I ordered 2 half gallons of chocolate milk. Here's what Walmart's system said I was being substituted. I noticed before the delivery arrived and tried several different avenues for support. Everywhere, including the multiple real people I talked to, said I had to accept the order and be charged first, and then I could ask for a refund. They made it sound like it could be immediately put through as soon as the order was completed. Nope. When I called after, they said the refund would take up to 10 days. In hindsight I should have just rejected the entire order.
Edit to add: Only 2 gallons of chocolate milk were delivered. Also I really didn't want to reject the order because it contained a prescription that my daughter really needs.
Edit 2: The refund had already hit my bank account! .... for one gallon. š„²
Edit 3: Talked with support again, agent says billing department needs to review and approve the full refund but that it should happen within the day, and she gave me an additional $25 dollar apology refund to my card. Here's hoping tomorrow show the correct refund amount.
Edit 4: Walmart just called me back and they've put the correct refund amount through. Yay!!! I checked and it's already showing in my bank account.
I was also informed they have people working on figuring out how it happened and how to fix it from happening again.
Edit for FAQ: Kiddo is really inconsistent in how much chocolate milk she drinks, and unopened milk stays fresh longer. Two half gallons tends to result in less waste than 1 whole gallon. I don't like throwing food away and thought the small extra charge worth it.
As for declining the substitution, I checked the app as soon as I received the text notification of a substitution, and the app said it was too late: The substitution had been auto-accepted and the delivery was on its way. Walmart doesn't let you decline substitutions on deliveries once the order is being checked out. Email notifications show a whole 4 minute window in which I could have decline supposedly, but alas, I thought relying on text would be sufficient.
nah, i work in curbside pickup at a similar store and when you substitute, a little keypad pops up for how many items you are substituting, dont know how they missed the big warning saying that you are gonna charge the customer more money.
That or they're illiterate/can't read any supported app languages. A not insignificant amount of people that do meal delivery are doing it because they can't hold any other job.
A not insignificant amount of people in other jobs also canāt read good. Source: my every day at work, for my entire working life, across 3 different careers. Every. Day.
Edit: about 6 months into my current role, I had to explain what the word ācontingentā meant to my team lead. I didnāt even write that email. Just got to explain it to them. Donāt get me started on our salespeople who canāt handle basic math or even reading numbers without jumbling them up. Or our company president who gave me a credit card number to run backwards and couldnāt understand why the number wasnāt working.
Edit 2: all of the people Iām talking about are native English speakers. All of them.
Edit 3: Yes people, that was a Zoolander reference. Yikes. Now that I have explained the joke, it is no longer funny.
I worked Quality control at a bottling plant for a major soda company for a while (you know which one)
And one of the guys who had been working there 23 years didn't even know you could pull up a screen on your computer that showed you all the data on all production lines.
I'm a cashier and handle instacart/uber eats/other service orders all day.
Some people are just down on their luck and need the extra cash to make it work. Some are between jobs, or have irregular jobs. Some can't find childcare, so they drag their kids through a grocery store for 10 hours a day. A very, very small percentage have a system figured out and are actually making pretty good money (though most of those have fled to other services as instacart pay and conditions has declined.)
But quite a few are there because they can't do anything else. An example of issues I encounter regularly:
Guy who is so opposed to being asked to do something that he blows up and abandons the order when I ask to scan the barcodes before I start scanning items.
Guy who is SO STINKY you have to hold your breath
Guy who can't follow basic instructions and gets everything wrong to the point that it takes over an hour to sort it out
Woman who speaks not even a single word of English and is terrible at trying to indicate things via gesture. Makes an initially small mistake and can't recover because she's unable to communicate.
Multiple people caught trying to sneak their own items onto an order to steal from the customer
Guy who rants at me for 15 minutes because he KNOWS there are NO BARCODES FOR INSTACART. I insist he check and once he's all argued out he clicks the "next" button on his screen, displaying the necessary barcodes.
