Jessica Vera said the retailer’s customers rely on Walmart’s mobile delivery app to make a living by shipping items they buy online and having them delivered to their homes.
But when order requests from the Spark app mysteriously decreased significantly and wait times for deliveries started getting longer and longer, she could no longer rely on Walmart as her main source of income.
“We are increasingly wasting time doing nothing, sitting outside in the sun, driving or trying to find money,” the Broward County resident said. “It’s so bad that it’s crazy that we have to use other platforms to make ends meet.”
According to Justice for App Workers, Vera’s experience is not an isolated incident. They claim she and hundreds of other delivery drivers in Florida are victims of a “predatory fraud group” that hacked Walmart’s app to direct deliveries to a group of “rogue” drivers. are doing.
“Fraud leaders are refusing to redistribute digital Walmart orders to fellow delivery drivers unless they pay with cash or, in some cases, with a cell phone or marijuana.” Justice for Justice spokeswoman Nikki Morris said in a statement.
The group represents a coalition of more than 130,000 rideshare drivers and delivery workers across the country.
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“These corrupt and fraudulent drivers are unfairly hoarding delivery orders, cutting off other legitimate delivery drivers’ access to store orders and preventing them from completing their jobs,” Morris said.
Morris said Walmart delivery drivers in Hollywood, Miami, Fort Lauderdale, Jackson and Orlando have filed complaints with Walmart and law enforcement to no avail.
“We’ve asked for help, we’ve asked Walmart to make changes to protect their platform, and they haven’t done anything. They don’t have anything. I ignored it.”
In a response to WLRN, a Walmart spokesperson blamed “bots” for taking some drivers’ orders. They said the retailer was trying to reduce leverage and put in place strict processes to investigate complaints.
“We have a robust bot prevention system that detects and stops services that manipulate apps in any way, and this has allowed us to significantly reduce the use of bots on our Spark Driver platform.” said in a written statement to WLRN. “We encourage Spark Driver platform drivers to report suspicious activity to his Spark Driver platform driver support.”
“Creating a safe and secure driver experience is our top priority. We have zero tolerance for harassment or threats of violence, and when we receive reports of this type of behavior, we investigate and suspend drivers. We will take appropriate measures including: .
Bots, software applications that perform automated tasks over the Internet, are typically intended to mimic human activity and are not tools unique to the Walmart app. Apps like Instacart and Amazon Flex have recently dealt with similar issues.
Bots violate the terms of service for most apps, including Spark.
Another way some drivers are circumventing app policies is through a scheme where a person applies to be an app driver and, if approved, leases their account credentials to someone else. Accounts can be leased for a few hundred dollars.
Walmart said it is working on new verification procedures for the app and is rolling them out in some regions.