Employees at delivery apps at Walmart stores across South Florida say they are using fake accounts and bots to get the best orders while claiming certain parking lots as their turf. He is embroiled in a bitter feud with other drivers.
A small group of gig workers rallied outside a Walmart on Broward Boulevard in downtown Fort Lauderdale on Tuesday morning, demanding the company take action against “scammers.”
The workers, many of them immigrants, depend on the app known as Spark to make a living and support their families. They described having their income cut in half, being harassed and threatened by other workers, and spending hours in hot parking lots waiting for orders.
“When you wake up, you have to go and see what you have to deal with,” said Marcos Fisboin, 71, one of the protesters. “All these scams and fake accounts…and Walmart doesn’t do anything about it.”
Walmart said in a statement Tuesday that it has taken specific steps to prevent and investigate bots in its South Florida stores, but that the problem is constantly evolving.
“We want everyone to have a great experience with the Spark Driver platform,” the statement said. “The use of bots is an industry-wide issue that we take seriously. Using bots on the Spark Driver platform is a violation of our Terms of Service and we will investigate reports of the use of specific driver bots. , we deactivate drivers who are abusing our platform in this way. We take a proactive and comprehensive approach to identifying and preventing the use of bots on our platform. ”
This situation is not unique to Sparks or South Florida. Employees at other delivery apps, including Amazon Flex and Instacart, have also complained of a loss in income as their co-workers use a variety of creative methods to get the best orders. Instacart employees, for example, told The Seattle Times that they were starting to lose out to bots that retrieved the best “batches.”
Spark workers had previously protested in Chicago, where workers voiced similar concerns. In Florida, workers in Orlando and Jacksonville are witnessing the same phenomenon, according to App Workers, who represents Spark, Uber and Lyft delivery drivers and helped organize protests in South Florida and Chicago. According to Lenny Sanchez, National Spokesperson for Justice in .
Sanchez said “workers are seeing a significant drop in income” in South Florida and across the nation. “They have amazing stuff. It takes the same amount of time and they’re making the same things they did before.”
Justice for App Workers represents just over 100,000 workers, about 500 to 1,000 of whom drive for Spark. Sanchez added that many workers are afraid to come forward because of their immigration status.
In South Florida, Spark employees have ordered Walmart to prevent people from creating accounts with fake IDs, stop bots from requesting orders, and prevent other employees from threatening or harassing them. We are asking them to take safety measures. He said he raised the issue with upper management several times, but no action was taken.
A statement from Walmart said the company investigated certain stores in South Florida.
“We have contacted stores in these regions and followed our normal process to investigate specific reports of bot use,” the statement said. “We encourage drivers using the Spark Driver platform to report suspicious activity, including the use of bots. Bot services are constantly evolving, so we recommend using a consistent approach to combat this activity. It requires a continuous approach.”
The automated gig economy has become a cat-and-mouse game, with contract workers lacking job security and benefits seeking new sources of income while companies try to police them.
Sanchez said he sat outside his Chicago store for hours, watching delivery workers juggle more than 20 phones. Employees often create multiple fake accounts to receive more orders. Other times, he said, he would pay someone to stand near the store within a “geofence,” retrieve orders on a cell phone, and then hand them out.
Online, Spark employees spoke of drivers standing outside the store with phones attached to selfie sticks to see their location as close as possible. Some news outlets reported that Amazon drivers were seen hanging their phones from trees.
Walmart has taken several steps to crack down on various fraudulent activities in the Spark app. A company spokesperson pointed to a recent post on the company’s website announcing steps to verify users’ identities using selfies and facial recognition. Spark recently rolled out this feature in some markets, including Chicago and parts of Florida, Sanchez said. Already, workers in these areas are noticing significant increases in their incomes.
But in South Florida, workers aren’t seeing that change. Jessica Vera, one of the protesters on Tuesday, said her income has dropped from more than $1,000 a week to about $500 to $600 in recent months.
“We demand fairness!” she shouted on Tuesday. “We are tired of injustice!”
Since 2022, she has sent complaints and follow-up emails about fake IDs, GPS spoofing, and bots to Walmart executives and agencies including the Federal Trade Commission, Office of Inspector General, and Florida Attorney General’s Office. He says it hasn’t been sent yet. I received a resolution on one of them.