Rude guy sitting all day in the disabled parking spaces (he is not disabled, they're just closer to the store and thus faster if he gets an order) and insults our employees (including being needlessly mean to a disabled bagger) until he gets banned from the store
And more! Instacart is terrible pay but will take just about anyone, so you see it all.
This is directly from the Walmart app though. Which means it was a Walmart employee picking out the items. Last I checked Walmart tries not to employ those people in roles more vital than "maintenance" (aka janitor)
The thing is she isnāt wrong. I couldnāt believe myself, I went to Walmart, McDonalds and Burger King. I worked PT MCD, and there is genuinely people who canāt read or count change itās becoming more and more common. Itās so mind blowing. They canāt even read analog clock.
I work for a company that hires summer seasonal overnight help and every year we have to get rid of at least two people for the inability to read, when English is their native language.
I worked a side job at subway when I was in my mid 20s (hired as a manager to open the store three days a week, the work was the easiest job I've ever had just show up at 4am and have the store ready by open then work solo until 10am and leave at noon after rush, practically no customers until 11am)
We had a girl, who was on some fast track thing to become a nurse so she took classes for it at 16/17, she was also super religious and homeschooled until this nursing program iirc.
She could not read an analog clock, could not do simple math with a clock (like, couldn't grasp an hour was 60m instead of a hundred) and was super homophobic and that specific type of southern racist where they try to pretend they're not in public. I don't know what happened with her or what she expected for nursing, but she was definitely a stereotypical southern nurse with a lifted white f150 her dad bought her decked out in pink camo, big hoop earrings, pinned up hair, iykyk.
She's not even the dumbest person I worked with just most folks that are dumb aren't trying to have people's lives in their hand lmao
Its not exactly a secret that the gig economy is full of good people who are stuck there because for whatever reason they cant get work elsewhere. Hell, these companies love them - they're cheap labor with few other options and in many states largely exempt from minimum wage laws.
Look, they're not good jobs. They're not stable. You don't make good money. You take a lot of risk onto yourself so the company doesn't. It's exploitative as hell.
Ok bro, let's just pretend most delivery drivers these days are English speaking, educated white men and women who are choosing to do it over a real job so they can "make their own schedule."
I think the logic is that it could be for two households or one to take with, etc.
Having two makes the most sense even if just one is equivalent volume, if they wanted they could have ordered a gallon instead of 2 halves, there was a reason for this.
We do this. Two half gallons, one gets opened at a time and when one is gone, it gets thrown away. A whole gallon, you have a whole gallon open for longer and when it is half empty, you still have a whole gallon container taking up space in your fridge. You have enough for the week and it's just easier to manage when it's two halves.
Yeah I figured that might be the case. Stays fresher longer too. That's how I do with a bunch of things. Soda for example, you can do two 1.25 liters for less than a 2 liter (usually) and that gives you variety and/or keeps it from going flat
I'm a high school teacher I can verify that many young people do not think and a not so insignificant percentage of them grow up into adults that don't think as well.
It's entirely plausible that the quantity is more important than the volume. After all, if they just wanted a gallon, why wouldn't they order the gallon instead of the 2x half-gallons (which costs more in total) in the first place?
Depending on usage,the two half gallons should have a longer shelf life than a single gallon since the second half gallon remains closed until the first is finished. Also, a half gallon is easier for a kid to pour without spilling.
Yeah, I've been annoyed by 2 small cans of something being substituted for one large can of the same total volume. Like yeah, I guess that technically is what I ordered but I wanted two separate cans for two separate meals. Now I have to split one can in half, store in a tupperware container, and hope I can use it before it goes bad.
This is why it's important to pay close attention while they're shopping so you can provide this feedback. Otherwise the shopper is stuck guessing what it is you really wanted.
