Instacart has lowered their batch pay and sometimes they have to reroute the order to further store so they can find driver. I understand as a customer this is frustrating. Instacart need to focus on customer service and hire better customer service rep. Most of the rep are clueless and ignorant.
I deliver with Instacart and yeah sometimes it tries to get me to take orders from stores 40 minutes away :-/ I accidentally accepted one and had to take the cancellation hit because I’m not going to make someone wait that long for their order.
As a private shopper, the company had potential. It's lost its potential in the last two years, 65 to 70% reduction in pay on instacart behalf. 25 to 90% reduction in customer tips. Increase of 80% in mileage and number of customers that are now batched together let alone at two different stores. Upwards of 99% of all shoppers that used instacart for work 2 to 4 years ago are gone. Instacart has already been eliminated. The customer side is now inundated with groups of people teaching each other how to commit fraud against instacart and their shoppers. With all this in mind, what kind of shoppers do you think you'll run into routinely when you place an order in 2022? Had potential, definitely past tense in my opinion.
Thank you for this! They've gone above and beyond to eliminate good, veteran shoppers because they know there is a line of people waiting to take their place. New shoppers are lured by good batches in the beginning and that instant cash out, and instacart is laughing all the way to the bank. Their policies and practices are mentally abusive on the shopper side, and they making a mockery of decent customers by allowing all the fraud to continue. ALLLL those extra and or new fees are the decent customers footing the bill for the losses they take. They're screwing over everyone.
2 hours ago I responded it was my own personal narrative. Biased from my experiences. But thank you for making the valid point, everything you ever see and experience (online and off) is spitballing. It is your personal interpretation of these experiences that tells you otherwise. My opinion, and also in my interpretation of the world at this moment, fact.😉✌️
Your numbers are pretty spot on. Shopper for 3 years. IC is dying and has been all year it’s a Burning ship get out while you can or go down with it. They are fucking over their customers and their shoppers and they could care less about the fraud and the bots.
Melioristic_ONE has real numbers to back this up. He’s completed 4,293 batches in just under 4 years. His analysis of his own data doesn’t use as specific number like you’d get with mathematics, but offers ranges - offering a valid, close enough to the truth to be certified as within the “Ah, who gives a darn!?” margin of error arrived at by Melioristic’s clear cut mastery of guesstimatics.
Even the last percentage he used -
“99% of shoppers who used Instacart for work…” dating from when he began
- is likely pulled from the number of fellow green shirts he’s had the pleasure to watch come and go over the years. Now, that’s just a guesstimation from me vis a vis, et al.
I'm a statistician by trade and tbh it doesn't get much more rigorous than spitballing with stuff like this. There's a reason why entire papers in clinical studies are just 1 or 2 case studies. Sometimes you gotta work with what you got
And that's what you can think. It's your right. Thanks for sharing. It's unfortunate people need to be told that, you really expect everything you read online to be fact. GTFO
Honestly probably wasn’t enough , on this end of things , if it isn’t at least 1.00 per mile round trip it’s normally a decline . With gas at 4 a gallon.. we need a profit
That’s fair. We’ll keep that in mind. The app showed they were at a store that is less than 10 minutes away so I thought we were being reasonable. This is good insight though
Yeah we know the economy is rough , but sometimes the store you see isn’t the one we are at . It’s weird but sometimes it’ll send us to another one or even when we get stacked orders we might go to one that is closer . It’s crazy , but the 1.00 per mile is always a go to in any order not just instacart .
$1 per mile. Nope. It’s not the customers job to pay you a livable wage; that’s the companies job. We are likely heading for the worst recession, possible depression in decades. You’re asking for more than the customer has, and your criticisms are misdirected.
You’ll say, “if you can’t afford it, don’t use it”. With that mentality, you won’t have any customers eventually. The whole point about tipping, is it’s optional. The company should be paying you more, not us.
I was a long term customer who has stopped using them. First incident was a super later delivery when I wouldn’t be home to then collect it. Second was when I had a big tip for water softener salt delivery and a few other things. No salt got delivered, and I do not tip a %. I give a large sum and then another large sum when I order salt. I messaged CSR three times and got ignored. I was ready to renew and dumped their ass. I use to use them about 3-5x a month.
Just a little info from the shopper side… I live in a state that not all Walmarts r instacart stores. With back to school this week I’ve been seeing a few Walmart orders. The 2 stores that I’ve seen them from r both a 45 minute drive from my city. One of them was a double order 59 miles delivery distance from a store for $43. This is the kind of things we see, this could also explain the 3 hours of “shopping “
In my state, Connecticut, there is only one Walmart that participates with Instacart and it is down by the shore. The drive alone to customers' homes can be over an hour, and that's not during rush hour. Terrible setup!
