Walmart customers in six states across the country, including Florida, will soon be able to have their orders delivered by drone in under 30 minutes.
Walmart’s new delivery service, powered by drone services provider DroneUp (Website), will be the first large-scale drone delivery network in the country and is expected to cover 34 regions by the end of the year – possibly serving up to 4 million homes, including Tampa and Orlando.
The service is currently only available in just a handful of towns in northwest Arkansas (near the company’s headquarters), and only for a small list of items (because there’s no way you’re getting a memory foam mattress flown to your home … yet). During the pilot, Walmart was limiting drone deliveries to a maximum of four pounds of goods or less with an added $10 delivery fee, ut that will be scaled up to 10 pounds with a reduced fee of $3.99 in the next phase of the launch.
Drone delivery will be available from 8 a.m.-8 p.m. from at least three participating Walmart stores in each city. The exact Orlando locations to have the service are yet to be shared publicly.
Walmart expects to be delivering more than 1 million packages a year by drones when the service has been fully rolled out.
I sure hope they are better at accurate deliveries as opposed to how they do it now (as of this writing).
I stopped ordering from Walmart after 2 of my deliveries were delivered to someone else. Both were fully refunded when I complained about the misdeliveries and could show photographic proof where they were delivered was NOT my front porch or my front door.
I have a warning doorbell that goes off anytime someone cones to my door, they have to walk up a 66′ wooden wrap around handicap ramp, the doorbell goes off as soon as they enter the ramp, so I can be at an open front door before they even get there! And I am disabled and legally blind, so I am always home when expecting a delivery from any service. USPS, UPS and FedEx I have never had issues with, but Walmart store to home delivery turned out to be a nightmare!
I might give them another chance when they start using drones for delivery, but I’m just not sure I can even trust them to get a delivery from store to home, even with a drone! Time will tell.