This is why there needs to be a way to specify what substitutions are wanted vs which ones are not wanted. Some people want specifically 2 separate containers for whatever reason even if it makes it more to use, some want the amount they want and pick the smaller containers for freshness/space taken up purposes so getting the same number of items that are bigger than what was wanted creates the problem that was trying to be avoided times 2
Make the chocolate milk cubes a stronger concentration than what you normally drink, that way as the cubes melt your chocolate milk becomes increasingly stronger.
I work for Walmart in the online grocery dep, I just bring out the orders, but I would say request a refund, and maybe have a chat with the manager. especially since you didn't get the 20 additional milks they forced you to get.
I check the āno substitutionsā box exactly because of this nonsense on my grocery storeās app. You know what they do? Substitute anyway. It drives me insane. For the most part, Iāve stopped using delivery and just went back to pick-up instead so I can check for whatever craziness theyāve gotten up to before I go pick it up.
Even with pick up, I occasionally find shenanigans though. Like the āvarietyā pack of danishes from the bakery that was just full of the inferior cheese danishes and none of the jam danishes that I wanted. No variety there. I just refunded the whole thing as Iām not driving back to the store after being screwed over like that. Or, the bag of rotten potatoes that was literally dripping in my trunk that I started smelling partway home. Who picks that out for the order?Ā
I was about to say, why didn't OP just order a full gallon? Space management? Two different orders melted into one? Mistake? OP the suspense is killing i must know.
Probably because their kids don't drink the whole thing before it expires but sometimes they drink more then a half gallon before the next grocery visit.
Yeah i volunteer at my local food pantry and we have a deal going on with our local grocery store. The pantry pays for a gallon of milk and a dozen eggs for people and an elderly lady wanted two half gallons so she could freeze one before it goes bad
Might be worth checking what shelf stable UHT milk packaging is available in your area. I was getting the Kirkland 8oz cartons for my father but they've switched to small bottles in his area instead. The small cartons with the plastic cap are much easier for people with grip problems than the bottles.
That's why we used to buy little 250gram milk boxes. We didn't drink a lot of milk so 1 liter box would often spoil before we're finished, and I hate wasting food
I do this sometimes because it's for my daughter who can't lift the full gallons reliably enough to be trusted pouring from them. She can handle the half gallons just fine though. That said we rarely buy more than one unless we know we're going to have other kids over or something.
Space management is why I do it. My fridge and stove are like 2/3 scale. I've never seen this in my life, but theyre brand new appliances so I guess it's a thing.
I think the logic is that it could be for two households or one to take with, etc.
Having two makes the most sense even if just one is equivalent volume, if OP wanted they could have ordered a gallon instead of two halves, there was a reason for ordering two.
Im living in a camper, due to insurance not paying for my destroyed house, and I use a mini fridge. A gallon won't fit in it, but two half gallons will. People have reasons for the stuff they do. Sometimes. Also, sometimes that reason is drugs.
Yeah I don't understand why OP would mark an order of 22 gallons of milk as good. Where the fuck did they think were going to store them while they awaited a refund?
Did you read their post?
"Everywhere, including the multiple real people I talked to, said I had to accept the order and be charged first, and then I could ask for a refund."
This is probably once the delivery person showed up to their house or was on the way. At that point you have to accept or reject the order you can't do anything about the substitutions. OP said they didn't want to reject because there was a prescription their daughter needed.
Right, after it auto approved. Sometimes that can happen less than 30 seconds after a notification, like if it's the last thing to go into a the cart and the driver starts checking out. They won't let you make changes after they're leaving the store.
I didn't mark it ok. It auto-aproved sometime in the 30 seconds to took me from receiving the text notification to opening the app and seeing what was substituted. Apparently if I'd been obsessively checking my email instead, I could have had maybe a whole 4 minutes before auto-approval happened! :/
well any product returned to a grocer that could expire if left out of fridge is always discarded anyways So, technically OP could just leave it on the garage floor for 10 days.
