Walmart.com ShippingPass members get free 2-day shipping with no minimum for an annual fee of $49. There’s also a free 30-day trial.
Update: Shipping Pass has been discontinued.
Walmart ShippingPass
After a rocky targeted rollout last year, Walmart now publicly launched their ShippingPass service which offers free 2-day shipping on all walmart.com orders with no minimum purchase amount.
The cost for an annual ShippingPass membership is $49.
It’s still being advertised as ShippingPass Pilot indicating that there they are still in experimental stages, and things might change over time.
As with Amazon’s Prime free-shipping offering, the free shipping is only for items sold/shipped by Walmart themselves, not items sold by third-party sellers on walmart.com. And as with Amazon Prime, ShippingPass excludes items purchased for resale.
ShippingPass terms can be found here.
Free returns
Another big perk to ShippingPass is they offer free returns. Presumably, they’ll send you a free shipping label to make the return.
This ShippingPass benefit trumps Amazon’s Prime, which does not offer any special return policy for Prime members. (On Amazon, certain items such as clothing typically have free returns, and defective items can be returned free. This is the same for Prime and non-Prime members.)
Update: A reader points out that Walmart already offers free online returns. Wow, that’s a nice perk I never knew Walmart had! So you don’t need to be a ShippingPass member to get free returns.
Free Trial
Walmart offers a free 30-day trial to test out ShippingPass.
You do need to give in a credit card for the trial, and you’ll be automatically charged the $49 fee unless you cancel before the trial expires. Future years auto-renew unless you opt out of auto-renewal online or over the phone. [You can get a full refund if you cancel within three business days or if you never used the service.]
If you already signed up for a paid ShippingPass plan, you’ll get 30-days added to your membership in place of the free trial.
Limit of one free trial per customer.
Walmart Versus Amazon
ShippingPass is obviously Walmart’s response to Amazon Prime. Let’s take a look at how they match up.
Edge to Walmart:
- Cost Walmart charges $49, half of Amazon’s $99.
- Free Returns ShippingPass offers free return shipping while Prime does not. Big advantage to Walmart here.
Edge to Amazon:
- Benefits Prime offers other benefits outside of retail: Prime Video, Prime Music, and access to the Kindle Owners’ Lending Library.
- Value Amazon is a much broader market for a couple of reasons. First, you get free shipping on Amazon Marketplace items that use Fulfillment by Amazon, which is huge. Second, Amazon probably has a wider range of goods (my guess).
- Multi-Person Use Amazon allows two members of a household to share one Prime membership (it used to be even better), while Walmart does not offer such an option. This might not be a big deal since Prime sharing members can see each others info (orders, cards, etc.), and such people might be able to simply share one ShippingPass account entirely.
- Scope Amazon also has numerous other programs only available to Prime members such as Prime Fresh, Prime Now, Prime Pantry, and Dash.
My Thoughts
Personally, I think ShippingPass is an intriguing offer for someone who prefers shopping online and who would use it quite a bit (e.g. a family).
Here’s why: I find that Amazon is not competitively priced on low-cost daily items like a bar of soap or stick of deodorant. Prices get jacked up to cover the exorbitant shipping fees, effectively negating the ‘No Minimum’ advertised. (The exception is Add-On items and Prime Pantry.) There are still many cases that Prime is useful, but it’s not across the board.
Walmart, on the other hand, seems to price their online goods in line with the regular discounted prices that we see at Walmart and Target stores. As of now, you can get a $2 thing of hand sanitizer shipped free with 2-day shipping. Technically, this is something available with Prime too, but it doesn’t actually happen much since Amazon will just peg it as an Add-On item.
Of course, Walmart might change all this in the future and start making the equivalent of Add-On items as well. At the moment, however, I think this is the sweet-spot for value from ShippingPass.
I also find Amazon to be less consistent than Walmart, and when buying daily items, this hinders the speed with which you can get your shopping done.
Target.com is also a good option since REDcard holders get free shipping with no minimum, but I find that target.com pegs many lower-cost items as ‘only available in store.’
