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Comment by snarf21 | Hacker News Reader

I don't understand why Walmart doesn't have a customer supplied delivery program. Using the app, you would sign in when you enter the store. It would inform you of any deliveries within X miles of your home. It tells you how much you would be paid in store credit to do those deliveries. So you start shopping with say $33.50 already in your pocket. Then you just drop off a couple of bags at a few houses on your way home. Seems more efficient and cheaper than outsourcing to DoorDash or others.

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They floated the idea a few years ago. Doesn't look like it panned out.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-retail-walmart-delivery/e...

Some customers might not like other customers knowing where they live? Obviously you can obscure some details but if you remove names would it require the customer to scan the package to confirm its theirs? I guess you could make it opt in for community delivery, otherwise you wait for a doordash delivery?

i mean "other customers" == 1099 contractor. The doordash guy is a shopper/customer also I'm sure. Doordash/uber/lyft/gig anything is just a random person with a smartphone and hopefully a background check.

If anyone is delivering something to your home, they know where you live.

How is that any different than a doordash driver knowing where the customer lives? I really fail to see any meaningful distinction here.

Well for starters, one is an "employee" (contractor) who signed up to do that work specifically and has been verified that they can do it. The second example is just a customer walking around a store.

That is a good point. I guess walmart customers could go through an approval/training process if they want to earn some extra cash as wal-dash contractors too.

> Seems more efficient and cheaper

Option A: You drive to Walmart, pick up your shopping and three other people's, you drive home via three other homes.

Option B: A driver starts at Walmart, picks up four people's shopping including yours, delivers it all, and returns to Walmart.

Seems to me the number of person-hours and distance driven is identical in both cases?

I think the difference would be that you were probably going to come to the store anyway for whatever reason.

So option B is really, "A driver starts at Walmart, picks up three people's shopping, delivers it all, returns to Walmart. You also drive to Walmart, pick up your shopping, and drive home."

Option A can likely be structured as a store incentive whose total dollar cost to Walmart is below that of an hourly worker.

Option B would likely be an employee requiring additional taxes to be paid and benefits to be supplied.

This is not a comprehensive argument.

I think Walmart wants to (or they should) have a little more control to ensure that the driver doesn't steal my order. An employee gets a background check...

Because you cannot rely on non-employees to do the job correctly.

It's already non-employees (there's little to no entry barrier for DoorDash, Postmates, etc). They just don't want to have to deal with delivery logistics, easier and cheaper to outsource it to the existing companies.

> there's little to no entry barrier for DoorDash, Postmates, etc

There's still the entry barrier of having a background check, verifying insurance, etc., so it'd likely be more effort than it's worth for neighborhood Joe to sign up for it unless he wanted this as a full-fledged side hustle. If people want to do a "community delivery"-style thing, they can just sign-up for DoorDash/Postmates/IC/etc.

huhuhu, what happens when I tell Walmart I've completed the deliveries, but I haven't?

what happens when I make the delivery, but someone gets injured in the process? DoorDash has insurance for this most likely.

How much would you bet against DoorDash's "insurance" being the small print on page 78 of the T&Cs when you sign up to be Dasher including something along the lines of "You, as and independent contractor partner, certify that you carry all appropriate insurance and accept responsibility for any claims arising from your delivery operations."???

ahahahahahah probably yes. doordash has some cool lawyers that can defend that. but mom's delivery company gets the full force of the law

I know Instacart has some kind of injury/disability insurance for their runners, but if you get in a wreck you're pretty much on your own since most insurance will deny claims for "Rideshare drivers".

Shipt supposedly covers it–their contractor agreement states that you need to have the state required auto insurance and they have a policy that takes effect while working that will increase your coverage to commercial-level insurance. I have also asked their insurance department about this directly and this has been confirmed.

I interned at Walmart Technology in 2014. All of the interns had to participate in an innovation challenge, and one of the teams had this very idea. I can only assume that Walmart explored the idea and passed on it.

That does sound like a decent idea if it could be incentivized strongly enough. It also sounds like a fun problem to work on, on the coding side of things.

That’s basically what DoorDash is, minus the liability

Delivery to home is a loss accruing business.

It’s so much better to either piggyback on the mail or just have customers do curbside.

If I were a burglar and wanted to do some casing, this would be a legit way to do it.

The idea of random Walmart people coming to my house is terrifying.

Unlike those random DoorDash people, who are totally picked from a different crop than the Walmart people?

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