Spark Driver
Reviews and Complaints

If you are low income or on a fixed income do not work for spark

The money is not consistent

Everyday - you can count on the app crashing and malfunctioning. It does not matter if you charged your phone to 100 and made sure you checked for any and all updates.

You cannot change the ringtone or the volume of offers received and you will receive offers the moment you put your phone down... Never put your phone down or look away

Offers sent are normally expired and they count it against you. So you were sent an offer that already expired and your metrics drop meaning you get less offers and they eventually deactivate your account.

Customers will take it out on you if anything is wrong with their order, and there will be numerous problems. You have to play customer service but the customers dont seem to understand, I am just the delivery driver.

I receive what the store gives me and I bring it to you. Sometimes they give me smashed eggs, they give you busted glass jars and for some reason the milk is always leaking? And guess what - I cant do anything about it except deliver it to you and I lost my tip because of it?

Doordash, instacart, even amazon is better than this. Goodluck to you if you do sign up but the rumors are true

It is good at first but as soon as its good it gets bad and goes to furiously worse

Save yourself and dont deliver for spark

When Spark is working properly--things are decent. But when there is a glitch, you have NO option to resolve the issue in a timely manner. There is no Spark Support--when you call the 800 # it is Walmart support you have reached. All they do is send a claim tix into Spark. You cannot talk with anyone at Spark. All you can do is contact Walmart, they tell you they will escalate it--but all you can do is wait until Spark figures it out and fixes it. You feel helpless. You are given no information on when a fix might be available. Tech will not contact you to help or walk you through anything. You may or may not receive an email from them...All. you can do is log out/in to see if you app is working again. Until it is fixed you cannot receive or accept offers to work. I am now on Day 2 of no work because my app is frozen stating I am in progress of a trip. No one can seem to clear it out--it shows completed to Walmart staff at the store and it shows completed to Walmart support when you call. So, they say they cannot help, you must wait for Spark Tech to figure out a fix. You will get no time frame--this could be hours, day, weeks...no one knows. I do not know what other glitches happen but when you cannot work or cannot earn it is quite upsetting, alarming but...this does not warrant a top priority to the Spark tech people. Yet, if they were not being paid/earning $, they would be all over this for a fix asap to get their money. I have called the minute it happened and continue to call...or send screen shots via their "Report Issues" on the app and have gotten no response what so ever.

I’ve been clamoring for a long time for Spark and Walmart to be more transparent on customer rating. The reason they aren’t is because they’re fearful that a driver will retaliate against a customer for giving them a bad rating.

What many customers don’t realize is that they’re not rating the store. They’re rating only the driver and their experience with the delivery itself, not the products in question. Walmart allows them to rate the “experience”. In many instances, the customer will blame the driver when they’re really meaning to rate the store down.

Walmart needs to educate their customers that we are not picking every order. We are only picking when it is a shop and delivery. Customers should only be able to the delivery. Walmart needs to have better transparency for both the driver and the customer.

Why won’t this happen? It won’t happen because Walmart will always blame the driver. They aren’t blaming themselves because it looks bad on them. It’s an easy cop out to just blame the driver because we’re the most visible part of Walmart delivery. We are the face of Walmart to the customer. Even if it isn’t our fault, Walmart will blame the driver.

The system has been and will continue to be unfair for drivers. I’ve been doing research and due diligence on other gig apps because Spark is just trending too far south and it’s a lot faster pace than at which other gig apps collapsed.

They don’t care. They will let this go as far south as it can. You aren’t the first to post this recently, and that’s the concern that Walmart is just not facing the problems that ail their delivery service. It’s why Spark is crashing and burning.

This customers are taking out there experiences with spark on us the sub contractors giving low ratings. If it's curb side pick up it's not on us when the store gets order ready and brings it out. But due to stores constantly being behind on orders, customer are giving low ratings to the drivers. Customers need to realize this or Spark shouldn't allow customers to rate us unless we do the actual shopping. There system is extremely flawed.

Let’s start here. I have worked as a delivery person for the last 6 years in different cities and states. I work via several apps as well. I stumbled upon Walmart’s “Spark” back in late November/December . At first, this app was incredible! So many offers to choose from it was hard to keep up. These offers were diverse too, shopping, curbside and in-store pick ups, with reasonable pay included. I quickly put Spark as a priority app pulling in anywhere from $600-$900 a week before any incentives or bonuses. I referred anyone who asked about it because I felt confident in the company.
Flash forward a few months ahead to the end of April to present (June 2022). I turn on the Spark app early morning and leave it on until end of business. I stay inside my desired and assigned zone. My phone is silent. If I do receive an offer it is often a batch of curbside orders- 10 or 12 orders, generally going 30+ miles for significantly less pay. On the rare occasion of a single order it is usually $7 going at least 5 miles or further. In addition if I agree to do a curbside offer the down time waiting is unbelievable often exceeding 45 minutes if not an hour. The usual explanation is short staffing or not pulling the order until I arrive at the pickup location. This downtime used to be about 10 minutes. Spark still offers incentive programs, complete 5 trips for $15 extra etc, which is impossible if no offers are received. Or at times you’ll get 4 of 5 trips completed before it goes silent.
Customer service recommends logging out and back in to the app and if unsuccessful uninstalling and reinstalling the application to fix glitches as offers are not assigned to specific drivers but housed in a round robin forum. Both of these approaches are unsuccessful. A drivers metrics drop if they let offers, when received, expire or reject them. This remains true even if the same offer is repeated IE it is additional demerit. Finally the main form of communication with support is via email. Complain about no offers enough they will completely stop responding.
This gig that was once paying $900 now barely pays $100. Think twice before fully relying on it. They will flood you with offers when you first begin then once you have experience ghost you.