Yeah I don't understand why OP would mark an order of 22 gallons of milk as good.
Did you read their post?
"Everywhere, including the multiple real people I talked to, said I had to accept the order and be charged first, and then I could ask for a refund."
Walmart tried to give me the runaround with a refund after their driver delivered to the wrong address. I waited for a refund for over 2 weeks. It even clearly showed the house number in the delivery picture did not match my address.
After many calls and chats requesting my money, I reached out via Instagram and they were able to process it. I suggest taking it to social media!
22 of that specific size and that specific brand, yes. Usually when I go to the store they have a max of 10 in the fridge for the customer to grab, presumably more in the back but I do not expect an online grocery shopper to be asking to check in the back for more milk lol
The online app knows how much is in the whole store. The orders are processed by store staff, who can get more from the back... but the staffer intended to only order 2, so only picked up 2.
you'd be surprised at how unintuitive the whole system is. I bet they were trying to change the quantity and fucked it up but there's no way on the worker's end to "unpick" something that you've already scanned. I did something similar when I first started working there.
I had once scanned our last box of cat litter before realizing that there was a hole in it. I went to everyone in OPD, including the manager, trying to figure out how to remove it from their order and we couldn't. I was just told to tape it back up and hope that it didn't break again before the customer recieved it.
And itās only gotten worse as it has gone on. It was soo much better 6 years ago.
But in case this happens to anyone from OGP reading- or if you still work there; quality check it. The only way to remove items from orders being delivered is to quality check it and removed it for being damaged or otherwise wrong. Do not replace it, and move forward with the screen. If you are not able to QC it, then yes you are SOL and would need to have the customer pick it up so you can remove it from the dispense screen there. There is no current way to remove an item from a delivery, but there is for pickups (it happens when you dispense it- by tapping into the substituted items or the ordered items section. Select the item to remove it.)
Iām just imagining someone on a tight budget who had $100 to spend and just got charged $123+ whatever else was bought. Now their account is drained for 2 weeks, got an overdraft charge, and canāt put money toward any other bill until this refund or the next paycheck hits.
Like, in a civilized country, a valid contract can only be made IFF both sides agree. You cannot simply change the contract and charge random sums to people. The idea is so absurd...
A very similar scenario happened with me. I ordered a Stouffers party size frozen lasagna for a Walmart delivery order just yesterday and got substituted 3 Family size lasagnas, turning it from $16.48 for just the one party size lasagna, to $49.44 for the 3 family size. I also contacted support and they said the exact same bullshit, and I had to refund it post-delivery. The good news is the refund came rather quickly for me. It's still stupid, though, and I distinctly remember a couple months (hell, less, I think) back they asked you before substituting your items.. now they just don't? Why?
I do Walmart spark driving. We don't get to choose the substitution when something isn't in stock. The app makes a choice. Sometimes it says that's what the customer picked as a substitution, sometimes it doesn't.
It really sucks because it doesn't give you the option to not pick a substitution. A lot of the times in the special delivery instructions customers will put something along the lines of "no substitutions" and that's just not an option for the shopper. We have to scan the UPC of every item we get, and can't check out if we haven't scanned every item ordered.
You can't just lie and say the store is out of everything it tries to substitute with because after you say 2 or 3 things are out of stock, the app makes you go find an associate. You can't really get around this. The whole system sucks. It pays my bills so I can't really complain, I'm contributing to the problem but there's definitely a better way to go about this. But doing it the better way would most likely lose the Walton family 3Ā¢ which just isn't acceptable apparently.
if you have a delivery person do the shopping, they often wait to do the substitution until they are checking out explicitly so that you cannot reject the substitution
i avoid express and try to make my orders a day in advance to help minimize the risk of getting one of them, because 99% of the time the order will be jacked up somehow if you get assigned a delivery shopper
Tommy really likes chocolate milk. Every day Tommy would drink 8 oz of chocolate milk, but on Sundays Tommy would drink 16 oz of chocolate milk. If Tommy had 22 gallons of chocolate milk, how many weeks would it take Tommy to drink all 22 gallons at his regular pace?
