A reader sent in a tip about a recent news story detailing Home Depot’s new fulfillment arrangement with Walmart.
Home Depot has been in the news a lot lately, such as how they contracted their own container ship to help prevent freight disruptions, but this new story is a little different.
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Walmart has launched a new service called “GoLocal,” which makes their “local commerce power” available to other companies. Walmart’s GoLocal service offers “white-label delivery” which helps retailers “maintain their customer relationship.”
They say that “if you sell it, we’ll deliver it.”
From gears & gaskets to artisanal goods, we work with businesses from a wide range of categories. We can help you meet varying service level demands, reaction time specifications, & regulatory compliance needs. If you sell it, we can help you deliver.
Basically, Walmart has created a “last-mile” delivery service, and they say it’s built for:
- Nationwide leading retailers
- Small businesses
- Peer-to-peer deliveries.
Last week, Walmart announced The Home Depot as their first retail client:
Two of the world’s leading retailers are working together to expand same-day and next-day delivery capabilities for home improvement customers in the U.S. With Walmart GoLocal, The Home Depot customers have another option for same-day or next-day delivery on a variety of home improvement products.
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Home Depot already has a fast delivery service, where you pay extra fees for items to be delivered from local stores. Walmart’s GoLocal service will be in addition to this. When ordering for “express delivery,” the rate is usually determined based on whether your order can fit in a car, van, or truck.
It seems that Walmart’s new GoLocal delivery service will accommodate the consumer product or small supply deliveries.
[The Home Depot] will offer delivery with Walmart GoLocal in select markets in the coming weeks, with plans to expand to multiple markets across the country by the end of the year. Products that qualify for this scheduled delivery, including tools, fasteners, paint and other supplies that easily fit in a car, will have that option enabled at online checkout.
The joint press release also says:
The Home Depot is building a comprehensive, innovative delivery network to provide customers with same-day or next-day delivery options no matter the product or project – whether that’s a box of nails, décor items or big and bulky shipments of lumber, drywall or appliances. Its network accommodates products of any size or volume, with delivery options for both Pro and DIY customers.
This suggests that perhaps Walmart’s GoLocal services will complement but not replace Home Depot’s express delivery option. So, tools and smaller supplies might be delivered via Walmart GoLocal, while lumber and building materials would still be delivered straight from stores.
This is an interesting development, and it’ll be interesting to see how it evolves.
Thank you to Mike for the tip!!
Steve
Oh boy! This isn’t going to be good if Wal-Mart handles partner orders like they do their own. I’ve always had more problems than successes with Wal-Mart orders. I hope they have worked out a reliable system for this.
fred
I never ordered from WalMart prior to the pandemic. Now I order many grocery, cleaning and paper-goods items that are amenable for shipping (non-perishable) from them almost weekly. I’ve had only one problem early on – that was some raspberry preserves that opened up in shipping. When I complained (sent them a photo too) about the mess – they reshipped the entire order (even though I told them I was able to salvage some of the items) and sent me a $5 coupon. Since then they seem to have made note of the problem and subsequent orders have better protected jelly jars and similar items. I’ve been ordering at least $40 to $50 per week from them since March 2020 with very good luck – and fast shipping.
Steve
The problems come when you are ordering items that are not in store.
fred
I don’t think that I’ve tried to order items that are out of stock. Nor have I ordered stuff from their 3rd-party sellers. I generally stick to items that they proclaim as having 2-day shipping. It always seems to arrive on-time via Fedex. Once in a blue moon – they seem to deliver a few items from the local store via a delivery person in a private car rather than ship it – even though that service was not requested or billed.
Plain grainy
I have tried purchasing groceries online. Everything is thrown into a cardboard box, no packing at all. Arrived with 1/3 of soup cans heavily dented. Looked like no thought was put into item packaging. It wasn’t Walmart.
Albert
My last few orders of small hand tools and common electrical parts shipped in multiple boxes from multiple locations, all delivered by Fedex. With free shipping, I don’t mind, but I can’t see how HD could make money doing this.