The app for the last week has been causing me to lose money. Twice I’ve accepted a order but then realized it wasn’t worth my time and I canceled the trip well twice now some how the order didn’t get canceled or removed from my account but it showed it was on my app and the a hour or so goes by and I get a random notification that my order is it at risk of being late if I don’t start soon but I don’t have any order to my knowledge so I sign out and sign back in and what do you know the order is still on my account and that’s why for a hour or more I received no new orders which means I lost out on $50 to $60 dollars because there app won’t work properly. My app is up to date and I have the newest update for my cell phone as well and I have the best cell service to offer I’m my area. So it’s on them and do they do anything to compensate you no they don’t. Also another issue is the app holds and want you to meet such high expectations for us as drivers but then the stores you pick up from can be lack luster. Twice today the same Walmart store had me waiting over a hour for one order of 15.64 which got assigned to two people so that’s mother app issue I experienced me and mother driver got assigned the same order and we were there before her but she got to get it and then another instance we had to wait over a hour for a order and missed out on $30 to $40 for that hour and spark does nothing to the stores and does nothing for you to compensate your losses a store can mess up all it wants but you mess up once with spark and your at risk of being fired if your going to have such high expectations for us you need to hold the stores more accountable for there mess ups. You also need to compensate your workers better. We make a $1 while you all make me $10 but can’t do better for us. Also you all act like you do something for us with incentives but lately I’ve been seeing less and when they do pop up they are total unattainable. Like 15 trips for $30 extra but it’s for one store location only and you got 2 days to do that but you might get 2 order from that one store in two days so it’s not like we are benefiting at all. We do a lot for this company and make it flourish but yet we aren’t treated fairly by the company. Something need to change

I was really hopeful with this app despite the other bad reviews, but now I get what they are talking about. This app is glitchy and clunky. The first 2 1/2 weeks of a new zone going active were great. The bonus incentives were amazing! Then once the honeymoon period was over a huge drop in income earning potential. I went a whole day with no job offers. I logged out of the app, turned my phone off and on. Nothing made a difference. When the same thing happened one other time, except that time I finally got an order for 2:45pm pick up, I asked the Walmart Pick Up employees if there had been other deliveries and they told me yes. They said it seems to be the same person coming all day. Yet, I can’t get one offer, even with a customer rating of 5.0 It’s beyond frustrating and disconcerting, especially when you are counting on at least a certain level of income. I know that is how delivery apps work, but this one seems a bit worse. I never get any other offers besides “Round Robin” where I have to pick up in 15 minutes. And those are always offered 20-22 after the hour. It’s insane how for a while I could predict I would get the offer at the exact minute every time. Well, since a delivery usually takes you past that, at times if you have two, then you miss out on the next hour’s delivery. You can go 1 1/2 hours with no delivery offers. Every few hours. If I get 3 in a day it’s amazing! Also, when I accept an offer it says it’s been accepted by another driver, but then it always ends up on my Home Screen, but I have to click the house icon to see it. One time, I really thought it was accepted by another driver and I didn’t know I had received the offer! Also, you need to know that the offer will show you one amount and then, when you view it after accepting it’s substantially lower. They figure tip in the offer and then only show base pay in the actual delivery. And the metrics don’t work in the app at all. Other than customer rating, none of the percentages show. So, I also can’t get more offers because that is dysfunctional. No one at customer support can give anything other than general help answers on app function, but they are great at helping you when a delivery pick up is in process and there are issues with picking up at the store.

I loved driving for Walmart before this update. I have orders cancelling g on me after I get to the store and put in my lane number and the job disappears like it never was there and didn’t even get my $2.50 for showing up and waiting several times. Also it seems like the app now goes out of its way to make us go to stores that are the furthest away from the driver to waste more time and spend more on gas, gas being so cheap these days. The app can track us for the customer but acts like it doesn’t know where we are sends us to stores that are furthest away from the customer when a store could be right around their house and I’ve had several customers complain that the app is ignoring their default store and shopping at stores that are so far away that they don’t want and consequently orders are taking longer which affects our tips. One lady said she manually put the store in by her house 3 times for the last 3 orders and the app ignores her and goes where it wants too far away for her and she was gonna stop using us. Now I wait an hr or more sometimes in between orders waiting for work when before I used to get orders one after the other so I’m just sitting in store parking lots waiting only to be sent to another store 30 min or more away in traffic to deliver orders around the corner from the store I was originally sitting at. The app update to me has cost me so much money I have to work twice the time and am making half the money that I used to and the orders just make no sense. I’ve called several times to customer service about all these issues and all I’ve gotten is lip service and the run around about we’ll look into it and call us back if it continues. This has to be the worst IT department I’ve ever dealt w because they can’t fix anything so far or even have answers for us and I’ve spoken w many drivers in the last week that all day the same thing that it’s just not worth it anymore and they’re looking for other employment. I don’t understand how you guys had such a good thing going and nothing was broke, not really anyway and y’all decided to fix it which was nothing and all the drivers income has suffered. Further trips for so much less money and double the working time to make half and spend a ton more in gas. Doesn’t sound like a recipe for success.

