. The workers will come out and verify that you are the dasher for the particular order that you are picking up, and then everything will get loaded into your vehicle.

I would like to mention that ever since the Covid 19 pandemic arrived there is no need to make contact with the Walmart workers. It has been a while since I've picked up from Walmart, but if I were to do a pickup from there these days I would open up my trunk and let the worker load the items and be done. There is no need to sign anything anymore either.

From there it's off to the delivery point. When arriving at the drop off location, the dasher shall carry and deliver all of the customer's items to their front door. The customer used to have to sign that they received their items. Again, in this Corona Virus age nobody should be worrying about signatures. Also, if you don't want to have any contact with the customer, I would advise to text the customer and make sure that they understand not to come out until you leave.

When this Dasher first began to do Walmart deliveries

Walmart offers always looked good to me because as I mentioned earlier, the pay was almost always decent. Just like any other call, I would accept a Walmart offer call based on the pay and distance, but there was one more other thing that I paid attention to when it came to Walmart. I had to know how many items a Walmart customer ordered. I was not going to deliver 100 items to a customer for $9. What if this customer lived on the top floor of some apartment building? It is not happening!

I would accept the decent calls for Walmart deliveries such as a call paying me $10 to deliver 20 items or something similar. I would never rely on customers leaving me tips after the delivery. I would say that only 20 percent would leave a tip after the delivery was done, and those tips were only a few dollars. It is safe to say that I was not too happy about the tips, and it came to a point to where I didn't even expect a tip.

Please keep in mind that a Dasher is expected to deliver the customer's items to their front door. Customers have always expected that, and this is especially true with the pandemic and all. Most customers want the delivery to be no contact and will not come out to get their items until the dasher leaves. Carrying the items to the front door has never been a big deal to me as long as it is not a 100 or 200 item order. Those orders would just not be worth it to me unless they paid at least $25.

Be aware that the Walmart customer may think you are a Walmart employee

This may not be very important, but it is interesting to know. Many Walmart customer that you are delivering to wont know that you are a Doordash driver. They'll just assume that you're a Walmart employee delivering their items. This is no big deal, but it is a good thing to know. These customers place their orders through the Walmart website, and Walmart has Doordash drivers make the deliveries for them; of course there is no need for Walmart to tell the customer that the deliver driver works for a company called Doordash.

Doordash Walmart orders and delivering to the elderly

Another situation that a Dasher may encounter out there is delivering to elderly people and being asked to deliver the food into their home. What shall a Dasher do in this situation? Honestly, that is a call that every Dasher will have to make themselves, and that decision has become harder these days due to Covid 19. These crazy times have changed the decision that I would make, or at least have altered it.

Before the Corona Disease attacked our world, there was a few times when I have taken the food into the customer's home and placed their groceries in their kitchen. On one occasion it was this friendly couple in their 80s. They were both disabled as the man was in a wheelchair, and the lady could barely walk. I had no problem helping these elderly people, but was it the right decision? I like to think so.

During this pandemic, I would not take food into anyone's house. I don't care who they are or what they say. I mean, I would feel really bad not doing it for elderly people, but I am not risking mine or my families life for them. Honestly, nobody, especially the elderly should be inviting a stranger into their house anyways,

Even before the pandemic I would advise dashers, especially ladies not do deliver in someone's house. Why? Well, there are some sick individuals in this world, and it is not very difficult for a person to pretend like they are disabled or handicapped to get you to help them and bring their items into their home. They can set up a Dasher and rob them, kidnap them, sexually assault them or commit other unwanted and illegal acts. Of course nobody ever thinks anything like that will ever happen to them and chances are it never will, but a Dasher should always take precautions and put their safety ahead of everything else.

The reasons I no longer accept any Doordash - Walmart deliveries

I will honestly say that doing the Walmart deliveries for Doordash was never really anything special. The Walmart calls began to be seen just like the regular restaurant calls. It was just another call. Then something started happening with these Walmart calls, and it was not for the better. No, not at all! These Walmart grocery delivery calls that were coming in from Doordash began to be a stain on my cell phone screen that I never wanted to see anymore.

Many of my Walmart pick-ups were ending up as uncompleted. Why? Because Walmart started having a very difficult time keeping up with their orders. It was not just one Walmart, but all six Walmarts in my region. Yes, I work in a very large region. There were numerous times when I would accept a Walmart call, arrive at the location, but then unassign the order because I had already waited 20 or 30 minutes. These long waits started making these Walmart calls very unappealing. Even if the call paid a decent $12 or so it simply was not worth my time.

If I have to wait a half hour for the customer's order then from start to finish everything would take me an hour or so to complete the order. I would rather do two or three other orders during that hour and earn much more. Sitting there and waiting for the Walmart customer's order is simply a waste of time, and no Dasher should ever wait longer than 10 minutes in my opinion.




I remember one time when I arrived at Walmart for a pick-up I asked one of the workers there if it would be a long time to bring out my order. Without any hesitation she told me that they were backed up by hours. I said thank you and unassigned the order. That was the very last time I ever accepted a Walmart order. When I am out dashing, I will never again waste my time with a Walmart order.

I'm not sure what is going on with the Doordash and Walmart delivery agreement, but they're going to have to figure out a better system that works because whatever they are doing is not working. Dashers waiting forever for orders is not acceptable. Most experienced dashers will eventually do as I have and ban themselves from any Walmart calls. This does not mean that there won't be drivers to pick up Walmart orders because there are always newbies ready for them.

Also, the Walmart customers are many times not happy. I have encountered many customers that have told me that they were waiting for their Walmart groceries for much too long. On one occasion I remember delivering to a lady at 6 p.m. After some small talk she ended up telling me that she had been waiting for her groceries since noon time. That's right. Her expected delivery time was noon time, and here I came walking up six hours later.

This is not very good business. Is it Walmart's fault? Is it Doordash's fault? I don't know, but it all makes sense as to why most Walmart delivery customers don't leave tips after the delivery is made. I probably wouldn't either after waiting for so long, and it wouldn't be nothing against the driver, it would be against Walmart. Remember though, in the customer's mind the driver represents Walmart. The driver is not a Dasher, he or she is just one of those darn Walmart employees that screwed you over and made you wait all day to receive your groceries.

The worst story that I ever heard from a customer was an elderly lady that had been waiting for her groceries for over a day. This is truly ridiculous! She had ordered on a Friday morning and expected her order that day. She told me that even as the late evening came about she still expected her order to arrive. She also explained how Walmart customer service was of no help to her and just kept telling her that her order will be delivered as soon as possible. That time never came, but the very next day, which was Saturday, I drove up her driveway to deliver her groceries to her. Little did I know that her order was over 24 hours late, and I would have never known had she not been so friendly and talkative.

My advice to any Dasher out there is to leave the Walmart orders alone. They are usually not going to be worth it for the dasher and will only waste a dasher's time. Until a better system is set up by Doordash and Walmart, I will never ever take another Walmart call again. Happy Dashing!