My experience with these new delivery services is limited to Amazon Logistics, but they seem much more gentle with packages than UPS and Fedex.
Lastly, in my area, Menards uses Door Dash (they normally deliver food) to deliver small items the same day from the nearest store. The fee is very steep, but they saved me a lot of trouble on a few occasions.
Anson
In my area Walmart has been using door dash for things like rubbing alcohol and acetone(best price in my area). Which makes sense as those are considered hazmat when shipping.
Still kinda weird to have someone in an unmarked vehicle park in my driveway and leave a brown paper bag with loose items in it.
Amazon Logistics in my area has been a nightmare of damaged products, boxes thrown out of vehicles(on camera), and drivers dropping packages about 20ft up a 120ft driveway. Co-workers are skeptical until I show them the videos of drivers throwing boxes/envelopes/etc towards the house, or showing up at midnight.
Overall if isn’t Fedex/USPS/UPS there are no expectations that a product will arrive undamaged. Some of these other services may have been convenient but I’m tired of random people making deliveries to my house, taking things back to stores, USPS drop offs, and/or waiting for someone to come pickup damaged products.
We’ve switched to making store pickup orders for Home Depot, Walmart is no good as their customer service for pickups closes at 20:00(8pm).
Steve L
Walmart’s online store seems to list a lot of items that are not stocked around me. Led me to conclude Walmart was using their logistics network and website to sell product stocked by others. You can boost profits when the sales transaction is handled by a network you already built and someone else stores the item in their warehouse for you.
Like Fred I didn’t use Walmart online prior to the pandemic and they have become one of my choices when ordering something.
MM
I don’t know the nitty gritty of how the orders are fulfilled but Walmart certainly lists 3rd party products on their website, I have seen that many many times, for years. The old Sears web site was the same way. Honestly it made both sites unusable for me back then, even if you searched for something you knew they had in stock in your local store you couldn’t find it because the search tools were horrible and the catalog was jam-packed with every item under the sun, and I don’t mean general stock: I recall trying to find brake spring pliers for auto repair on the old Sears Craftsman website–a tool I knew Sears to carry instore at the time–and being forced to wade through page after page of 1970’s snowmobile brake springs, orthodonic tools, and spring (the season) themed greeting cards. It was almost like someone dumped the entire contents of every catalog they could come across into the backend of the website. The other day I noticed a Walmart catalog listing for industrial hydraulic pump parts.
I rarely shop at Walmart; that’s been consistent pre- and post-pandemic. I ordered online from them once, four years ago. After several days I received an Email stating that the products were unavailable and my order would be automatically canceled. The very same day I also received the products in the mail. And two days later I received a second (duplicate) shipment of the same products via a different shipper. I wasn’t charged for any of it.
I guess it was nice to get free goods but the whole situation didn’t exactly instill confidence.
Brian
Wondering if this means I can get HD Stuff delivered to my APO here in Germany?? 👀
Kent Skinner
I was trying to avoid Amazon, and used WalMart 3 or 4 times for online sales and delivery.
OMFG. I spent so much time trying to find my order, doing a return *within the return window* and other tasks that ended up being far more difficult than they required.
In the end, I had to threaten them to return my $299 for an order I returned. I ended up leaving a $0.01 credit on a gift card (they gave me $10 after months of fighting) just so they have to keep it on the books and it costs them money.
WalMart can go rot.
Jim Felt
I had ordered something last year from a known vendor who’d contracted with Walmart for my delivery unbeknownst to me and the double walled carton was delivered a day or two late visibly smashed.
And not surprisingly the contents were as well.
Jim Felt
I’m glad I don’t need to depend on Walmart for literally anything.
Just too many of their workers nationwide are on public assistance to eek out a decent living while actually employed by them. Heckuva government subsidy that is.
I wonder what “Mr. Sam” (Walton) would think of his creation now?
John
Walmart delivery is awesome I order in the evening and usually we have our order the next morning on our door steps..
