Viral Video Shows Walmart Spark Shoppers With Perishable Items Waiting in the Arizona Sun

A viral video posted by a YouTuber reveals two people who look to be Walmart Spark shoppers waiting in a parking lot as their carts containing milk and other groceries are left in the sun, reports Business Insider.

Walmart Spark is the collect and deliver service provided by Walmart via the Spark app to transport orders to customers’ doorsteps. However, this video, which was posted on Jan. 6 by “Uber Lyft Phoenix” on YouTube and currently has 227,000 views, shows the supposed Spark shoppers resting up against a wall at a Walmart in sunny Arizona, while two carts filled with household daily essentials, some of which are perishable, sit in the sun.

Walmart has a window of either 75 or 90 minutes, based on the type of order, within which perishable items should be delivered.

The narrator of the video, who is a driver called Aaron, said in the video, “Both of these guys have carts full of groceries with no ride.” He added, “These customers’ orders are sitting here in the parking lot,” and then he zooms in on the carts to show a gallon of milk. At the time, according to AccuWeather, the temperature was about 57 degrees Fahrenheit. Around 12 minutes later, a car parks next to them, and the two contractors start loading the things from the carts into the trunk.

Business Insider said that Aaron chose not to have his full name revealed out of fear that his account would be deactivated by Spark. But the publication spoke with him about his experience and verified his status as a Spark contractor.

He said one member of the group showed him his Spark app, and “self-checkout Walmart employees confirmed to me they’re doing Spark.”

Another two Spark drivers told Business Insider that they’d seen similar cases of contractors in parking lots with groceries waiting for transport to arrive to finish their delivery jobs.

A Walmart spokesperson said, “Ensuring customers get their order delivered on time and at the quality they expect is a top priority. Perishable items must be delivered within a certain time period, which begins when the first perishable item is shopped.” They added, “In instances when an order is not delivered within the designated time period, drivers are asked to return the order to the store, and we give customers the option for redelivery or a refund.”

Aaron said that a few days after he posted this video, the workers who were captured in it were gone and had been replaced with others who followed the same pattern.

He said that in-store shopping orders paid more than curbside pickup orders, and even though he once had a reliable blend of both, it had been about two weeks since his last shop order.

He also said he wasn’t only annoyed about seeing people grab the best shopping orders without a car to deliver them in but also with the way they were treating customers’ perishable products.