First you can make a lot on this app but there are several improvements that NEED to be rectified. The first being time frame offers, which is the time you are supposed to arrive at the store and the time the algorithm sends you the order is NOT feasible by any stretch. For instance, the order pick up time is 445pm the system sends it to you at 438 as an offer so if you do not accept the order it goes against your acceptance rating and your on time arrival. Plus they will send you an order that will take a minimum of 10 to 15 may even 20 minutes. Now the metrics: BE MINDFUL OF YOUR METRICS ESPECIALLY YOUR ON TIME ARRIVAL. The system DOES NOT calculate your on time arrival correctly. The app literature states that on time arrival is measured from the time you arrive at the store (start the trip), but the algorithm measures it from the time you start delivery. PLUS IF YOU ACCEPT AN ASAP the system/algorithm only gives 15 minutes to arrive at the store and what is NOT STATED IN THE LITERATURE is that ASAP orders also have a suggested arrival/pick up time and if you arrive outside the 15 minute window of that time it counts against your ON TIME ARRIVAL. ALSO when you accept ASAP orders the system/algorithm does not state a designated/suggested pick up time IT ONLY SAYS ASAP until you arrive at the store then the time revealed. Very shady practices n metrics calculations no transparency on any of the metrics especially customer ratings and on time arrival. On time arrival is also calculated incorrectly, so if you get to the store on time and have to wait 20 minutes before you are able to start delivery the system measures your on time arrival from the time you start delivery. For instance, you arrive at 1245pm but are not able to start delivery until 105pm, 105pm is what shows up as your pick up time in your completed order section. PLUS, the 15 minute early window DOES NOT WORK AT ALL! So if your on time arrival starts plummeting that is why. I have been calling and emailing them for months but nothing has been resolved. And keep in mind if ANY OF METRICS drops to the red zone and stays there you are deactivated from the platform because of the THEIR algorithm incorrectly calculating the metrics. You can make a lot money but I would not recommend this gig app to anyone until more transparency is given on the metrics calculations and explanation on how the metrics is calculated.

So I was reading the review about having 29 deliveries for a $500 bonus needing 30. This was a huge issue k kept running into! I would be right there needing one more delivery and it would never come so basically I gave up on trying to reach the bonuses or my specific store took over 1 hour to load my car which made it impossible to reach the goals of the bonuses. Also, not to mention I am upset about having gotten deactivated with no real reason as to why!? I had all good metrics, I always made sure the customers groceries was accounted for (two times the store just throws stuff in the car and items rolled far under the seat & of course I returned them to the store). Two times the store put cracked eggs in my car and support just tells you to throw them out and Inform the customer. We’re not suppose to get out the car to watch them load according to the app but then happens? (Don’t make since). There has been 3 times I had random customers call me saying the app told them I delivered there groceries but they was not even any customer I had so not sure if that goes against me. Two times I pulled up to my actual customers houses and they was upset because again the app reflected the groceries was delivered and I had to show them my phone that I was not the one who marked that. Two times the app could not pick up I was actually at my customers home (in which I verified with the customer prior to leaving them). Three times orders dropped at like 9:30 and I picked them up but when arriving to the store they was either cancelled or the store didn’t answer the phone or bring the groceries out to me. A lot of situations where the app would say I have offers but nothing was there within literally seconds. Several times the app would freeze up so I had to cancel my order while at the store and reaccept it hoping it was still available. I’m sure there’s more issues but after relaying this to spark driver support they give you no reason why your deactivated due to privacy concerns……. They want you to appeal but you have no idea what or why your appealing for. I really enjoyed doing this in between classes at school and would be open all day and super late just to get deactivated and given no reason why! It’s like whomever deactivated you assumes you have bad intentions or something. I would not assume this as a full time job because at anytime you can get deactivated with no reasoning. I’ve read situations where it could be as little as a customer complaint or an employee complaint? I’ve never had conflict with either so I’m not sure what my reason could be.

App is very user friendly and simple to navigate. Everything is self explanatory. Access to make decent money if you want to. You can set your own schedule and work when you want to as well as be off when you need to be. Everything is in your control. You can be successful as long as you get your deliveries to the customer within the set delivery window. Not hard to do. Pretty simple and lots of opportunities to make money. Paid weekly on Tuesday’s. Come join and be a part of the Spark Walmart family.

Only thing I dislike about the delivery job is the long wait times at the store waiting for the order to be dispensed. Sometimes it varies from 10min to 30min and sometimes it’s 30min to 1hr before you receive your order.
Another downfall is sometimes you will be sent a delivery at per say 25 after that is ready to be picked up at 45 after so it’s a 20min window before you have to arrive at the store. What I do is since there’s always a long wait for your order I will immediately head to the location as soon as I receive the delivery offer and if the app doesn’t allow me to check in through the app I will call them and check in. So doing it that way and arriving 20 min before scheduled time allows you to head to the store, call and check in and usually by the time your able to start the trip your order is already being brought out and loaded into your car so your able to start your delivery immediately after starting the trip.

Another downfall is, you will receive some deliveries only paying out $6.50 and have 73 items to deliver and it’s going 10miles without tipping you anything. I think that is very disrespectful for anyone to ask of someone without tipping. It really is shameful when you get to the drop off location and seeing the type of neighborhood and nice home your delivering to, and no tip really disgust me. I’m sorry I don’t understand how some ppl can ask someone to do something for them and not be considerate enough to leave a reasonable tip for the driver that went out of their way to get out, & go pick up your things & bring them to your doorstep cause for whatever reason you couldn’t do it yourself. Remember some ppl use this as their primary income and depend on your delivery and tips are always a plus to show your appreciation. Better if you can tip in cash when they arrive so Uncle Sam doesn’t take a percentage but understandable if that’s not an option tipping is also available through the app and again is always appreciated as well.