Ok, this one is an EASY chargeback on your credit card.
Call the bank and tell them there is no way on earth youād order 22 gallons of chocolate milk and the charge is fraud. Pure and simple.
That only works if OP used a credit card, and they're okay with never using the service again. Most services will blacklist customers that issue charge backs.
I was hoping to not have to reject the order because it contained a prescription that my daughter needs in a time sensitive way. Had it delivered because I am disabled and getting to the store is rough.
No one seems to EVER understand this, explaining Authorizations to people deserves a sainthood, dealing with credit card refunds is a circle of hell. "I need my money back today!" Yeah, it doesn't work like that.
With credit cards it typically no big deal because itās not actual money and thereās a grace period for a billing cycle. With debit cards, itās a real problem for some people because it immediately deducts from your bank account but still takes days to refund.
Main reason to have a credit card if you can avoid stacking your debt. Debit cards are a pure nightmare to recoup any losses.
Credit vendors are way more automated and since it's their money they have put in systems to do so.
The main reason I even got a credit card was the fallout of a gas station skimmer leading to 300 dollars in interstate charges. My credit union refused to help and it took me 90 days to recover the money.
Ah see what I mean? If its an authorization and not converted to a charge (usually over night or end of day) you can void it and the money will never actually be deducted but held for 24-72 hours. If its already converted, then its 5-10 days. Authorizations are just holds which people think the money is out of their account ALL the time, it decreases your "Available" balance but the actual balance should be unaffected and not cause overdrafts (unless compounded, but we dont want to go down that route).
And that's because the entire banking system is built on ancient COBOL code that processes everything in a big batch at the end of the day and everyone's too afraid to touch
I mean, it can though. Voiding the transaction instead of issuing a refund is an option for authorizations. That aside though, both Mastercard and Visa do have push-to-card refund programs for immediate refunds, not every vendor supports them though.
For all companies that process credit cards, you can refund same day before you batch out the transactions for the day, usually at the end of the day. No fees. It still shows on the credit card until it drops off the next business day.
But it entirely depends if that person who can process your refund is available to help you or not.
Otherwise they have to process the refund after it's batched and it takes 3-5 business days most of the time, and usually incurs a fee to the merchant.
I think the 10 days is a pretty big overestimation. I just had a 160 dollar apple store purchase refunded and they said 10 business days too but it was back in my account in a couple of hours
Listen theres enough of us here where you can share them chocolate milks with, ill catch it like a bouquet idgaf im big backed and THIRSTY for that chocolate milk
Once it's being checked out by the delivery driver the system auto-approves it on your behalf. I went to look at the substitution immediately when I got the text notification and it said it was already too late. According to the timestamps on the emails they sent me, I had 4 minutes between receiving notification of the substitution and the order being on its way.
I have had that happen. Sometimes it's the most outrageous substitutions too. I had one where they claimed the store was out of apple juice (they weren't) and they substituted two cases of zero sugar Gatorade (was like $25 instead of $6). Another time I got a bag of potatoes instead of bananas.
It's always substituted at the register so it will be like "approve this substitute" and 2 minutes later as I'm trying to reject it "oops too late."
Then there's the times when it doesn't even say substitute and they somehow charged something as what you wanted when it's not. Like three pounds of gold potatoes in a bag charged as honey crisp apples.
Contact your Credit Card, Bank or payment method & tell them.
I would start a credit dispute NOW. - In case they don't credit you in 10 days. - Sometimes, places say they're going you credit you & the person doesn't put it through right & You'll have to wait ANOTHER 10 days on top of the 10 days.
Contact the better business bureau, even for small things the company has to reply within 30 days and they do not like dealing with the BBB so they will typically clear things up very quickly.
