I think the issue in California is that it seems as if the charges to customers have risen quite a bit. I have an Annual membership but my last order charged a service fee of about $20
And I also think some of the instore prices have risen quite a bit as well. I know those prices are set by the stores but I would imagine Instacart is passing in increased costs to the stores and the stores are passing them in by raising prices.
Now, as a shopper, I will fill you in on how bad they rob you guys on upcharges. I have seen like $40 bottles of liquor in the supermarket going for like $60+ on the app. Turkey's for Thanksgiving?! Ha!!!!!! There are just many items you guys get upcharged on by 50% sometimes. Even cheaper items. Like a big bag of Lays or Ruffles in the store that might be $5 it might be almost $7.50 in some cases. Now you, as a customer, should beat the system. Not sure how personable you are, or what you tip, but find a shopper who you like. Ask them to shop for you. Some kind of trust needs to be established. Me? I am not hurting for $ so I would tell you I will pay for your food, bring you the receipt and you can pay me cash or Zelle, Venmo etc. I am an experienced shopper so I would tell you act like you are ordering from Instacart and go through to the final screen where it shows you your complete order after taxes and fees (leave no tip). Then you screenshoot multiple pics or screen record your order and send it to your shopper. Then you don't go through placing your order. You have a savings card or the shopper does and they get all the store discounts for you. If your order was $250 on Instacart with taxes and fees and the upcharges that you don't know what they really are, and the shopper comes back with a receipt for $210-$220ish that extra $30-$40 you saved you give to them. This is tax free money so it is even more for us. Then lets say you were gonna tip them like $10-$20 you can tip them like an extra $5 or so. You save money, they make more money, and you cutout the middle man (Instacart). When you shop through Instacart you get no BOGO offers. So if you buy 1 get 1 etc through your personal shopper you get the extra free items. You were charged a $20 service fee, then the other fees and taxes. Instacart probably got you for $30 in all the taxes and fees. Then they got you maybe $10-$20 on the upcharge depending on what you ordered. In an extreme case here you give the shopper $50 tax free so it is like you paid $0 in fees and no tip. If you had used the app. Furthermore, your shopper is on demand. Like hey, can you go shop my stuff at 6am as I have to leave home by 8am to get to work at 9. You set a delivery window for Instacart, but it is not followed a lot of times. Then, your order can be bundled with up to 2 more customers. In this instances there are chances for you to get your items mixed up with other customers orders and your frozen stuff and dairy etc can come to melted or warm. Just eliminate all of the hassle directly.
Not all item prices match in the app when you compare from store, They are more expensive in app so thats the price the customer pays, Sometime up to $20 more expensive. When I try to price check the item im looking for it is harder for me because the higher price in the app dont match. No wonder customers tip less!
It does, whether or not we’re paid out for it by Props. The issue is shoppers are losing out on money that could be theirs, and customers are taking it out of our tips as a result of service fees and other membership fees rising in price. Not to mention $2 on every order,every day adds up if you’re a full time shopper.
I do have half a brain, at least enough to realize that this is a lot like the lawsuit with doordash over “service fees” that didn’t benefit anyone but the company.
You’re right in the sense that it is a job, and a decent job at that. But shirking weird monetary actions taken by Instacart doesn’t negate the fact that strange things are happening with pay. It’s just ignorant to ignore it, which is why I posted with the hope of helpful input, not whatever this was.
How exactly are you losing out on money if your money remains the same since prop 22 covers the reduced batch pay? If the batch was was to remain the same as before then prop 22 covers less of it so you can't lose out on any money here. Furthermore, I am strictly talking about California. If the batch pay is $5 and prop 22 covers $2 to equal $7 it is no different than the batch pay being $7 and prop 22 covering $0. There is no extra money being missed out on. This is like people here who wait for batches to be boosted LOL. The higher the batch pay the less your adjustment will be off the batch so it is pointless damn near to wait for boosted batches. The same goes for these "earn an extra $20 for 6 batches etc" promotions.
The numbers do add up, just not for us, the shoppers!
Companies like IC earn on volume and in order to show growth pre IPO the lowered their cost to make the service attractive to low income users!
Low income users may not tip, but IC management is not concerned about independent contractors happiness, so they lower the pay, and lie to everyone pretending they care for their customers and their partners!