Hope this helps others along the way as well as hope customers are able to see it as well to know how appreciated tipping is when doing this type of work.

Thanks & God Bless Everyone
Have a good one going forward. M

I have been delivering for Spark about 1 1/2 months now. I enjoy the freedom of the ability to make my own schedule. I appreciate being able to pick the zone I feel comfortable working. The money is okay, however it could be much better.

The communication and understanding of how the Sparks works with things that affect pay and metrics which affects the jobs we receive.

I have several questions and suggestions to make our pick up and deliveries more efficient and less frustrating. However, I don’t feel I have a contact that can answer them properly or in detail.

One suggestion would be to have an accurate diagram on our phones of the Walmart’s we do the shopping at. Not all Walmart’s are created equal or organized the same. This causes a delay to locate a product, which can cause a time delay for the customer and affect our metrics/pay.

Also a breakdown on our pay for having to sit for over a half an hour, store and Spark errors would be nice. I have been told that I get compensated by the Spark Support if I haven’t been loaded up with products in 20 minutes also 1/2 hour.

I was sent 3 express orders in one day. I got to the Walmart within minutes for 2 of the orders just to be informed that the orders wouldn’t be ready for a long time. The third order I arrived in 10 minutes was loaded up immediately and drive straight to the address. When I arrived my phone said the order was cancelled because it was a food order and there were refrigerated items in this order that could have gone bad.

I arrived at a Sam’s for my for delivery of the day at 7am and the worker from Sam’s told me sorry, but that order will not be ready for at least an hour. He recommended that I go Spark somewhere else for a couple of hours because they were so far behind.

Same day a Walmart worker informed me after waiting one hour that he recommended I go Spark somewhere else because they were slammed busy.

I had a delivery in a mall food court. It was 30 packages of sugar. They had a shopping cart for me to bring their items in. I had to go to their restaurant and get it. Then make two trips to bring them the sugar. This was quite a ways to walk in the delivery. First of all I wasn’t made aware of this and secondly there should be additional pay for this. I wasn’t sure what my responsibility was, but I took care of it anyway.

With that being said, I really do like the job overall. However, I feel the frustrations could be limited with a better/timely questions and answers system.

No one can give me an answer if I get paid or how much I am compensated.

Once again there are many little things that come up that are frustrating because there isn’t a go to to get solid answers to my questions.

I started with Spark a month ago and started getting offers frequently throughout the day. Made great money the 1st 2 weeks. 3rd week started very slow did not make hardly any money. 4th week did good but not great. Orders were sparse and far between. I start at 7-7:30 am and work until 8pm. Have gotten an announcement twice now that hours are extending to be able to offer more work but it then announced that will be delayed. This week (Monday) I received 3 orders today that I had to call customer service to end up having the offer cancelled because Walmart is running late by 2 hours due to orders still being “picked” prepared. This was after I waited an hour for 1st 40 mins for 2nd and 30 Minutes for 3rd. I was compensated $2.50 for waiting. I was also promised it would not affect my rating. We will see. Walmart employees began saying orders have been delayed due to still be “picked” which means the order isn’t ready! My problem with this is that if the status says READY then the order needs to be ready. This is greatly affecting drivers ability to be available to accept offers that are ready. Also there needs to be better communication between app (Spark) and Walmart! The many nice customer service specialists said they (Walmart) are not supposed to mark as READY until the order is complete and ready for pickup. Apparently this is some sort of violation the store can get in trouble for. However the 2 stores in my zone both have this problem the last few days. One worse than the other. Each store complains they don’t have enough help. I usually see at least 5 employees not including the ones shopping the orders. Bottom line Walmart appears to be over there head with orders they can actually fulfill ! Also I referred many friends for the referral incentive but the 3 that applied got as far as onboarding through DDI but have never received further communication. I applied through indeed and as I stated did exceptionally well the 1st couple weeks only to see a massive decline from what appears to be too many new drivers competing along with DoorDash, Uber, & Grubhub all being offered these deliveries in my area. If expansion is the concept then Walmart needs to hire more employees to handle the massive amount of orders they are taking (Delivery & customer pick-up) and since Spark is exclusive to Walmart then the other delivery services really shouldn’t be offered any of these deliveries. Last there really needs to be better communication between app and Walmart. Offers shouldn’t be sent out unless the order is TRULY ready. Overall fair experience, going to keep working it and see how it plays out for a while longer. Oh and on bonus days good luck getting any offers don’t know what the heck is going on with that.