IronWood
Well they can’t do worse than Home Depot. We’ve had a ton of problems over the last year with things going in and out of stock for online orders, or that can’t be shipped to a local store, or that wind up delayed “in transit” for weeks. I can’t figure out what makes something available to ship to store or not, I’ve had small simple items only available for home delivery while the rest of the order went to the local store. Other times everything went to the store.
Side note: there have been a ton of truck driver job postings for Hermiston, OR lately (where Wal-Mart’s NW distribution center is) and I wonder if they’re trying to bulk up capacity, both internally and contracted carriers. Incidentally, amidst the requisite bashing of WalMart’s corporate ethics, when I was driving long-haul years ago WalMart was one of the top places to work for drivers in terms of pay and treatment. Drivers that went to WalMart usually retired from them at a time when other big trucking companies had something like 100% driver turnover every year. I’m by no means a WalMart fan, but as usual things aren’t as clear cut as they sound.
Rx9
This appears to be the latest front in Wal-Mart’s epic war against Amazon for global retail supremacy.
Frank D
If it is a means to skip Home Depot’s ship to home charge of $75, that I have run into a number of times, I will gladly use it.
Steven B
Can’t be any worse than Home Depot. No one f-es up day to day operations worse than my area Home Depots. I dislike WalMart and they don’t have them in my area (I live in a city), but I do order from them online from time to time and they deliver promptly with no drama. My local Home Depot, on the other hand, if you order online for store pickup, for a product that’s actually in stock, they take 5 days to fulfill it. I also get long delays for any order I have shipped.
For Target, you place an order, it’s ready in 2-4h and drive up for contactless delivery…very respectful of your time and very efficient. Our Home Depot?…nope, I have to actually go in and pick items by hand because the F it up every time. Also they frequently say they have things in stock and they don’t…it’s not out, no worker can find it, even if you can find a worker who will interact with you. In my area, the Home Depot associates are actively hostile towards customers. (they’re nicer farther in the burbs, but still just as incompetent)
Home Depot is the reverse Midas of customer experience. Everything they touch turns into s**t. Any step to remove them from the equation is welcome.
Jason. W
My family has been using walmart+ for a good while now with really good results. We get weekly grocery shipments. Anytime we have had a issue they resolved it quickly and easily. Usually a full refund for an item that is still mostly usable. the substitutions they make are often in our favor. We order a 6 OZ bag and they were out of stock and substitute two 4 OZ bags for the same price.
Jim
We all know the current supply lag for items due to the pandemic. I ordered an electric stove from Lowe’s on May 1st 2021 and 4 rescheduled delivery dates later the new delivery day is now Oct. 25th. The unsettling thing is they have charged my credit card at least 10 times and after a few days the pending charge is canceled.
As for Walmart I had terrible time getting a patio fire table that wasn’t damaged or rusted, after the 3rd damaged table I ordered a different brand and everything went smooth. The problem was that the damaged tables were visibly damaged by looking though the openings of the destroyed shipping boxes.
Recently ordering a mattress from Macy’s I had the wrong mattress delivered 4 times. It seems they just slap a delivery tag/sticker on something similar at their delivery warehouse. After calling their “expert mattress hotline” and explaining that the thickness of the mattress was 2 inches thinner than ordered, the response was “you need to wait at least a week for the mattress to expand after taking it out of the box” After explaining it came in a bag like a conventional mattress they still claimed it required time to expand due to the time it spent on the delivery truck. When I mentioned that the mattresses were standing side by side on the delivery truck, the response was “You ordered the wrong mattress” “You should of ordered a different brand”. “We can send out an investigator in a month to check out your claim” In the end 2 months later we kept the wrong last mattress and received a discount because it was on sale at the time we received it.
I had co-worker order a battery operated laser leveling system from HD. The website stated it came with the rechargeable battery. When delivered no battery, They said return it to the store and we will send you another one and credit you $20. Next unit delivery no battery, he returns it again receives another $20 credit. 3rd delivery no battery another $20 credit, finally they figure out the description was wrong on the website. They said keep the last unit and we will send you a battery for free. 3 weeks after the original order, he had a complete laser system with battery that cost him $19.