
Wal-Mart may get customers to deliver packages to online buyers - danso
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/03/28/us-retail-walmart-delivery-idUSBRE92R03820130328?feedType=RSS&feedName=topNews
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ams6110
_Wal-Mart would offer a discount on the customers' shopping bill, effectively
covering the cost of their gas in return for the delivery of packages, he
added._

Eh, I think they are going to have to offer more than just a break-even on gas
to get me interested in going out of my way to deliver a package. But I guess
they can try it.

I actually don't see this working at all. Who is liable for the "loss" of
deliveries in transit? If the person delivering the order causes a traffic
accident, is Wal-Mart partly liable? Will they be checking insurance and
driving records before letting someone deliver for them?

It would have to work more like a pizza delivery situation, where the drivers
are actually employees, with a driving history check and insurance, though
perhaps using their personal vehicles.

~~~
EliRivers
There are already courier companies employing essentially casual employees. No
uniform or anything like that; these people use their own cars and simply pick
up a stack of parcels in the morning and deliver them as best they can over
the day. No reason why a company as large as WalMart can't manage that, and by
paying these people with a discount on their shopping instead of money,
WalMart effectively pays less. Add in that WalMart already has established
locations, so they won't need to rent distribution centres, and they're
laughing.

~~~
HarryHirsch
Eight or ten years ago Amazon tried using Parcelnet, and what a desaster it
was. Parcelnet, if anyone remembers it, was Moms With Vans that were
contracted by (I think) Selfridge's to deliver their orders. If that sounds
iffy, that's because it was. Packages would never arrive, there was no number
to complain, it was awful.

It's possible that Walmart are going for a rerun, but I wouldn't recommend it.

~~~
EliRivers
They were rebranded as Hermes Europe and they still operate. Amazon uses them
today.

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danso
My first instinct is to dismiss this as a crazy idea, except that if the CEO
is speaking publicly about it with a major world news organization, then it's
probably past the "crazy idea someone wrote on a bar napkin one night" stage.

The biggest WTF, of course, is how do you insure against fraud and
liability...but courier services have presumably come up with a system, and so
Walmart "just" has to innovate on industrializing the system. So it's
obviously not a trivial task, but Walmart (and its competitors, such as
Amazon) have already managed the seemingly-impossibly complicated logistics
behind every other part of the shipping, cataloging, and, in Walmart's case,
the manufacturing process. Those parts don't seem innovative because the
everyday person doesn't have to think about them...however, the everyday
person _can_ relate to delivering items to strangers and all the ways that
could possibly go wrong, so of course that task seems even more impossible and
unlikely...from _our_ perspective.

It may very well be harder than the logistics Walmart has already
mastered...but I don't really know that, so I guess Walmart deserves some
benefit of the doubt.

In any case, it'll be interesting to see how a behemoth can reinvent itself in
this space...sure, startups have the nimbleness of no legacy baggage...but
it's possible a company with hundreds of millions of dollars to throw at the
problem may also be enough to spur the needed innovation.

~~~
JumpCrisscross
" _how do you insure against fraud and liability_ "

A large pool of customers with known purchasing and probable credit histories?
Travelling through neighbourhoods with known income, employment, substance
abuse, and past crime statistics? I'm presuming this will be presented as a
perk to the store's "best" customers. Insuring this would not be
insurmountable.

------
nakedrobot2
My first comment was in jest, but perhaps it wasn't making the point clearly
enough:

The children of the 2020's will find it inconceivable that you DON'T deliver
some package to your neighbors on the way home from the grocery store :)

We are moving in the direction of cost-cutting and streamlining so much that
many jobs really are going away, the prices of goods are dropping, and fewer
people are working. Who would have thought, twenty years ago, that YOU would
be the checkout person, and the bagger, at the supermarket? (Yes, non-USA
people, they still have bag boys at many supermarkets!)

The service jobs that are not being replaced by robots, are being done by you,
in the name of "self service" to lower costs - and they pass the savings on to
you! ;-)

This move makes perfect sense and it is a natural progression of the trends
that have been happening over the past years and decades.

~~~
yardie
I'm not convinced. The self-service registers at the Walmart near me took up
nearly 1/3rd of the space at the front of the store. Well people suck at
checking out. Either they don't know how the machines work, move too slow, or
have a problem with the scanner/price check. The lines were getting long and
people were getting pissed at having to wait because the damn machine didn't
think you actually put the bottle in the bag.

A few years ago that Walmart moved into an even bigger store. Before it was
consumer products and some groceries. Now it's 50/50 with a bank, Macdonalds,
and dentist. That self-checkout line has been reduced to 1 lane with 4
machines.

The cashier may be disappearing soon but it's not being replaced by self-
service. Compared to a good cashier they are ridiculously slow. If anything
they will be replaced with good computer vision or RFID.

~~~
jiggy2011
I had the same reservations when I first saw these machines, the software was
buggy and hard to use and people just weren't used to it.

However a few stores near me have now removed human checkouts entirely and
just have 1 member of staff floating around to deal with problems.

The queues are dramatically smaller, the software has gotten better and people
are now more used to using it.