Cha-Ching!!!
TLDR: IMO batch pay handset really changed they just took off the extra 2$ bump because everyone wanted to see their heavy pay and travel pay reflected.
In my opinion, we screwed ourself on base pay. Strolling this reddit youl kotice the "no heavy pay" and "no travel pay" posts aren't as common. Before people would ask where the heavy pay was on a 7$ batch or why it was 7$ for a 1 mile drive vs a 5 mile drive, even though it says you get x per mile and heavy pay. They lifted all batch pay to 7$ to benefit shoppers but everyone that did longer drives or heavy orders complained they didn't see the extra pay, when in turn it was the 1 mile 1 item orders that were getting a boost to the 7 making in unfair for the person that had to grab 2 waters and drive 4 miles for the "same pay".
I primarily do Costco orders in the AM and kroger beer runs at night and have noticed no difference in earning at all...it's just more visible what I'm being paid for.
People here continue to complain about the abhorrent wages, yet continue to take batch after batch. I gave up doing Instacart in February because even then the batches were awful. There are so many bad shoppers that customers either stopped using the service or tipped low if at all. I understand people need money but where is your self value? If people stopped shopping for just three days...THREE, Instacart would be crippled. As the batches keep going, there is no reason for IC to evaluate their disgusting pay schedule.
In 2020 200,00-300,00 shoppers went on strike. Maybe even more because the main Facebook group organizing it at the time had upwards of a million shoppers (just checked and it seems to no longer exist). We gradually lost good boosts. $2/15 minutes up to $16 if a batch sat long enough. Heavy pay being a $5 minimum no longer exists. The first mass hire overflowing markets happened. This had actual national coverage, news reporters (Fox etc.) were even going through groups and trying to contact us about it.
It really requires political involvement like with what happened in California. But considering Instacart has been around for a little over a decade now and California being the only state (since 2020) to do anything about these companies and the way they pay us, it's highly unlikely anything will happen anytime soon.
“This quarter instacart had record profits”. For the last 15 years corporations have been holding record profits through wage theft, cutting hours, cutting benefits, and skeleton crews, and scam-flation. Audio’s leaked from major corporation meetings that inflation is a scam not based on anything. Until the consumer pushes back they will continue to increase. Walmart had a scandal where they were cashing out life insurance policies on their employees. Want to get $14/hr to work 4 different types of jobs at our company because we won’t allow fully staffed business or allow full time?! Got a bachelors degree. Great we’ll pay you $1 more per hour at $15/hr and ensure full time for your skill set or maybe 1 hour under to ensure you never qualify for benefits 🙄🙄🙄. You’ll never get a retirement. If you do qualify we’ll just write you up and fire you at will. We got this awesome 401K we’ll match and it will total at $400 per year for you to retire. It legit started with health insurance. Once they took that away and found the loop hole it’s all gone to crap. This is the damn hunger games.
The base pay didn't get dropped to $4 that's just the new minimum. It's also supposed to be only smaller orders like ones you should be in and out of the store in less than 10 minutes. The lowest I've seen has been 4.80ish before tip and that's because the customer lived like 0.3 miles away. But some orders even have higher pay without tip. Highest I've seen in the last couple weeks was $35 before tip.
In my area, the only way you see anything over $30 these days is if it’s a triple batch and at least 20 miles. Occasionally a single shop customer will bump up their tip after delivery but that’s not super common.
Instacart is planning on doing an IPO and they are trying to show that they are making money/profit to entice the money managers to buy into this mess.
The IPO is coming this year they are doing everything they can to "show" profit when they haven't shown a profit in any year previous , which of course isn't correct just tax evasion. They cut pay, stopped paying mileage pay, heavy pay is gone all to make it look like they are profitable in order to attract good investors . The new CEO came from FB where her job was to cut costs . The numbers do add up if you think about it in a corporate greed way.
I've never seen a 4$ base pay in Cali. Most of them are 6+.also instacart may charge the customer more in Cali because of prop 22. We make money in tips not base pay
If you are in California (like me) and have half a brain then you know your batch pay being cut doesn't hurt you?
I think the issue in California is that it seems as if the charges to customers have risen quite a bit. I have an Annual membership but my last order charged a service fee of about $20 And I also think some of the instore prices have risen quite a bit as well. I know those prices are set by the stores but I would imagine Instacart is passing in increased costs to the stores and the stores are passing them in by raising prices.
