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Comment by dx87 | Hacker News Reader

Not sure how this is going to work, even the standard service is completely booked until next week at my local Walmart, unless they'll reserve some drivers for the 2-hour service.

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You can't blame Walmart for that, that's case everywhere, from local supermarkets to Whole Foods delivery. All deliveries are out at least a week due to everyone avoiding going out because of covid.

I'm not blaming them, I just legitimately don't see how they could offer another service when they're already booked solid and don't have any drivers to spare.

Walmart near me uses DoorDash to deliver orders. Maybe they’re planning on ratcheting that up?

26 million workers have lost their jobs in a little more than a month. The labor market might well be worse than the Great Depression. It doesn't seem to be a hard problem to solve.

I get what you're saying, but I have to imagine some people are reticent to start engaging in such a dangerous task for such a small amount of income. You're literally putting yourself and your immediate family in danger of catching a potentially serious illness for the opportunity to make, maybe $50 a day before expenses.

I feel like this is an American perspective. From my understanding the danger is overblown (provided social distancing measures are in place and respected).

> maybe $50 a day before expenses

If the alternative is homelessness, people will take this offer. And don't forget, there's entire groups of people who do dangerous jobs daily with little thanks (builders, bin men, etc..) so I don't think they'll have a problem filling these spots.

I don't think it's that little money; I just delivered some packages on Amazon Flex to get out of the house and it was CAD$70 gross for about 2:30h of work. Not bad at all for unskilled labor.

Instacart is paying ~CAD$30 gross per shopping trip but seems riskier and more annoying so I haven't hopped on that.

They aren't using their own drivers.

In the Bay Area Instacart has been the best option in my experience. A few weeks ago Amazon Fresh and most other services I checked were impossible to get, but on Instacart you could still get a spot 3 days out if you booked it before about noon. Now it seems better across the board, still spotty on other services but on Instacart you can reliably get any time slot you want the next day and even usually same-day.

It is more along the lines of 'you say you offer a service, but you clearly do not have capacity to run it since it is completely booked'. Similar story in Chicago suburbs too. Your real option is to do it yourself.

It seems to me that they will use some of the extra money to pay more drivers.

Depends on the location. Walmart is everywhere. I live in a midsized city and the delay was only 8pm the next day when I placed an order at 6pm or so. A few weeks ago they’d just stopped it completely so it was nice to get groceries delivered.

They can spend more money to make the premium service work. Hire more delivery people etc.

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