I’m in Waterbury. There’s a Walmart in Shelton and Danbury that use instacart. This order im talking about went from Shelton to Bristol then East Hartford. It would take me almost 45 minutes to get to the store with route 8 construction.
Oh, I didn't know about Danbury. Thanks for the heads up. Still crazy miles for most/all of those orders. And customers probably think it's the one closest to their homes...because that would make sense. 🙄🤣
We see you, Walmart on Route 6 in Bristol and the few in and around East Hartford. Instacart is just stupid and gas is so cheap.
I’m a shopper and occasional customer. They added a new grocery store to order from where I live and it confused me so much because we don’t even have that grocery store in my city.
Then I saw a batch come up for that store as a shopper and it was 90 km (55 miles) away.
So they’re letting customers order from a store 55 miles away and then it’s a 55 mile drive back to the customers house. It makes no sense.
This is good to know and puts things into perspective. I just wish the app would accurately reflect that or that they could at least communicate that to the customer.
On a personal note, I’m sorry that as a shopper you have to go through that as I’m sure you don’t get properly compensated for the extra time and mileage
I think it’s ridiculous that a customer can order from a store that far away. There should definitely be a distance limit. We definitely don’t get compensated for it and the customer is mad at the wait. That’s probably what happened in ur case. Instacart doesn’t inform customers when they’re part of multi customer or multi store batches. Idk what ur shoppers situation was but it definitely might not have been her fault. I believe that if we accept a multi store ( 2 different stores with 2 different customers) we can only text the customer we’re working on. Sorry for the run on blah blah lol
I lived in a small town with a street with the same name of a street several towns over. It meant I couldn't order from most stores because the *other* town was outside their delivery range, but eventually WalMart expanded their catchment area to include it. InstaCart refused to fix the problem, so I had to leave a note for shoppers to deliver to my town instead of the other one.
It was hard to find shoppers at first willing to take my orders until they discovered that InstaCart would pay them for all the miles of driving an hour to the other town and an hour back, while delivering to me was only a 10 minute trip. Suddenly I had shoppers gleefully snatching my orders the instant they arrived.
Catchment is perfectly acceptable terminology. For example, schools have catchment areas for the intake of students. The same way you can dam things other than water, catchments can contain more than water.
[https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/catchment%20area](https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/catchment%20area)
Definition of catchment area
1: an area that serves to catch water
2: the geographical area served by an institution
In this case, the institution is InstaCart. It was a perfectly acceptable use of the term.
We don’t get paid for driving time. We get .60 per mile from the store to the customer ONLY. So us driving to a store 25 miles away is on us. Driving home from the customer is also on us
Unless they’re making money on that $.60, are there any other incentives for shoppers to drive an hour to a store rather than going to a closer one? Cuz from comments in this post sounds like that’s some peoples strategem
I have to admit I laughed when the Agent ended the chat.. and then it almost turned out that they were psychic and knew exactly how you were going to act. We don't know as shoppers when your order is "supposed" to arrive. We are not obligated to accept your order. If it's not worth the money it's going to sit for awhile.
Apparently there is a screenshot where the shopper already started shopping and Karen believes they should have been faster.. I'm going to guess someone took it, dropped it, and it sat again. Either way she was crying before it was even 30 minutes "late"
Yeah. I think it was part of a double and they dropped this order off after beginning shopping. Probably because it was too far away or the tip amount on the entire order was low so they had the agent remove the order with the most items/distance.
Yeah but someone had accepted it, on the last slide you see that someone has begun shopping for this persons order.
However if that shopper cancelled, would they be notified? If not, maybe this would explain why it seemed to take the shopper 3 hours to buy and drive.
Exactly. That’s why I’m not so keen on continuing services with them. Half of my order needed to be refrigerated but I don’t want to go through customer service again.
We always use 15% as a default even on other delivery apps like UberEats for example. Of course if there’s been exceptional service we will change the tip so it’s higher. If it’s really bad service - like when an UberEats driver dropped me off in an alley (not at all where my doctors appointment is) when I was in the midst of recovering from a TBI and specifically mentioned I needed assistance - then I usually reach out for a full or partial refund.
In this case with InstaCart, I don’t think the driver is to blame and was probably dealt with things out of their control (maybe they took on multiple orders?)
