We all know Amazon prohibits shipping to any address other than the one on the order, even at the request of the buyer. Does anyone know if Walmart has a similar policy? I looked but I didn’t find anything.
I simply don’t do it. My customer’s are honest I feel because of what I sell. But if I apply Amazon’s rule of thumb across the board, I’m usually safe. I tell them Walmart doesn’t allow me to ship to another address. Actually had one ask me to change the address AFTER I shipped on the day it’s supposed to arrive. I told her that’s impossible for me to do and she needs to head down to the post office TODAY to catch it before it’s returned to me.
No clue about Walmart and policy – but if Amazon does it, I would think Walmart does or at least should and will once they realize they need to state a policy.
I had an item delivered on Friday, and less than an hour later the buyer messaged me re:INR, and less than 20 minutes after that I got a message from Walmart with the all caps “THIS IS AN ESCALATION” nonsense. The buyer just said they never got the item, but the Walmart message said the buyer expected a replacement and gave a different address to ship it to. I always assumed the Walmart support rep messages were the same as the Amazon messages, where they just tell you what the buyer said. Whether they are or not, this is the first time I’ve had a Walmart customer try to change the address. I don’t plan to reship the item since the tracking shows delivered, but I realized I don’t even know what Walmart’s policy is regarding address changes, or if they have one.
Not necessarily helpful, but I found this at Edit or Cancel an Order:
TEXT
Edit Options Unavailable
You might not have options to edit or cancel your order because:
- Your order is on its way to you.
- You ordered items from a Marketplace seller.
- We are unable to cancel your Marketplace order.
If you can’t edit or cancel your order, you can return most items.
What this actually made clear to me–and neither a Walmart Seller nor Buyer am I–is that Walmart uses “Delivery” differently than “Shipping”. A delivery order will be dropped off to the Buyer by an individual during a specific time window; a shipping order will be delivered by a carrier as usual.
A bit frustrating.
The only other Buyer-facing, possibly useful info I could find was about the Walmart Marketplace Promise, in the circumstance that “Tracking shows the item hasn’t shipped to the shipping address” (at Marketplace Sellers on Walmart). It sounds to me that if a Seller ships to an address other than the shipping address provided at the time of ordering, then the Buyer will not be protected by the WMP, and that Walmart policy therefore prohibits shipping elsewhere.
Yeah, that’s sus as ship. I mean, maybe they are going out of town and now want the thing that they were going to pack at their temporary address, but most online shoppers these days know that mail carriers (for all companies) are marking things “delivered” sooner than they are actually delivered due to crazy job expectations to bend space and time for what can actually be delivered in a single shift. So “delivered” can mean your order is currently at your doorstep, or it can mean that it is on the truck that might get to you sometime today but probably tomorrow.
But the immediate INR message to you, and then the replacement demand to a different address just feels like a scammer. 
This is possible. It’s also possible the buyer got a “delivered” email, opened their door, stuck their head out, didn’t immediately see the package, and filed an INR claim right off the bat.
I’ve also noticed that every message from Walmart support says it is an escalation, even when it’s a first contact and the issue is minor and not urgent. (It really… really ticks me off when people try to ramp up the pressure to provoke a response over nothing, but that’s a different issue.) I think the demand for a replacement might also be SOP, although the new shipping address probably isn’t.