Some of her complaints ask the company to investigate specific stores in Hollywood, North Miami Beach and Miami Gardens, as well as employees who she says are using fake accounts.
“We have received reports that bots, modulators, and apps are being used to manipulate the app in order to help drivers earn more perks and shopping perks,” Walmart employees wrote in one email. answered and stated. “We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause. We understand the importance of this and are happy to assist you.”
Some workers who started down the traditional path found themselves losing money, and the possibility of earning more money was replaced by necessity. A rift developed between the two groups of workers, often turning hostile.
“At some point, we were all friends,” said Vera, a Pembroke Pines resident who learned of the situation a year ago. She even helped one of her employees bring her family from Venezuela to South Florida before she realized that one of her employees was using an alleged bot. she said.
Bella and a fellow employee described waiting for one order outside the store’s parking lot while watching others pick up multiple orders at once.
“You just sit there outside watching them go in and out, in and out, in and out,” she said. “And then when you actually get the order, 10 miles makes her $7. No, I don’t mean that, that’s rude, that’s rude.”
Sanchez said selling bots has become a full-fledged industry in its own right.
“Scammers approach employees in parking lots and entice them to sign up by telling them they are making thousands of dollars every week,” he said. In exchange for the bot, he pays an initial fee of $150, after which he is asked to pay $50 per week. Seller prohibits people who do not purchase the bot from accepting orders at certain stores.
Sanchez said some people make a living simply by paying workers to access their bots.
Right now, he believes nearly half of Spark app workers are using bots, fake accounts, or both. He says the system is so entrenched that App Justice for Workers has expelled one local leader and an entire group of workers for doing so. .
Protesters in South Florida on Tuesday began claiming certain Walmart stores as their own, with some workers threatening to stay away if they don’t pay the bots. announced.
One of the employees, Alexis Ron, shared that she received a message saying, “Hey, you son of a bitch!” That’s how it started. “It’s a shame that I can no longer work in this Pompano Zone, especially Walmart 2946. Please start looking for another zone that is not Pompano or you will lose this account.”
“It’s a growing mafia,” Ron said in Spanish. “They took over the store.”
On the online Spark subreddit, users are debating whether the bots are real or just excuses made up by bitter workers about the quality of their orders. Some say that drivers who snag more orders are just working harder, and that those promoting bots are actually promoting apps that steal people’s information.
Charles Grau, chief innovation officer at Nova Southeastern University’s Levan Center, said it’s certainly possible that what people are downloading thinking it’s a bot is actually a phishing scam.
Sanchez and the workers said they believed the bot was real after observing and talking to workers using it. However, they declined the offer themselves, so they have no first-hand experience.
Experts say the technology is reliable for bots, whether workers are using bots to grab orders or using location spoofing to make apps think they’re closer than they really are. It is said that it exists in
Grau said the program essentially communicates with a “host system” and queries it to see if a delivery is possible.
But he said there are some things Walmart can do to improve security, such as preventing multiple queries from the same IP address and passing CAPTCHAs (challenge-response tests) that bots fail. He said this includes asking people to do things.
At Amazon Flex, we’ve also encountered employees who use bots to schedule “blocks” or time slots to deliver orders. An Amazon spokesperson said the company introduced photo verification in 2019 and introduced CAPTCHA earlier this year to try to stop it.
Grau added that app companies need to slow their time to market so they can proactively address these security issues. Ultimately, he thinks it would be a blow to Walmart if its employees decide they’re fed up with it.
“If you have drivers signing up for the service because they don’t believe in the app and what it can do, you’re not going to have a viable employee base,” Grau said.
Bruce Schneier, a lecturer in cybersecurity and public policy at Harvard Kennedy School of Business, said he thinks the protesters’ sentiments are misplaced. He said they should be angry at Walmart for not paying them enough and giving them benefits, not their fellow gig workers who are “using various hacks to regain their autonomy.”
“If the only way to survive is to cheat, then those who don’t want to cheat don’t have to fight the cheaters, they have beef with the corporate powers that make cheating the only option. ” he said. survive. “
Even with safeguards in place, this pattern is likely to continue. Already in Chicago, Sanchez has seen workers using newer, better bots join the fray, while workers who used older bots argue they’re no longer making money. He said he was there.
“The reality is that no matter what the app is, there’s always going to be someone who will find some glitch or weakness and exploit it,” he says. “This is truly a new wave of hustle.”