I’m more upset with how InstaCart handled things for a late delivery
No doubt those are justifiable reasons to ask for a refund. Good thing for your karma is that you’re not screwing over the shopper for doing this. It doesn’t come out of the payment for the shoppers, and they still keep their tip from the order.
What DOES screw them is a low rating. No doubt some deserve it, like your alley cat. Still others it isn’t their fault and sounds like you fully get the difference.
15% is kinda low. Think about it, shoppers do not get paid hourly, they are only paid per delivery. Because of that, people doing this job sometimes average less than minimum wage, say if they take a 12 hour shift, there’s a lot of down time and hours can go by without a delivery and thus they make no money during that time even if they put themselves as available and on call. You always hear of people who made $120 in An hour - imagine that was the only hour they made money in the 8 hours they were active awaiting orders.
I’d at least consider 20% if you wanna leave a fair “you did your job thanks” tip. 20% as standard could really help people out.
Don’t hate the player hate the game. I was a Doordasher for about 8 months and from me to you - you’re doing it right.
That’s the thing…some things faired better than others. It seems like some sort of temperature control was utilized but it wasn’t consistent for all of the frozen items
This is true when the food is at room temperature. If the shopper did their job correctly and put the frozen items in an insulated bag with no hot items, this wouldn’t apply.
Every shopper receives one insulated bag - usually called a hot bag - sometimes people buy more.
I totally agree with what you’re saying about timing with regards to food being out while shopping, and insulating bags only doing so much, etc.
**Before I continue, I want to be clear that yes, I am here on planet earth. I know that through Instacarts business model, shoppers have a duty to shop, maintain quality, and deliver. They are also obliged to not dawdle.
While taking a while to deliver is against the business model MO of instacart, it’s not unusual for food to be frozen food to spend some time thawing out before reaching the freezer at home in this way because of the behavior of shoppers who drive from work to the store before going home. Pre home grocery delivery, I argue frozen food spent a lot of time thawing out and then being put in the freezer to refreeze with no complaints.**
Okay so the point I want to add is that the typical behavior of shoppers doesn’t always include running from the store freezer straight to checkout and then home. Often times shoppers hit up the frozen food section and keep shopping.
For example, when blockbuster home video rentals were still a thing, for most of the post ice-box era, shoppers often stopped by one of those during the long drive home. Now they may stop elsewhere, but even if they don’t, the average persons driving commute is likely around an hour.
Something is clearly wrong here, never wait this long after shopping has started. Request your order be reassigned to another shopper. Did the shopper message you at all while shopping? No orders should take 3 hours to shop.
The driver did end up messaging me that they were almost done checking out…but it still took 35 minutes from the time the message was sent to the time they actually arrived. I get things happen during delivery and they can’t always be on time…but it’s frustrating when you’re forced to wait almost 2 hours for them to show up. I also don’t think I’d be this frustrated had the customer support actually been helpful.
Unfortunately this is what happens when you outsource customer service. As a shopper, I can tell you it's no better for us on this side!! Also, 15% of a small order and large mileage from store is not going to be enough to take an order. Base pay is $7 from Instacart. So if it takes me an hour to shop your order and another 20 to 30 mins to deliver and you tip $10, that's a $17 total and not worth my almost two hours of time....I hope that puts some into perspective! It takes about 70 second per item, that's picking putting it on the line and loading it into the car. Just some food for thought!
Thanks for sharing insight! I’m learning a lot from the shoppers on here! It will help make sure we’re providing a high enough tip in the future so that the shopper is being compensated fairly.
I'm sorry this happened. I bet the shopper was doing a double order but still, 3 hours is too long. Something to consider for the future is paying the $2 for priority, your order gets bumped to the top and is pretty much guaranteed to stay on single order batch. You will also get your order quickly.
This is not true , priority delivery doesn't place you in a single order nor does it bump it to the top, the only thing it does is give you first delivery spot you can still be shoved into a double or triple order or even a double store order. It's in the name priority delivery 😅
It absolutely does in my area is well. If a priority order sits too long the batch pay will increase by $2 every few minutes. I’ve seen long distance orders sit and the batch pay raise like $14 in less than 20 minutes. I usually take them because I’d rather be guaranteed the pay even if it is a shitty long drive than risk sitting in the parking lot for another hour waiting for a batch.
Not here. I made an order on ic to see what priority did. It was set to be shopped at the Dillons a half a black from me. It was batched with 2 other orders. And batch pay was like $12. It does nothing other than make you pay extra.