They are still slower than a human checkout for very large quantities of
shopping, but if I want to make a very large order it's easier just to do it
online anyway.

~~~
yardie
_However a few stores near me have now removed human checkouts entirely and
just have 1 member of staff floating around to deal with problems._

Like the Apple Store? Who has done away with the idea of checking out
completely. I can see self checkout working at a boutique where you may buy
half a dozen things and I've done it at the Boots, CVS, Apple store. But that
bi-monthly food shopping trip, complete with coupons, is completely unworkable
with those machines.

I've found my online shopping has actually decreased because I'm eating
healthier. I'm eating more fresh veg and meats which you need to physically
inspect. Plus, the online shops have a 60-100€ minimum and I can't plan that
far in advanced.

~~~
larrys
"Like the Apple Store? Who has done away with the idea of checking out
completely. I can see self checkout working at a boutique "

Apple and boutique same thing high price and margins on the products
(generally).

Important to factor in that at the Apple store the margins are extremely high.
So this is not the local drugstore making pennies when selling razor blades.

You can't really lift the computers and desirable products and the other
things come with enough margin to cover any theft. If you've ever priced some
of either the add ons (like hard drives) laptop bags vs. what you can buy them
on Amazon for you can see how much they are making and that well covers the
cost of some shoplifting.

And on the Apple products even larger. An Apple lightning to 30 pin connector
sells for $39. I wouldn't even want to guess how cheap this is to manufacture
(I'm talking about marginal cost of course) in other words what their loss is
if one is lifted.

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jt2190
BIG emphasis on "may":

    
    
      > This is at the brain-storming stage, but it's possible 
      > in a year or two," said Jeff McAllister, senior vice 
      > president of Walmart U.S. innovations.
    
      > Indeed, the likelihood of this being broadly adopted 
      > across the company's network of more than 4,000 stores 
      > in the United States is low, according to Matt Nemer, a 
      > retail analyst at Wells Fargo Securities.

------
ebbv
This is a remarkably bad idea. What happens when someone who's delivering a
package gets robbed? Think that's a remote possibility? Pizza delivery guys
get robbed constantly.

Also, it says a lot about Wal-Mart's opinion of its customers that it thinks
the customers would be willing to do this for cheaper than any other method
Wal-Mart could use to get this done.

~~~
EliRivers
Casual courier companies already exist. Employees are paid daily, piecework.
They drive their own cars and pay their own fuel. They just pick up parcels at
the start of the day and deliver them as best they can. This already exists,
so whatever objections you have must have already been surmounted.

~~~
ebbv
> This already exists, so whatever objections you have must have already been
> surmounted.

There's a huge difference between some fly-by-night operations working in this
model already existing and a company the size of Wal-Mart taking it on.

Additionally there's a huge difference between a person coming in daily as a
contract employee and a company like Wal-Mart recruiting its customers at the
checkout.

The difference is lawsuits and liability when something bad happens. If it's a
small company there's not so much assets to go after. If it's Wal-Mart the
ambulance chasers will come out of the woodwork.

------
nakedrobot2
In the future, all humans will be employees of either Wal-Mart or Google.

~~~
largesse
Or products.

------
plehoux
A startup, from Quebec, is working on this: <http://gofellow.com/>

~~~
sixQuarks
I like it, could be big

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frogpelt
Maybe Wal-Mart is not going to be as involved as it seems.

Perhaps they will just set up a framework for peer-to-peer contact. If they
leave the agreement solely between the deliverer and the recipient it should
remove much of their liability risk.

They could then reward people based upon positive reviews by recipients.

------
bane
Wal-mart is trying very hard to eliminate employees as quickly as possible,
but it may backfire.

[http://business.time.com/2013/03/27/hey-walmart-its-hard-
to-...](http://business.time.com/2013/03/27/hey-walmart-its-hard-to-make-
sales-when-store-shelves-are-empty/)

------
sixQuarks
200 days ago, I suggested this exact idea:

<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4475730>

I wonder if Walmart saw the post...

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ck2
It's all fun and games until someone uses delivery to scope out your house for
theft.

Or delivers your items covered in dog hair.

There's a reason why people use professional delivery.

------
bitwize
Walmart: Finding ways to not pay a fair wage for work done since 1962.

------
mikec3k
I can see this failing in so many ways.

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duck
What happens when you deliver a package and the recipient thinks you're an
intruder and shoots you?

~~~
EliRivers
Presumably the same thing that happens now when a stranger knocks on your door
and you murder them. You get arrested for murder and go to jail.

~~~
duck
Yeah, that wasn't my point though. You're basically making those people doing
delivery's contractors. I probably should of asked something like: what
happens when you go deliver something and you fall on their slippery sidewalk?
Walmart is at that point responsible, right?

~~~
EliRivers
No. Whilst I am guessing which legal system you come under, if it's the one I
suspect, the owner of the property has the responsibility to ensure reasonable
levels of safety. Walmart does not have a responsibility to maintain the
sidewalk outside someone else's house. If the last dozen people delivering
there all were injured and WalMart knew about it, then you might have some
kind of case.