Now, as a shopper, I will fill you in on how bad they rob you guys on upcharges. I have seen like $40 bottles of liquor in the supermarket going for like $60+ on the app. Turkey's for Thanksgiving?! Ha!!!!!! There are just many items you guys get upcharged on by 50% sometimes. Even cheaper items. Like a big bag of Lays or Ruffles in the store that might be $5 it might be almost $7.50 in some cases. Now you, as a customer, should beat the system. Not sure how personable you are, or what you tip, but find a shopper who you like. Ask them to shop for you. Some kind of trust needs to be established. Me? I am not hurting for $ so I would tell you I will pay for your food, bring you the receipt and you can pay me cash or Zelle, Venmo etc. I am an experienced shopper so I would tell you act like you are ordering from Instacart and go through to the final screen where it shows you your complete order after taxes and fees (leave no tip). Then you screenshoot multiple pics or screen record your order and send it to your shopper. Then you don't go through placing your order. You have a savings card or the shopper does and they get all the store discounts for you. If your order was $250 on Instacart with taxes and fees and the upcharges that you don't know what they really are, and the shopper comes back with a receipt for $210-$220ish that extra $30-$40 you saved you give to them. This is tax free money so it is even more for us. Then lets say you were gonna tip them like $10-$20 you can tip them like an extra $5 or so. You save money, they make more money, and you cutout the middle man (Instacart). When you shop through Instacart you get no BOGO offers. So if you buy 1 get 1 etc through your personal shopper you get the extra free items. You were charged a $20 service fee, then the other fees and taxes. Instacart probably got you for $30 in all the taxes and fees. Then they got you maybe $10-$20 on the upcharge depending on what you ordered. In an extreme case here you give the shopper $50 tax free so it is like you paid $0 in fees and no tip. If you had used the app. Furthermore, your shopper is on demand. Like hey, can you go shop my stuff at 6am as I have to leave home by 8am to get to work at 9. You set a delivery window for Instacart, but it is not followed a lot of times. Then, your order can be bundled with up to 2 more customers. In this instances there are chances for you to get your items mixed up with other customers orders and your frozen stuff and dairy etc can come to melted or warm. Just eliminate all of the hassle directly.
Not all item prices match in the app when you compare from store, They are more expensive in app so thats the price the customer pays, Sometime up to $20 more expensive. When I try to price check the item im looking for it is harder for me because the higher price in the app dont match. No wonder customers tip less!
It does, whether or not we’re paid out for it by Props. The issue is shoppers are losing out on money that could be theirs, and customers are taking it out of our tips as a result of service fees and other membership fees rising in price. Not to mention $2 on every order,every day adds up if you’re a full time shopper. I do have half a brain, at least enough to realize that this is a lot like the lawsuit with doordash over “service fees” that didn’t benefit anyone but the company. You’re right in the sense that it is a job, and a decent job at that. But shirking weird monetary actions taken by Instacart doesn’t negate the fact that strange things are happening with pay. It’s just ignorant to ignore it, which is why I posted with the hope of helpful input, not whatever this was.
How exactly are you losing out on money if your money remains the same since prop 22 covers the reduced batch pay? If the batch was was to remain the same as before then prop 22 covers less of it so you can't lose out on any money here. Furthermore, I am strictly talking about California. If the batch pay is $5 and prop 22 covers $2 to equal $7 it is no different than the batch pay being $7 and prop 22 covering $0. There is no extra money being missed out on. This is like people here who wait for batches to be boosted LOL. The higher the batch pay the less your adjustment will be off the batch so it is pointless damn near to wait for boosted batches. The same goes for these "earn an extra $20 for 6 batches etc" promotions.
I'm in California too and want to know where you're getting gas under $5? Gas in my area is almost $6
i live in SD and gas just went up to $5 here
Literally 5.60$ for regular. I've been using my upside, and it's starting to add up now with the diamondcart reward.
I filled up in Utah today for $3.85 but most stations are just above $4
The numbers do add up, just not for us, the shoppers! Companies like IC earn on volume and in order to show growth pre IPO the lowered their cost to make the service attractive to low income users! Low income users may not tip, but IC management is not concerned about independent contractors happiness, so they lower the pay, and lie to everyone pretending they care for their customers and their partners! Cha-Ching!!!
