Can You Drop This Off on Your Way Home? Walmart Tests Delivery by Store Employees

originally posted by: seasonal
a reply to: CriticalStinker

If it wasn't cheaper would Walmart be doing this?

You're forgetting that a lot of Wally-Worlds business comes from people impulse shopping. No foot traffic less sales. They may become a victim of their own success.

a reply to: Caver78

True, I wonder if the powers that be in the leadership positions are thinking about that?

originally posted by: seasonal
a reply to: CriticalStinker

If it wasn't cheaper would Walmart be doing this?

Because it's faster and they can charge more for same day.

originally posted by: seasonal
a reply to: Tardacus

It is cheaper and faster to use employees.

yes, and americans love cheap and fast.

originally posted by: seasonal
a reply to: Caver78

True, I wonder if the powers that be in the leadership positions are thinking about that?

I think this move would answer yes. It's a way they can compete with Amazon and other online retailers.

originally posted by: seasonal
Another opportunity for employees to make a little more money.The employees can opt to deliver up to 10 packages on their way home. This is to close the gap with the likes of Amazon. What could go wrong?

Walmart has a new idea for beating the high cost of shipping e-commerce packages – paying store employees to deliver them on their way home.

The program aims at using one of Walmart's biggest assets – more than a million U.S. store employees – to help close its big e-commerce sales gap with Amazon. Walmart has more than 4,700 stores, putting potential delivery nodes within 10 miles of 90% of the U.S. population.

In a test that launched a month ago in two stores in New Jersey and one in Northwest Arkansas, employees can opt in to deliver packages on their way home for extra pay. They use an app that offers opportunities to deliver up to 10 packages per commute.

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This is great. Used to dislike Wal-Mart and fed into the jokes about it but a few years ago I grew to genuinely like them.

Their organic store brand boxed and canned food is excellent and priced pretty fair. Great Value brand. Their Organic and NonOrganic milk, butter and cheese tastes delicious. They have super cheap decent tasting potato chips in various flavors. Other shoppers are usually friendly. Shoppers can interact with cashiers who are usually pretty friendly or choose to use the self check out with minimal contact with another person. And WalMart has stores open 24 hours offering cheap food & personal needs at anytime, WITH bathrooms and well lit parking lots that truckers, campers and others in vehicles can snooze in on their travels with no one harassing them. Oh, and they carry a lot of made in U.S.A. products.

Yeah, now I'll root for Wal-Mart. I think this is a good idea they're trying. I hope they kick butt and crush the stuck up out of Amazon. They too have stories about how crappy they treat their employees. Heard plenty where they can't afford housing. Who knows if they've had to sleep in their car at a Wal-Mart parking lot from time to time themselves?

A lot of money is made by the supermarket giants from regular weekly grocery orders. Many people are too busy with their jobs to spend a couple hours roaming around huge supermarkets trying to find things you need, and that's after the stress of traffic getting there and then finding a space to park, change for the parking fee, then hauling a week's worth of groceries back to the car, drive home, unload, unpack, etc. Much simpler and stress-free to click your order through and have it delivered for a fiver.

Here in the UK, Asda/Walmart employ their own delivery drivers that deliver to local online shoppers. I don't know how they're paid but I assume it's minimum pay.

I would imagine they'll soon bring this idea (having store employees do the delivering) to UK stores. More profits could be made if they fired some of their delivery drivers and got the store employees to drop-off customer orders on their way home. They'd charge customers a fiver each order/delivery but will pay the employee maybe 2 quid per order delivered. Great stuff for Asda/Walmart, they'll save cash by leasing fewer delivery trucks and buy less fuel/insurance/etc and pay/hire fewer drivers, plus make a few quid on the delivery charge too.

Not good for the delivery drivers that'll lose their jobs, but feeding big companies' ever-increasing demands for more/bigger profits have gotta come from somewhere.

a reply to: WhiteWingedMonolith

Everything they do is for money. They have no morals. That certainly does not mean Amazon or Walmart is evil. However, they would gladly pay their employees in crackers if they could.

In the end, its the people who support these giants that ultimately control the machine.

A lot of the Wal-Mart employees in our area look like they just got out of prison. I wouldn't want a single one of them knowing where I live.