It’s crazy that just early last year I thought Spark was the best gig app I worked for. Not anymore. So many things have gone completely wrong with this app. 1. Based being lowered. What I see these gig apps don’t understand is a job like shopping for someone where you’re constantly walking and lifting groceries for a person takes a lot out of you. How can you not pay someone a fair amount for this type of work. What’s worse is inflation is so high right now yet they’re lowering pay; like make it make sense. 2. A MAJOR ISSUE I’ve been seeing a lot of drivers and customers mention. The app either not having an option to tip on occasions or the TIP they know they added being removed. How does this happen. STOP MESSING WITH THE TIPPING SYSTEM & PEOPLE WANTING TO TIP. 3. They over-hired because of the Christmas holiday. I never understand apps doing this when they know that that many orders isn’t the norm. Here’s an idea for all the grocery gig apps, why not hire temporary drivers during the major Christmas holiday like UPS does. That way when things are back to normal, you have the regular drivers still left with some decent orders for the day. 4. The app always has a problem. The worst is when there’s a new update. An update is supposed to fix the previous issues, not make it worse. 5. Some of the metrics we as drivers have is ridiculous; why am I being penalized for rejecting an order that’s further away when if I take that order, my on time arrival rating will be affected; like make this make sense. No app should have an acceptance rating. I always find it completely pointless to have it working a contract job where I make the decision on whether or not I want to do the order. Another thing, why am I being rated by a customer for mistakes loaders make. Customers should not be allowed to rate when we didn’t shop the order because whenever I do shop the order myself, my ratings are higher. Which brings me to 6. Why not provide us with more shopping orders. It’s easier, more convenient and most of the time gets done faster than waiting for loaders. 7. Whoever is making some of these decisions for the new app updates should be fired. I loved seeing surges on the map. Why remove that. There should be a distance to the store update like idk 5 miles from each store where I can receive orders. I shouldn’t need to be in the store’s parking lot to receive an offer or be receiving offers that are at stores 10 miles away. There’s so much that can be done to improve these gig apps yet the companies refuse to do them. We’re the ones doing all the work so why aren’t we treated better and paid what we’re worth. I was gonna give the app 1 star but because it’s fairly easy to use, especially when shopping, I bumped it to 2 stars.

Their Rules and policies are shaping our youth’s opinions about these companies at younger age , so many bugs, or professional liars, your Delivery Showing Rate (How many deliveries it will allow you too see on your screen) on the offer screen is affected by your metrics while affecting your metrics, also the stores mark the deliveries “Ready” way before they are, and it goes against your metrics, they also take your tips, Most of my customers are very nice if they meet me but most of the time they never see me unless I’m on camera, and I almost never get the tip when it is warranted, here’s something, they have orders that can be delivered , but for some reason they can REPOPULATE back in the system thru the algorithm and have a driver wait hours and only get compensated $2 for time or equivalent gas spent waiting, also from the get, they had a nice feature where you could see your offers, your DELIVERIES accepted, and your DELIVERIES completed, now only offers and deliveries completed, cause when they used to change the pay or anything, you could go back under deliveries accepted and screenshot the original offers, now all are changes to EST pays, also they need to have a early bird program or system that can tell you how many deliveries are on standby while you are delivering another one with their location, pay , this app is not safe , because you only have seconds to accept a delivery , that doesn’t care if your driving , refueling or using the restroom, which also hurts your metrics, also the region I work is expanded over 30 mins away , and they want me to drive over 30 mins to pick up a $8-$15 extra trip that will push me further away from my area, that’s around 1hr and 10 mins driving no pay, will shut you off if you only accept certain trips like the close ones, almost like if the algorithm sees you make too much money, it won’t give you orders or give you far ones that they know you won’t accept and and then affect your metrics, When you call and talk to Customer Service they all act like caring ppl but tell you nonsense and say there’s nothing we can do, outsourcing customer service positions to different countries, they don’t work with their own partners Walmart Employees who are seriously under appreciated and overworked, I have taken screenshots, photos, videos, these workers really don’t care about Walmart Spark Drivers, For the Last 4 days I have been approached to load my own vehicle several times in a row on my cameras and Walmarts cameras, They watch and let ppl steal so we will shutdown, talkin bout they are covered , seems like eventuality all companies implode on each other cause there’s no TRANSPARENCY, there’s training ppl to ACT concerning, but not follow thru with reasonable solutions to actual problems , while inferring that the problem is being solved. I know I get requested because I’m actually thorough and nice to the elderly and handicapped and children, going extra mile for them while trying to promote a positive image for Spark Drivers, Just recently heard some ppl hate us and I would have never guessed.

Well, as a Daily Spark Driver since September I never took a day off or holidays off, I work at all times when I have the time I wanted to say thank for Walmart and thank ddi for the opportunity that’s help bring food to those who in need, but as a system is not sustainable and not understandable since Iam a driver works for spark in NJ store number is 5447, since I started in September I got deactivated 2 times without knowing or addressing the reason for the deactivation, and I have completed over 500 trip in these 2 month, also I did help Walmart associates sometime when they have orders that’s other drivers took and return, I got asked to deliver it again as a favor and I did it, every time I reach out to support about my deactivated I got that’s there is not reason for the deactivation and the first deactivation I got I was calling everywhere to address where the problem so we can work something together I always follow the rules and the guidelines, trying always to be the best as much as I can, after several time wait I got the reactivating in the first deactivation and still till today don’t know the reason why ?, the second deactivation on 11/24 I woke up at 9AM took the first trip at 9:45 AM and I keep taking offer till 6:45 PM that day, completed all my trip and went home after finished my work at 11 PM on that day I recently open my app to check if I got the holiday bonus and I found a massage says ( your account has been deactivated please contact driver support to reactivate it ) I did call driver support the next day on 11/25 and got response says that’s they don’t know why! And told me that’s they will open a claim for me so I can follow up with what happens, also keep in mind that I have to wait 7 days to receive an email from them, all this time waiting losing money and losing time for deactivation I got that am pretty sure I did nothing for... I work carefully and responsibly trying to be the best as much as I can ... ( addressed that there an issue that sometimes Walmart associates forget to shop for one item or too and when we deliver the customer the grocery and he check their items they call the driver back telling him that he took the item and report him that’s he is fraud the item and the spark deactivate the driver access for something that’s is not his fault ..) the next day they reschedule the same delivery only for the item that’s has been missed by the associates and the driver got deactivated which means he got fired for something he didn’t do, also the app says it’s no contact delivery which means place the bags carefully and take a photo of it in the app and notice the customer, also the customers are complaining about leaving the bags unattended and they report a bad service about the driver... so please try to workout something about this developers and team leaders, because the only one who gets hurt even by following the rules and by following the guidelines that you put is the driver for a fault that he didn’t make ... thank you for the opportunity and thank you for your hard work .