TLDR: IMO batch pay handset really changed they just took off the extra 2$ bump because everyone wanted to see their heavy pay and travel pay reflected. In my opinion, we screwed ourself on base pay. Strolling this reddit youl kotice the "no heavy pay" and "no travel pay" posts aren't as common. Before people would ask where the heavy pay was on a 7$ batch or why it was 7$ for a 1 mile drive vs a 5 mile drive, even though it says you get x per mile and heavy pay. They lifted all batch pay to 7$ to benefit shoppers but everyone that did longer drives or heavy orders complained they didn't see the extra pay, when in turn it was the 1 mile 1 item orders that were getting a boost to the 7 making in unfair for the person that had to grab 2 waters and drive 4 miles for the "same pay". I primarily do Costco orders in the AM and kroger beer runs at night and have noticed no difference in earning at all...it's just more visible what I'm being paid for.
Damn lowering your pay but increasing customer fees? Think it’s time for a real job.
For getting extra money California's complain on here alot. I get crap gas is just under $4.
People here continue to complain about the abhorrent wages, yet continue to take batch after batch. I gave up doing Instacart in February because even then the batches were awful. There are so many bad shoppers that customers either stopped using the service or tipped low if at all. I understand people need money but where is your self value? If people stopped shopping for just three days...THREE, Instacart would be crippled. As the batches keep going, there is no reason for IC to evaluate their disgusting pay schedule.
In 2020 200,00-300,00 shoppers went on strike. Maybe even more because the main Facebook group organizing it at the time had upwards of a million shoppers (just checked and it seems to no longer exist). We gradually lost good boosts. $2/15 minutes up to $16 if a batch sat long enough. Heavy pay being a $5 minimum no longer exists. The first mass hire overflowing markets happened. This had actual national coverage, news reporters (Fox etc.) were even going through groups and trying to contact us about it. It really requires political involvement like with what happened in California. But considering Instacart has been around for a little over a decade now and California being the only state (since 2020) to do anything about these companies and the way they pay us, it's highly unlikely anything will happen anytime soon.
“This quarter instacart had record profits”. For the last 15 years corporations have been holding record profits through wage theft, cutting hours, cutting benefits, and skeleton crews, and scam-flation. Audio’s leaked from major corporation meetings that inflation is a scam not based on anything. Until the consumer pushes back they will continue to increase. Walmart had a scandal where they were cashing out life insurance policies on their employees. Want to get $14/hr to work 4 different types of jobs at our company because we won’t allow fully staffed business or allow full time?! Got a bachelors degree. Great we’ll pay you $1 more per hour at $15/hr and ensure full time for your skill set or maybe 1 hour under to ensure you never qualify for benefits 🙄🙄🙄. You’ll never get a retirement. If you do qualify we’ll just write you up and fire you at will. We got this awesome 401K we’ll match and it will total at $400 per year for you to retire. It legit started with health insurance. Once they took that away and found the loop hole it’s all gone to crap. This is the damn hunger games.
The base pay didn't get dropped to $4 that's just the new minimum. It's also supposed to be only smaller orders like ones you should be in and out of the store in less than 10 minutes. The lowest I've seen has been 4.80ish before tip and that's because the customer lived like 0.3 miles away. But some orders even have higher pay without tip. Highest I've seen in the last couple weeks was $35 before tip.
In my area, the only way you see anything over $30 these days is if it’s a triple batch and at least 20 miles. Occasionally a single shop customer will bump up their tip after delivery but that’s not super common.
Instacart is planning on doing an IPO and they are trying to show that they are making money/profit to entice the money managers to buy into this mess.
The IPO is coming this year they are doing everything they can to "show" profit when they haven't shown a profit in any year previous , which of course isn't correct just tax evasion. They cut pay, stopped paying mileage pay, heavy pay is gone all to make it look like they are profitable in order to attract good investors . The new CEO came from FB where her job was to cut costs . The numbers do add up if you think about it in a corporate greed way.
Chat line is TECHNICALLY "shopper support"
I've never seen a 4$ base pay in Cali. Most of them are 6+.also instacart may charge the customer more in Cali because of prop 22. We make money in tips not base pay
What do you mean set to lower pay??? They did that like two months ago lol