In the end, I’d say more people will get value out of Prime due to their wider range of offerings and their broader market. Conversely, ShippingPass might not be worth it for a lot of people. For families or others who like ordering online as much as possible, ShippingPass could be a great deal.
A year later and things are no better. Ordered last year with the free 30 day trial and “supposedly” my item was lost and then reshipped and so I ended up receiving the supposedly lost order AND the reshipped order a few days later than originally promised. This year I just ordered a swimming pool without the shipping pass but was suppose to have 2 day free shipping and now we are looking at it being 1-4 days late. Not impressed. Would never pay for Walmart’s 2 day shipping. They are inconsistent at best. You’ve basically got a 1 in 3 chance that it wont come within the 2 day time frame, this figure is based off of experience. If your not in a rush and its FREE 2 day shipping fine. But if you NEED it in 2 days don’t assume it will work out.
I’ve used Amazon Prime and Prime Pantry for many of my own purchases over the years as well as placing large grocery orders every month for an elderly, out of state, relative. I also placed two or more Walmart orders a month for items which were not needed as quickly or when they were much less expensive than Amazon. I signed up for Shipping Pass thinking it would be a no brainer….. lower prices and two day shipping. Well after two months every order I placed on Walmart.com would get cancelled. I would have to call in to customer service who would clear the order and I would have to place it again. All in all a huge waste of time and considering I have placed more than 100 orders in the past 2 years with Walmart.com and have not changed my billing address or payment methods it is completely unwarranted. After multiple calls to Walmart.com and Walmart Corporate failed to resolve the issue I have cancelled my shipping Pass membership and am back to Amazon.
I loved it during the free trial. Some items even arrived the next day, and all the others arrived in 2 days, right to my front door. After I paid for it, many items took weeks to arrive, and some even took a month! and the worst part is that they deliver to my local post office, and then I get yelled at because my PO box isn’t on the package! I want my money back, but they refuse! WHAT A WASTE!!!!!
I am a WM shipping pass customer. NOTHING but problems!!!!! Had it since they started the program.
So ordering today with a total of over 75.00. They ship their items free value ship orders over 50.00.
All items were a WM item and they charged me shipping! Been through this before! Still haven’t been reimbursed for past orders with same issue. DONE!!!! Stick to Amazon! trust me…, If anyone says they haven’t had any issues? They haven’t ordered enough to have an issue. It will happen! You will not get your money back for the shipping they charged and you will forever speak to someone who does not know their own shipping policies. the guy did not speak hardly any English and had the nerve to tell me I don’t know how this works! Asked him if he read the fine print cause I did….. hours later still waiting for a Mgr. to call. Like that will happen! walmart? What ever
i hate ship pass because i have tried multi ways of ordering a monday before 11 am pst and i received it 11 days later…. tuesday before 11 am cut off received it 15 days later wed received it 7 days later thurs received it 21 days later although in their defense they said it was lost… ordered another item on a thurs to see and it was 8 days later a friday and it was 12 days later just ordered something on 29th of sept and it states it will be here oct 13… i also ordered 2 mattress for ship pass and they automatically went for same day pick up at local store! yet they still cant find my order… i received my other order 5 days late all ship pass elgi and i paid shipping? and the cat little was butted and the spray for the counters were leaking…
Walmart has ended its open trial of ShippingPass. You now go onto a waiting list. They seem to be reconsidering the program based on all the surveys I get about it in my mailbox. This must be unprofitable for them because very often orders are broken up into many different shipments, which gets expensive fast. They do get a discount, but when you factor in labor and supplies, it doesn’t take many low value (but heavy) items shipped in multiple boxes to kick them into unprofitability.
I just had them ship me four gallons of Hawaiian Punch (less than $10 order) and the box was packaged so poorly three shifted and fell out. They had to resend it. This weighed almost 33lbs. The elaborate packaging around glass jars was also labor-intensive. Very few of my items make it within two days either. Most took 3-4. It was worth it to me because it saved me a trip to Walmart and I wasn’t in a hurry.
Seeing them slam shut new trial memberships this quickly suggests problems.
