Walmart Grocery Delivery Unlimited Review

I will be reviewing the Walmart Grocery Delivery Unlimited service. The review will focus on my experience with the service and not the app or website used to place the grocery order.

Walmart Grocery Delivery Unlimited service allows for unlimited grocery delivers as long as you meet the $35 minimum order. The cost for the service is $98 annually or $12.95 a month.

One other cost to take into consideration is the cost of the tip. Even though tipping is not required it is expected. By default they will have a tip amount automatically selected when you checkout. You can change this amount if you desire or set it to $0.

Is Walmart Grocery Delivery Unlimited worth it? Well, my vague answer to that depends on your needs and how fastidious you are about your groceries. It is a convenient service but it does have its shortcomings. I will highlight some of the pros and cons, and It will be up to you to decide if the conveniences outweighs the shortcomings.

*Note: This review does not reflect my bad experiences with the service during March and April of 2020 when COVID restrictions first began effecting the USA. Walmart, like many companies failed to prepare for the demand. During that period service was atrocious. Grocery orders placed were cancelled many times and it was also very difficult to secure a delivery time slot.

I have been using the service for almost one year now. These are my experiences:

Scheduling:

Pro:

• You can almost always get next day delivery on groceries.

Cons:

• Same day delivery can be hard to come by. If you order early in the morning you may be able to snag a late afternoon or early evening delivery.
• It is very rare to be able to get same day delivery on a weekend

Reliability

Pro:

• For the most part they hit their one hour delivery window. I receive grocery deliveries once to twice a week, so I have experienced many deliveries. In the year I have used the service, I have had three deliveries that were over two hours late and one or two others that missed the delivery window by a half hour.

Delivery Notifications:

Pros:

• You will receive a text/email the driver is on the way.
• Once the driver is on the way, you will also receive a link you can click on to see live updates on driver’s location.
• Once the driver arrives you will receive another text/email letting you know they arrived.

Cons:

• They do not have anything in place to notify customer of late deliveries.
• You will not get any proactive notifications your delivery will be late. As I mentioned above I have had about a half dozen deliveries that were late and I have never received any notifications regarding the status of the delivery. It is up to you to reach out to them.

Customer Service

Con:

This is by far the area that needs the most improvement. As a customer you get the feeling that they do not have any respect for you or your time. I understand mistakes and errors can occur. But a mark of a good company is how they deal with the mistakes. In my experiences they don’t.

I will share two of my experiences:

If a delivery is late, you, the customer must reach out to them but don’t expect to receive help. One example is 30 minutes after my delivery window was missed, I decided to reach out to Walmart on the status of my delivery. I contacted customer service via chat to check on the status of my order. The customer service rep I chatted with mentioned about not being able to get an answer and would call and then he disconnect form the chat. I was not given an opportunity to respond as the customer service agent closed the chat.

I never heard back from anyone. I wasn’t sure what was happening to my order. Was it not coming? Was my order canceled? Did I need to stay at home and wait for the order? Any communication would have been nice but I received complete silence from Walmart. Finally to my surprise, after another hour or so my groceries arrived.

My second example again reflects Walmart’s lack of respect for the customer and their time. In error, I received someone else’s groceries. I realized the error as the driver was unloading the groceries, so he was able to return the wrong order to the store. The driver was friendly and apologized and said he would be back with my groceries.

Unfortunately, that is where Walmart dropped the ball. Not only did the driver not return but Walmart did not follow up to let me know the update of my order. Instead of reaching out to me to let me know they had an issue with my order, they left me sitting around waiting for my groceries. Then after all that waiting I get a generic email a hour and half later letting me know they cancelled my order. They did not offer any resolution. My only option was to place a brand new order for the next day.

Substituions

Pros:

• Walmart does a good job handling substitutions. Just because you were able to add a item to your basket and checkout does not guarantee the item will be in stock when they fill your order for delivery. When you checkout, for each item, you can select whether you want to allow substitutions in case that item is out of stock.
• For the most part the substitutions are very similar to the original item you chose or in some cases you may end up with a larger package size for the same price as the original item. However, there does not seem to be consistency on what item is chosen to replace your original item. It seems the decision for which item is substituted is at the discretion of the person filling the order, as I have experienced some odd substitutions.
• Not all substitutions will make sense or may be for product you don’t like or can’t eat. However, you do have full control over your substitutions. Walmart will send you an email before your grocery order goes out to delivery letting you know what was substituted. At that point you can have them remove the substitution from your order. Also, should you ever receive a substitutions you don’t want, you can request a refund for the item.

Delivery

During the pandemic, I have not been using inside delivery but having the drivers leave the groceries outside the door. Since, Walmart uses a third party service to deliver your groceries you experiences can vary.

Pro:

• I have had positive experiences with the drivers and they have been friendly.

Cons:

• Because the drivers do not work at Walmart they will not be in uniform.
• Sometimes they don’t leave the groceries in the best place. Instead of putting the groceries next to the door, I have had a couple of drivers block my front door by leaving the groceries right against my screen door. When they do that I can’t open my front door.
• I have had my eggs damaged a couple of times but Walmart was quick to offer a refund.

Inventory

Pro:

• Large Selection of items.

Cons:

• Yes, Walmart has a large selection of items, however, one draw back of Walmart grocery delivery is out-of-stock items. I imagine inventory will vary from store to store but at least at my store there is quite an issue with out-of-stock items. I have rarely been able to add all the items I need to my shopping cart. It is common to have several items be out-of-stock.
• Also, On every delivery day, items that were previously in-stock may be suddenly out-of-stock. This is important to keep in mind if you are planning a meal based on a key ingredients you are expecting in your delivery. I usually have about three or four items that Walmart needed to remove from my order because they are out-of-stock and substitutions were not available.

Summary

Should you consider Walmart Grocery Delivery Unlimited service? It will come down to convenience and price versus the shortcomings. For me, between the kids remote learning and my busy schedule, grocery delivery is a convenience I like and want. Unfortunately, there is not a lot of competition in my area.

In my scenario the convenience of Walmart’s grocery service outweighs their shortcoming. I like that the service is fairly reliable and for the most part the drivers are friendly. Two areas where Walmart really needs to improve is inventory and customer service. They really need to find a way to reduce out-of-stock issues. It is very disappointing when trying to order an item to find it is out-of-stock and even more disappointing when you receive your groceries to see a long list of substitutions as well as seeing some items that you expected on your order are now not available. At times this has caused me to make a quick trip to the store for the essential items that Walmart failed to have in stock.

Last year I tried a different grocery service. I liked the company. They had great service, delivery, and inventory. However, it had one big failing that caused me to change to Walmart’s grocery service. The other service charged you a higher price for grocery items than if you had purchased them in the store. Some of the price differences were significant. It was becoming too expensive and I felt I was being gouged.

So for now, I will continue to use Walmart for the convenience and savings. Also, since I am not completely satisfied with Walmart, I will be keeping my eyes open for alternatives.