As a driver I would love to be able to provide more specific feedback, rather than thumbs up or down for an entire trip. It would take a few more moments to complete, but could result in major improvements.

Examples of thumbs or down categories:
Wait time at the store.
Associate that loaded your vehicle-how did they do? They get to rate us but we don’t get to rate them, not exactly fair.
Customer in the right delivery area (I’ve had several recently where I truly think it would be more efficient for them to be in the other stores area).
Interaction with customer-I haven’t had any bad experiences with customers, but it could happen.

Or get rid of thumbs up or down for the associate that loads your vehicle, and let us load our own vehicles! Right now due to COVID, I we’re supposed to stay in the drivers seat, we can’t see what the associate is doing. I get a lot of batched orders since I’m in a mini-van. I am responsible for making sure the correct customer gets the correct order. I am the one that doesn’t get a tip if something is missing because it fell into the other customers tote because the associate filled it too high. I am the one that doesn’t get a tip if the bread is smashed because the associate put it next to stacked 12 packs of soda pop, and they didn’t stay stacked in transit. Or if the eggs are cracked because the associate put them on the bottom instead of the top. The one that gets me, that the customer never sees-the bag with raw chicken on top of other items-including produce! I’m not sure the customers understand exactly how little control the drivers have over their orders! Those are all also valid reasons I could get a thumbs down for a delivery, even though it was nothing I did, or was in control of-and that can affect how many trips I get offered, but as long as associates load our vehicles, and get to rate us, but we don’t get to rate them-this will continue to be a problem.

I love that most trips I have an hour or two notice, occasionally I get a “drop and go” request, but I can plan.

I would also love to see for availability a checklist of times to check rather than scrolling to set custom availability, and even the option to check for example 9:45am-single only. Right now it’s confusing, for example if I need to be home by 10am, do I set it for 7am-10am, or 7am-9am, because I can’t do a 9:45am pick up. A checklist of hours would be easier.

The stores also need to enforce the rules. I watched the videos before I started, I’m a rule follower. I see other drivers with people in the vehicle with them-including their kids. I see drivers smoking in their vehicles while the order is being loaded and while they are driving off with a customers groceries.

I also don’t understand why I don’t get more daytime trips, I usually have 2-3 in a row first thing in the morning, and 2-3 at the end of the day, I’d love to work more. I’ve also noticed a decrease in trips when I’ve taken a day or two off. And if I’m not available, that’s when I’ll get daytime trip requests.

Overall, I really enjoy doing this, it’s flexible, and can make decent money.

I gave two stars, which is generous. Spark will not give you an option to cash out, even after your first week, which some drivers argue is because they don’t want their pay reduced because of the “Instant cash out” mentality of *other gig drivers, and that is ridiculous! If you have to wait all week for pay with these fuel prices and are still able to afford to drive hundreds of miles a day (in my state) - that’s pretty classist of you. The problem: Spark isn’t transparent about this fact. You will get a Branch Wallet and it’s more annoying than helpful! You can’t use the Branch Card very easily on purchases - like online payments - so you have to cash out (once a week!) with a fee. There is no other option, even if you read somewhere on the internet that you can cash out daily - YOU CANNOT. I felt misled. Spark wants you to be on time but you’re lucky to be loaded on time at Walmart. If you call them and check the status of a very late order, the associates with threaten to remove your order (which interferes with your metrics!) Walmart associates really make or break you with these orders. If they are having a bad day - so are you. Spark isn’t transparent about this either. Sure you can make decent money, but you will definitely not get paid when you need the gas money! If you live in a state where delivery areas are spread out and many rural communities, you will definitely need to have another “gig” to put fuel in your tank or you wait for LATE Tuesday afternoon “CT” even if you’re east coast, which is counterintuitive. Spark wants your car to be clean and the associates have a lot of power to undermine you if they don’t like you simply by saying your car is dirty (this didn’t happen to me but I did hear a women complain about her offers disappearing after words with one of the Walmart associates) So it’s pretty gamey from the start. If you want orders and you have good metrics, but don’t have any offers - chances are your local Walmart is to blame! This is again not something you are told when you sign up. Sure, they send lots of false positive emails and texts to get you to engage in long holiday weekend missions , “bonuses” and increased pay for rising GAS costs, and all that is is sales copy! You won’t get enough orders to qualify. You will see your pay once a week. You must stay on the good side of all Walmart associates (or you will be black balled) you must keep your metrics high , and at the end of 48 hours, you’ll find out exactly which trips you accepted that were nothing more than TIP BAITING. Oh and sign a NDA so they can continue to be a gross company. I am sure many love Spark, and get paid well. But there is no equal opportunity, it’s a classist system. It is for people that already have the $ to afford the gas to begin with. Spark has zero support, as well. If you are on an order and need help - good luck to you because the support is all but scripted and generic! They don’t actually know how to assist you and your specific needs. Spark is Walmart. So, if you know how they operate, and can use it for extra money, good for you. Don’t expect it to be a dependable source of income. It’s fleeting!

