One of the most distasteful parts of life for the male side of this writing team is shopping. He’d put it on a par with visiting the dentist. But, as the man says, “Ya gotta eat!” If more than a couple of weeks pass without stocking up, one of the most pleasant parts of life can get a bit edgy. Enter RVing Walmart—and their pickup service, where you can shop without ever setting foot in the door. We’ve found it works great in our RV lifestyle.
RVing Walmart—The rundown on its pickup service
If you’re not familiar with the service, here’s a rundown. Log onto Walmart’s website, or if you’re into apps, download the app and turn there. Start by choosing the Wally location where you’d like to get your goodies. What are you looking for today? Breakfast, perhaps? One of our frequent shops, “bran flakes.” Tap “bran flakes” into the search box, and hey, presto! Every kind of bran flake available appears.
Of course, shopping isn’t limited to groceries. We recently needed to add a mop to our cleaning arsenal. More mops available than ever excited (or terrified} a kid watching Mickey Mouse and the mops in Disney’s “Fantasia.” We soon added one to our list.
Got a snotty snoot? A visit to the pharmacy section of the Walmart site will soon have you set right. A bottle of de-stinking solution for your black water tank? No problem. Basically, anything you can find while strolling the aisles with a rolling cart can be tucked into your virtual cart.
Forget something after checkout? No worries.
Got everything you need? Hit the “checkout” button to see a rundown of everything in your cart. Choose a day and time to pick up your swag, and pay with your credit or debit card.
Did you forget something? Walmart allows you to come back and add more items, even after you’ve “closed” your transaction—right up to the same day of your slated pickup time, minus a couple of hours or so.
Out-of-stock and substitutes
An hour or two before your pickup time you’ll get a text message from Wally if something you ordered wasn’t available. The Wally crew will have a substitute for something you wanted but went out of stock when their “shopper” hit the floor getting your stuff. You can click on a link and accept or turn down the substitute. Didn’t catch it in time? No worries, the delivery person will tell you what was substituted, and you can turn down anything you don’t want then and there. The charge will come off your bill, and the credit will go back on your card. But watch it. Walmart substitutions used to be made for the same price as your original item. Now if the substitute costs more, you’ll pay for the more expensive item.
Swing that big ol’ rig right into the pickup area
Here’s where we really like RVing Walmart for our needs when traveling. We’ve used other stores’ order and pickup services, but way too often there’s no place to swing an RV around to the pickup area. Most Walmarts have their pickup areas staged around the side of the building. We find there’s usually plenty of space to swing the truck and trailer right into the pickup area. To be certain, you may want to do a Google Maps fly-over before placing an order or call the store in advance.
We swing our combination right on into the pickup area and park right alongside a long row of spaces. You can let the crew know you’ve arrived by hitting a link on your phone or simply call the crew. There’s a phone number posted on each “stall,” and you let them know you’re ready. We have to laugh when they get puzzled when they ask us “What stall are you in?” and we reply with something like, “We’re in 14 through 21,” with all the spaces we take up.
From there, a crew member will roll out with baskets of your stuff. They’re used to putting it in car trunks. But standing beside the rig door, we simply pass the stuff off into our RV. Beware the states that have BYOB (Bring Your Own Bags) laws. Don’t have bags ready and you can have a major mess of canned goods and bottles rolling through the rig if you’re in a hurry.
Did they get something wrong? Virtual complaints are easy
Finally, if you later find something you ordered is damaged, missing, or just not up to par, log back into your Walmart account. There the system will let you walk through your order and you can provide a virtual complaint. In the case of most food items, Wally will simply credit your account and tell you not to worry about returning the item.
Drawbacks? Probably the produce section is the biggest problem area. You can’t squeeze the avocados. No way to virtually pick just the right color of your bananas. And Wally also requires a $35 minimum purchase per order to get the service “free.” These days that’s not a tough amount to hit.
