Associated Press
Walmart surprised some of its Spark delivery workers with extra money — tips that they were entitled to, but didn’t get until now.
Walmart notified Spark gig workers about the “tip adjustment” payments over the past couple of weeks, according to emails seen by Business Insider.
The messages tell Spark drivers that Walmart conducted “a review of our records” and would be providing “additional disbursements related to tips from earlier periods, including interest.”
“Adjustments related to tips from earlier periods may relate to different reasons depending on your impacted tips, including cases where customers were not charged for those tips,” the message read.
Business Insider spoke with two Spark drivers who have received the tip payments. Both shared the emails that they received from Walmart.
A Spark driver in South Carolina got the email during the last week of August. He told Business Insider that he received a payment from Walmart of about $102, including $89 in tips and $13 in interest. He said Walmart has sent him payment adjustments related to tips in the past, but none were for that much money or paid interest.
The email about the August payment contained no specifics about what period the payment was for or why Walmart didn’t pay the Spark workers sooner, he said.
The company indicated that the back pay was due to payment errors.
“We deeply value drivers on the Spark Driver platform and are committed to ensuring they receive their disbursements accurately and on time,” a Walmart spokesperson told Business Insider.
“Through our standard review process, we identified that some drivers may not have received their full disbursements,” the spokesperson said. “The issue has been resolved, and those affected in the past will receive the appropriate adjustments with interest.”
With pay on gig work apps falling over the last few years, many workers now rely on tips to make the job worthwhile.
That’s especially true for gig workers making food and grocery deliveries, who, on average, relied on tips for the majority of their total earnings last year, according to a survey published by data analytics company Gridwise.
Some gig-work companies have faced charges that they misused tips. For example, DoorDash paid millions of dollars to settle a probe into whether it used customers’ tips to offset gig workers’ pay, similar to how some restaurants lower their cost of labor with a tipped wage.
On some Facebook groups for Spark drivers, users posted screenshots of Walmart’s email notifying them about the tips and shared how much they had received in payments.
In some cases, posters said that they received the tip adjustments after not working for Spark for months or after Walmart deactivated their Spark accounts.
One post on Friday in a group called “Spark Driver Community” showed a notification that Walmart had tried to deposit almost $700 into a Spark driver’s old, closed bank account. The poster wrote that they were having trouble reaching out to Walmart with updated bank information because they had stopped making deliveries for Spark and had deleted their account.
Another post from late August shows the Walmart email and over $300 in deposits, seen through the Spark app.
The poster said that they had seen their tips decrease on some recent orders. The poster said that they had previously attributed those decreases post-delivery to customers “tip baiting,” or leaving a generous tip while placing an order and taking it back after delivery.
Do you have a story about Spark or another kind of gig work? Contact this reporter at [email protected].
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