-“First come first serve” creat huge stress on the driver and make you feel pressured and in serious competition, you have no chance to accept the order because there are hundreds of other driver looking at their screen ready to click “accept”, many times you do not even have time to blink before the order comes and disappears in fraction of a second! Disgusting practice by walmart.

-Many times, almost 4 times or more, the payment for an order disappear from “completed” section after completion.

You refresh app, close it, restart phone, log out; nothing works. Until you call support to see what went wrong; and they find the order is still open and shows incomplete! Even though you completed it absolutely positively. The ugly sneaky part, if you do not catch it and you do not check the “completed” section after every delivery, you might be missing out on alot of your money that you made. Again more than 4 separate times.

-do not get excited when you see a good tips bu a customer before you accept the order. And that is because Walmart allow the customer to change the tips up to 24 hours after the delivery! And Yes many many customers do remove the tips completely after the delivery. And some customers might be doing “tips bait” and walmart allows them to do it. So after working a full day, do not be surprised when your tips next day are $30 less than what it should be. Very very frustrating and make you lose trust and confidence doing this.

Earning section is very confusing. Some tips get cleared same day. Some tips from other orders do not clear until 24 hours. The information on the earnings section is unorganized and confusing; confirmed vs unconfirmed tips and earnings vs cancelation compensation…etc everything is mixed up and all over the place.

-Driver rating system by customer is not fair at all. And that is why you, driver, get bad rating for ANY mistake done related to the order even though it is not your fault, items substitution disliked by customer, late delivery due to delays by walmart at the pickup and before even the pickup, damaged items, wrong items, missing items…etc so your rating will keep going down and down and down even if you do your absolute best and work fast and professional and follow the customer notes!

-No tracking or statements for hours and miles like all other apps do. There is no way to track how many hours you worked in a specific day or week and same for miles driven.

So California adjustment gets added randomly and you have no clue how many miles and hours done and no details whatsoever.

-Customer service is probably somewhere in India, the call l keeps disconnecting, voice cuts or very unclear or low, and honestly you cannot even understand what they are telling you sometimes weather it is the automated system or actual person because you get people in India who do not speak good English with extreme harsh accent that no one can understand. Nothing racist here. We are just asking for Customer service in clear English.

-finally, the pay is getting lower and lower. It is now at this point most orders are around $7-10. When the Galon of gas in California is close $7, that is insult.

So driving for spark is amazing. I can make over 300$ a day if I decide to work most of the day. Every single bad rating that I have read on this app has to do with user error and nothing wrong with the app. For example, if you started with Spark in the beginning then you remember the availability setting and all that which they removed and now you just “spark now”. This sold a lot of “issues” of people not getting orders and stuff because everyone got the same order at the same time kinda like instacart and someone was always watching so it made people feel like they weren’t getting orders when in reality they just weren’t quick enough, another added “problem” is people saying that they get the “notifications” for orders but they never show up, this isn’t the apps fault or your phones, it’s you service provider. I can bet money that every that’s had this issue has capped out their high speed data because they have services like cricket t mobile or other services that throttle your data after a specific amount of usage. Some advice on this is stop being cheap and expecting great service, I personally Use Verizon on the 80$ play more plan and have not had this issue since switching from US Cellular which is terrible for contract work such as this. I do disagree with the tipping system though because there are terrible people that “tip bait” and when people work hard and expect a great tip and provide great service that should not be allowed to be taken away by greedy customers. Tipping isn’t required, so stop “Tip Baiting” because all it does is steal money from hard working people. The incentives are amazing and I wish they were more consistent with them. Also everyone complaining about not getting orders for a few weeks recently that have been driving with Spark just need to use there brain a little more and stop complaining. There was just a referral bonus, which means thousands of people came in to try it out and it took a few weeks for them to mess up there ratings. For anyone that doesn’t know, Spark sends orders out based on your ratings, the number one factor is your acceptance rating and it’s unsaid in the app but if your rating is below 70% then you are put at the back of the list for round robin orders which are the ones that pop up and say “You have 1 new Offer, you have “2 minutes to accept” and these are the only ones that effect your ratings. Your ratings update after everyday, that being said, I know for a fact that no one that’s been doing this for a long time has 100% acceptance rate and when all these new people came in it killed our options because they were all prioritized. I encourage everyone I know and see to drive for Spark, the freedom of working when you can and need to and the amount of money you can make and invest while doing this is far above any normal job you’ll find. One more thing, the “multiple batches orders” that everyone’s complaint about are not what people think. If you get a “gm” order for 8-14 orders and they are all single items and you are taking them to the other side of town by another Walmart or another city, it’s simply because those items were placed on an order from those other stores and those other stores did not have the items so Walmart gives customers the “option” to have them “shipped”. They do not know you are a spark driver and they do not get notified about the Gm orders so you will NEVER get tips from these and that’s why the pay is always 30-50$ for these batches.

At 6:38 central time on Friday February 23rd I spoke with a representative from the spark driver help center. He has documented our interaction, which he has explained this morning the spark application experienced a glitch causing the deactivation of hundreds of drivers accounts, mine included. But yet I’m still deactivated. No one seems to know what they are talking about. No one helps me with this issue. I spent hours trying to figure out the issue but yet it’s still not resolved. I was told to do an appeal, which I did yet nothing happened.