I found this and would like to offer my experiences. About a year ago, I signed up for Amazon Prime. I thought it would be nice to have two day shipping. It used to be in the “old” days of Amazon, I used to order things and would get them either the next day or two days later at the most. The distribution center is only 35 miles from my house and hasn’t changed. Perhaps it was not feasible the bigger they got. Initially, everything worked just fine with Amazon Prime. I placed my orders and received everything within two days. I got a lot of things that I needed. One thing that I ordered a lot of was non-perishable foods. It would be cheaper for me to purchase them at wholesale places which I don’t get to shop at a lot. But it was convenient for me despite the higher price to have those things delivered to my door. I did a regular amount of purchasing of food items. By March, none of those things were Prime eligible. They moved to Prime Pantry. My feeling was that I was already paying the monthly fee and I wasn’t about to pay anything else. I would just have to plan ahead. But Prime still worked for me overall. Some of the items even came on Sundays. Fast forward to the famous mid-summer holiday this year. I was entertaining that weekend and I purchased some things for around my house. When I placed the order, it said they would be arriving that Friday. To be honest, I didn’t think that much about opening the confirmation email. I sat around that whole day and waited for a package. I finally decided to track the package after 4 p.m. and unfortunately, it was due to arrive the following Tuesday, even though the order was placed on Wednesday afternoon. I would have had no reason to expect anything less than a Friday delivery, especially since it is considered two day shipping. Somewhere between the time I confirmed my order and I got the confirmation, the shipping had changed to the following Tuesday. I was very upset as I needed those things for the weekend, not after the fact. So, I called Amazon and their suggestion was that they called UPS. UPS NEVER will take shipping requests from random people. I ended up calling back twice that afternoon getting hollow apologies. The third time I called and asked if there was anything that could be done. A very nice young woman who was stateside understood my dilemma and helped ship the items overnight that I could get. I couldn’t get all of them, but some I could. The representative told me the truth about Prime—THEY DO NOT GUARANTEE 2 DAY SHIPPING. THEY GUARANTEE THAT YOU WILL RECEIVE YOUR ITEMS 2 DAYS AFTER THEY SHIP THEM. While it may take away a day or two, I realized I was not paying for the delivery that I was… Read more »
Both of them are a joke. I can’t remember the last time I actually received my items in 2 days from Amazon. I tried the free trial with Walmart and it is now 6 days later and I still have not received my items. Yeah, I’m really going to pay to not get anything I order within the delivery times promised.
In walmart.com it says “What is ShippingPass and how will it make my life easier?
You told us what you wanted and now we’re delivering it. ShippingPass is our new subscription program designed to bring you unlimited 2-day free shipping for one year with no minimum order. Get what you need ― fast!” When I took to the representative on the phone name(Natalie) she say it just for free shipping it is not guarantee for 2 day period shipping I was like I guess you should read the policy first before you tell that to your customers. I have been waiting for my items for 1 week now and they are still don’t know where it is.
There are a lot of hidden gotchas in ShippingPass. As others have indicated, the two-day shipping actually means two days in transit between Walmart’s shipping center and the CITY of destination (not your home). There is also a hidden daily limit of four orders, after which all other orders are cancelled for a “payment problem” which isn’t the case. Order processing often takes 24-48 hours before it touches a shipper, and that seems to be almost exclusively FedEx Ground in this area. FedEx Ground delivery service maps show a pretty even circumference for 2-day delivery meaning it theoretically should only take two days from a regional warehouse to reach just about anyone in a three state radius. But the package actually has to leave Walmart’s warehouse and hit the FedEx processing center.
FedEx Ground has been lumbering over a lot more parcel shipments so they’ve been adding distribution centers. We just had one opened in Farmington, New York, just south of Rochester.
As far as I can tell, Walmart is relying on FedEx’s promises more than direct experience. Amazon seems to instinctively know when a shipper won’t reach a Prime customer on time and will vary the shipper or even do an overnight upgrade when they doubt it will get there within two days. Walmart seems more willing to shrug their shoulders.
Unfortunately for them $49 a year is a lot of money just to spend on free two-day shipping for some people, and if they cannot meet that commitment it isn’t going to fly. They also need to coordinate their marketing with their actual terms and conditions, which take away most of the marketingspeak. Walmart can pretty much do as it pleases with this program and not refund you.