But for making a big pickup, it’s usually an easy off the highway, pick up your swag, and head back out on the road. Yeah, we like RVing Walmart, even if we’re not overnighting in the parking lot.
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We love using Walmart curbside pickup, but use it mostly when at our sticks and bricks home.
We started using it during Covid and have continued. I now really hate going into grocery stores and taking the time to shop the aisles!
I shop from the comfort of my armchair!
Plus we don’t buy as many splurge items because we don’t have impulse buying as we walk down aisles.
Great service.
We also started during covid. Wally’s service is outstanding. Nothing better to pull up and have them load it in your car / truck and be back on your way in less than ten minutes. I get a kick out if people that “I want to pick out my stuff”. You do on the app.
We found it easier to shop in-store during Covid because most people stayed out. Aisles were much less crowded. Too many errors and poor choices when using a shopper to do my job.
I’ve never tried the pickup service. As the male side of this team I do all the grocery shopping. The last time I took the prettier part of this team to the grocery store I came home with aisle 5 🙂
🤣 Get a smaller vehicle, Impavid. Have a great day. 😀 –Diane
We have used exactly the same pick-up service at Kroger-chain grocery stores–Fred Meyer in OR and WA, Fry’s in AZ, Dillon’s in KS, and City Market in western CO. It’s always interesting to see the double-take by the delivery person when they realize it’s a motorhome. Once I couldn’t fit in a pick-up parking space, so I got a spare cart and stood in the space I had called in. That also got a strange reaction until I pointed to the motorhome sitting across the driveway. Pick-up is great because we have called in orders when we were 100 miles away and the order was ready by the time we got to the store. We prefer Kroger stores, when available, to Walmart because of the great fuel discount!
In my experience, the problem is that the pickers don’t know how to select good produce or select the gluten free versions of products .As someone with food allergies, I find it cheaper to shop myself and get the correct product. Otherwise it’s a great service.
Thank you, Russ and Tina! 🙂 Was Tina attached to the shoes just inside the RV? One additional point is that as one does later pickups, products bought in earlier instances are listed by category (e.g., beverages, and milk and eggs) in “My Items” at the bottom of the application (and surely easily found after logging into their website), making it much easier to construct an order and with a lower chance of overlooking needed items. We use this service frequently from our sticks-and-bricks. We typically schedule a pickup the day before we leave on a trip in order to stock the pantry and refrigerator. Thanks again, have a great week, safe travels, and safe stays! 🙂
Best company in America and a great place to meet the locals. No place is more than 3 hours away from one. Thank you Sam.
I’m male and have never found shopping for supplies to be distasteful. As for using ‘shoppers’ to shop for us, we prefer to do it ourselves especially for produce. Instructions regarding substitutions were rarely followed and getting credits for returned items took so long we would spend less time doing our own shopping to begin with.
I love using their pickup service at home but I don’t order meat or fresh veggies as mentioned. I can see where it would be a great help when on the road! I could tolerate going in and shopping for a few things that I want to select myself. I usually buy my veggies at Aldi tho.
You call it convenient, I call it lazy! One more way to avoid just a little exercise. I put E bikes in the same category.
I call it “saving time on a long drive day.” If I can order by phone from 200 milres away and pick up my order in 5 minutes, I can still comfortably make it another 100 miles before stopping for the night. And, since both Walmart and Kroger stores often have gas stations, I can save even more time by refueling while there.
Hi, Greg. Some people are physically unable to walk around a store. Sure, there are motorized shopping carts, but this would be lots more efficient and less time-consuming. That doesn’t necessarily mean someone is lazy. Have a great day. 😀 -Diane at RVtravel.com
I had someone in Florida charge groceries to my Walmart account. I live in Nevada. I immediately stopped my Walmart account. Never again!
I’ve never used nor do I plan to. Part of the travel experience is to walk around once in a while. I couldn’t be sitting for hours on end only to pull up and have them load up my groceries! I get the idea, it’s just not for me.