I’d say that I get at least 90% of my groceries from Walmart and ever since 2020, I exclusively use Walmart pickup. In this blog post, we’re going to look at 7 benefits of Walmart grocery pickup and also talk about 3 downsides as well.
1. Saves Time
One of the most obvious benefits to doing any kind of grocery pickup is the immense amount of time that you save.
Instead of walking up and down every aisle in the store your shopping becomes a series of scrolls and clicks.
Not only that, but you completely avoid waiting in line and doing a traditional item-by-item checkout.
Everything is paid for on the Walmart app when you submit your order, so all you have to do is show up at the store to receive your groceries.
2. It’s Convenient
Another benefit of grocery pickup and that is the convenience of it.
When you show up at Walmart to get your groceries, you don’t have to go into the store. Instead, you park in an available Pick Up spot and the app will automatically check you in. An employee will then come out and load the groceries into your car, and that’s literally it.
3. It’s Free
Walmart Grocery pickup is 100% completely free. There’s no cost other than the cost of your groceries to take advantage of grocery pickup.
Walmart even states on their website that associates do not accept tips, so don’t feel obligated to give a tip.
At this time, there is a $35 minimum for your order depending on where you live, and this just means that your entire grocery bill must be at least this much in order to place a pickup order in the first place.
4. Returns Are Super Easy
Let’s say you notice the yogurt that you bought is past expiration. In the walmart app, you can simply find the item you ordered, say that it was expired, request a refund and Walmart will issue you a refund to your card for the yogurt no-questions-asked.
The best part is that you don’t even have to go back to the store to return it.
5. Generous Substitutes (most of the time)
When an item on your grocery order is out of stock, Walmart will replace the item with an equivalent or better item at no extra cost to you.
In this case, they didn’t have the walmart brand of almond milk, so they substituted the name-brand for the same price, and on the same order, the store was out of individual lemmons, so instead, they substituted an entire bag for just $1.59.
You of course you have the option whether or not you want to accept the substitute. So for example one time I remember ordering fresh blueberries and they wanted to substitute frozen blueberries which was a nice thought, but I rejected the substitution and this took the item off my order.
6. Easy to Reorder Your Essential Groceries
Walmart keeps track of the grocery items that you buy, and this makes it really easy to go back through this list and add these items that you regularly buy to your cart, or even find the type of curtains you bought over a year ago.
You can see a list of all the items that you bought in the app or online at walmart.com, create your own lists, and see a list of your essentials which is an automatically generated list of your most commonly bought items.
7. You Get 5% Cash Back
The last grocery pickup benefit here is a big one and that’s the 5% cash back that you earn with the Walmart Rewards Card.
Basically when you use your Capital One Walmart Rewards card to pay for your Walmart grocery pickup, delivery, or walmart.com purchases, you earn 5% cash back which can be redeemed as a statement credit or as a physical check sent to your house in the mail.
During my first 8 months with the card, I’ve earned well over $200 cash back just by using this rewards card to pay for my groceries at walmart.
A screenshot of my Walmart rewards cash back over the period of 8 months.
Grocery Pickup Downsides
So those are some of the benefits I see when it comes to walmart pickup. There are definitely others like the fact that you avoid impulse purchases, but at the same time I do also see some downsides to doing grocery pickup with Walmart.
1. Can’t Pick Your Own Produce
One downside is the fact that you can’t pick your own produce, and this one took me sometime to get used to, but Walmart does have a freshness guarantee.
Remember that I already mentioned how easy it is to return items that you’re not satisfied with, so this one isn’t too bad in the end.
2. Can’t Easily Read Labels
Another downside is that it can sometimes be hard to read labels.
I don’t know about you, but I’m definitely a label reader because I like to know the ingredients that are in the food that I eat, and it’s rare, but sometimes the packaging is really hard to read, but most times you’ll find a high resolution ingredients list with the nutrition facts in a nicely formatted table.
3. Not Everything is Available for Pickup
The last downside is the fact that everything is not available for pickup.
For example, for the longest time I could not get Extra Raisin Raisin Bran cereal or a 2 pound bag of limes as part of my Walmart pickup order, which I’m not sure why that is the case, but hopefully in the future, Walmart will make the entire store available for pickup.