I verified my facial recognition and have never had problems in the past. Tonight I verified and my account was immediately deactivated. Why is this happening to me? I’m already going through so much. A loss of my best friend of 10 years and being in a car accident that totaled my car. Please, I’m literally begging you to help me. I don’t want to lose my place of living. My insurance and everything is up to date

I had to have shoulder surgery and went to log into my Spark driver app to work found out I was deactivated. I filed appeals and contacted driver support. They still have not given me a reason or a response. It’s been five months. I had surgery in August 2023 and was deactivated right afterwards. Apparently you can not have a medical issue working for Spark is all I can figure out. This is discrimination!

Horrible, unprofessional, and discriminatory. Spark deactivated my account after what I assume was a failed ID verification but who knows because they refused to tell me even what the reason was after four months of deactivation. I have called ,emailed , submitted appeals, and done exactly what they wanted, including waiting, patiently and not a single person has reached out. They deactivated me right before Christmas, which is severely inconvenienced my family. One agent I spoke with, told me that my appeal likely got lost and I should just submit another one since it had been over a month. Really?! This is a low even for Walmart. What’s even more bother some you have seem to have trouble identifying me which I think is a bit discriminatory.

I was Deactivated back in September 2023 they gave me No reason , Ive been with them since inception Then Uber deactivated me but they gave me the reason it was a county background check from checkr a non moving violation listed as criminal though a lowest level violation which was taken off , so now I have a clear background no points everything good but they will not reactivate me even though Uber has

There are Spark drivers who are out here they have not been through the Spark background check. They are using somebody else’s app. There non-document workers and different ethnicity. These could be people who are criminals or have been charged with sexual assault that are going to peoples homes. They are using robot apps to block people who have been approved to be Spark drivers. I have reported this to the company. The workers at Wal-mart and Sams are not asking these people for ID to check and see if this is the correct Spark Driver and the ones who do give ID give fake ID.

Per Spark policy, during identity verification, a driver has three attempts to submit a driver’s license and/or real-time photo verification. My account was deactivated during identity verification, but I was never asked to submit an image of my drivers license or take a selfie. I am the driver listed on the account and my drivers license matches the information listed on the account. Please allow me to complete the identity verification process as designed, and verify my identity with an image of my drivers license and selfie. Thank you so much for taking the time to review this issue, your help is invaluable.

The procedures of some of them they are following are not in favor of the drivers. Some of them are not treating the drivers in consideration the time and effort they are doing. Drivers are exposed to weather conditions. They are not considering if the drivers have a place to park and keep them on the line for 20 mts specific date 12/10/23

I had to call them several times due to inefficiency of the app

I received a text notification that my Walmart package was delivered on 12/2/2023 at 1:01 pm with a picture of it in my mailbox. Upon my arrival at my mailbox approximately 10 minutes later, I found the package missing. There was also another package missing that was delivered earlier by UPS. I have filed a police report for the theft. The Walmart order was placed on Dec. 1, 2023. Order number is 2000114-[protected] and was for a 4 pack of Apple Airtags at a cost of $79.99 plus tax.

My aunt/ uncle who lives in port charlotte had a spark driver that was very rude and obnoxious and threw the order in the porch and when spoken to about that she told them to “ do it themselves then” they asked her for her name to report her and she said her name was Joyce Lewis and that Walmart wasn’t going to do anything.

I was given a job $40 for 1.5 hours of driving time.

I did nothing but deliver the items. It took 2.5 hours to deliver. They scammed me. They refuse to compensate me for my time. Customer service is a nightmare!

You just get transferred around and no one knows what they are doing. Not even management. One rep said my manager wanted to speak to me because I asked who oversees them...fcc?bbb?

She immediately said my manager wants to talk to you. That wasn't even true. I was blind transferred again.

Since calling ive talked to 3 managers and 9 reps. No one knows what they are doing. Horrible company which I will no longer be working for. I'm going to every social media platform to expose the scam so others aren't hurt in this.

I'm a single mother that was diagnosed with cancer a year ago... im trying to make extra money for bills. They took advantage of me.

On November 20, 2023, I logged into my Spark Driver App to take deliveries, but was given a notice that my Spark account was deactivated, but there was no reason given. The app tells you to call into support to get the reason for deactivation, but the representative couldn't find a reason. She then put me on hold to get her manager, and the manager informed me that she also couldn't find a reason. I was told to appeal anyway, and if I didn't hear anything back to contact tier 2 support. Well, I did that and tier 2 support was no help as he advised me that they don't know the reason and the department that handles appeals has not way to be contacted internally. This has to be the most unprofessional and frustrating experience.

11/11/2023 at 5:57pm

Order purchased from Sam's club

Tallahassee, Florida

All of my cold items were missing- eggs blueberries, bacon , salad mix French green beans.

A Time before my order was misdelivered. I am not happy that Walmart and Sam's uses your services.

I guess I will be ordering from COSTCO and Publix's

I want a refund of my tip.

Not happy at all.

My account has been deactivated since 10/03/2023 for no reason at all. Spark can’t even provide me a reason on why my account was deactivated. I put in multiple appeals and phone calls to spark about my account but still no resolution or explanation on my account being deactivated. I received a notification from Spark that my account will remain suspended today. I starting to think I’m being discriminated against especially when you can’t provide me with explanation on firing me. This was my only means of making money and paying my bills. I did nothing wrong.