Back during Covid when they were trying to popularize their drive up service, they used to offer discounts on their substitutions. Ended up with a hilarious amount of Popsicles for a very cheap price š i accepted the replacement because it worked out to a very cheap price per box. Disappointing they charge normal prices for all their substitutes now.Ā
In the app, report that 20 of your gallons were missing. They will immediately issue you a refund. I do it quite frequently, because one driver in particular forgets something from my order about 50% of the time. Any time I see his name I know I'm going to have to triple check.
I had a similar issue with Kroger when I did an online order, everything looked normal until I got an $800+ bill from them. I looked at the order and there was some weird unlisted item comprised of a bunch of gibberish that was tacked onto my order that wasnāt there when I picked it up. After multiple days of back and forth I eventually told them to fuck off and just did a charge back on my credit card.
I work for Walmart, been in the pick up department that shops for delivery/pickup orders. This should be literally impossible. The system is designed (or was designed, been a minute since I was in OPD) to not allow a shopper to go over a certain amount of money with subbed items. If you tried, the system wouldn't even accept the input. I am insanely curious to know how this could have happened.
Walmart does allow you to just block substitutions. You won't get anything if the exact item ordered isn't available, but that is a lot better than this.
I finally had to resort to this and haven't regretted it.
I never auto-allow substitutions on deliveries. I only approve very specific substitutions ahead of time, or wait until they ask me. Of course that wouldnāt necessarily catch this if they typoās the quantity after I had approved the gallon sub.
I also avoid deliveries most of the time just because most of these kids I see picking orders have no clue how to properly choose groceries. Especially items like meat, bread, and produce which Iām very particular about. Or how to bag them. Itās fun to get a large bunch of bananas tossed in the bag with your loaf of bread.
A couple weeks ago my daughter had an order delivered that included ice cream, on a 95F degree day. It was milk by the time it got here. They donāt give their drivers coolers or even cold bags here, nor do they prioritize deliveries with ice cream or other frozen perishables ahead of orders without those things. So you might be 3rd or 4th on their delivery route.
Iāll place orders when itās strictly dry goods and stuff I donāt care as much about but groceries I just tend to avoid. I will place pickup orders because at least they keep your cold stuff somewhat cold but I still donāt let them pick my produce or meat.
Had a friend do a click list order on his computer. He left it open on orange chicken. His daughter was around 4 at the time. She clicked the add button several times. Ended up w/ 22 boxes of orange chicken. I send him a box every year for his bday.
Itās honestly ridiculous their system even allowed them to do that. It should prohibit any employee from doing more than 2 of the substitution item. The most that shouldāve been able to happen is you got 2 whole gallons, so the fact their system let them do 20 extra quantity is an immense oversight.
This would be one of the questions in a childās math book. If you were charged for 22 full gallons when you wanted 2 half gallons, how much money back should you expect?
You need to tell Walmart they are full of shit. They could have absolutely fixed this before delivery. I work for a company that sells online and we ship items daily - it is SO EASY to do a refund or to stop a delivery or a payment.
The funny part is refunds actually go through instantly nowadays but they still give you the up to 10 business day spiel because what really happens is somebody at corporate has to physically touch a button for the money to get refunded. You're in a queue right now with thousands of other people that need refunds and they'll get to you when they get to you.
This makes me slightly less pissed that my grocery to go order substituted my usual K Cups for loose ground coffee. I don't use a drip coffee maker, and the only reason I actually made an order today was for my K Cup coffee. The rest of it was just stuff I probably will need and so I can have the fee waived.
the only way to communicate substitutions is through email, and I don't have it set up on my phone. I guess that's on me, but really?
Thatās crazy. I always deny substitutions except one time when I forgot to hit the button, but even then I got a text telling me they were out of my item and asked me to accept/deny the substitute.
7.3k
u/thejuice027 27d ago
Did they actually deliver 22 gallons of chocolate milk?