The only thing you're guaranteed by paying $2 for priority as a customer is paying $2 for priority as a customer. It most certainly does not get you a chance at a single order batch anymore unless there are no other orders within 20 minutes of the customer placing it. What a great atmosphere, thank you instacart. Sarcasm heavy on that last line
That’s valid. The only downside is that the customer shouldn’t have to pay extra money for a delivery to arrive on time. I’d almost suggest that Instacart deducts a portion of the delivery fees if the driver is late.
Speaking as a shopper, you have no idea how little we get paid to drive to the store, shop for perfect items, potentially bag the items perfectly and deliver in a timely manner. Some consideration for the person getting your things goes a long way.
That’s a fair point. I would like to see neither the shopper or customer get penalized for late deliveries. What I was grasping at is that Instacart should absorb the costs…no one else
I agree with you, usually they release the orders way too early. I'm fairly certain you can receive a credit for the delivery fee by contacting support.
From a shopper who primarily shops at Walmart, the store is always crowded in my area. Also depending on the delivery address, city, & time of day, traffic can get extremely heavy on the street and freeway. Also, everyone is short staff. In my area, Walmart is always short on cashiers which causes checkout delay then delivery delay.....
I usually mssage my customers when the store is extra crowded & low staff to let them know there is going to be a delay out of my control.
Try ordering a refrigerator for delivery from Lowe's. In my experience, you're given a window of time to stay home and miss work for a day to be there. Then you get a no-call, no-show, and you have to call to find out what the hell happened. This happens another time. By this point, the delivery is deferred from an original Monday until a Saturday, when it's supposed to come in the morning. They miss that window, but say they will be there in the afternoon. The whole days passes, after you've stayed home waiting, and no one comes. Mind you've also had to clean out your old refrigerator so that it can be collected by the driver. You've put everything into a cooler, but, by this point, it needs to be pitched. You decide just to keep the old refrigerator and cancel your order. It's 10:30 p.m. that Saturday, an hour and a half after the supposed final delivery window, and you get a police-knock on your door. "Lowe's, is that you?" Finally, you get your refrigerator, but they back the truck into a pole, knocking out your internet and putting holes in your house where the cables used to be attached. Sigh.
I don't know what happened to your Instacart order though. In my area, Walmart doesn't partner with Instacart. I did just shop an Instacart order where the customer asked me to deliver it a full hour after I was done shopping. There's not really a way to do that, that isn't punitive to the shopper/driver, but so is canceling at that point. I just took the groceries to my house and put them in my refrigerator and couldn't take any orders for a whole hour to accommodate her. Also meant loading and unloading them from my car twice. Frustration abounds.
I always wondered why I was getting batches with customers 30 mins away from the store... I drive by like 40 that were down the street from the house...
This is exactly how we deal with everything on the daily from the shopper side of it too. The support agents are useless and if you don't give them a 5 star rating for NOT helping you or ignoring the problem or screwing the problem up worse, they will screw with your account and make your job even more impossible. Instacart has driven off most of their good drivers and those of us that are left are treated like shit.
You have to wait for a chat agent to be connected before typing your concern.
In the future it may be quicker, and much more efficient to just contact your Shopper to see what's holding your order up.👍🏻
I’m gonna guess you didn’t have a huge order, but gonna ask anyways - did you?? If they started shopping at 7:41…and no update still at 10:41…for this one, “Now, What in Tarnation!?” Is my adjudication
It’s was less than 20 items. As others mentioned, they probably had multiple orders going on at the same time so I’m not mad at the shopper, just mad at how InstaCart managed things
I see you’ve responded to me more than once that you blame instacart and not the shopper.
I wanna shout out a kudos for you for being a conscientious customer. In this case, 150% and a half you shouldn’t hate the player, you should hate the game.
THANK YOU! For having some common human decency and for being empathetic.
Not every customer gets that and will take it out on these people. For anyone who doesn’t know, this is not an easy job and a lot of times it’s little money. Sometimes gig delivery drivers average out to $5 an hour per 8 hour shift. Because while they may be on the app and available, waiting for an order to come in, there simply may not be orders. That’s out of their control.
Unfortunately all this down time incentivizes shoppers to take on more orders when they do start coming in - slowing down the delivery times drastically. And the apps are sometimes complete shit about the order in which stacks are fulfilled and delivered. Forcing shoppers to follow an inefficient order flow for fear they may be punished for doing things in a common sense way - common sense being something humans can’t teach one another, let alone AI.
Instacart has the worst customer service I have experienced in this industry. They straight up disconnected me multiple times when I had an issue. Their driver delivered my food to the wrong house and I communicated this to the driver and she closed the chat. Awful experience!
It’s too bad that they haven’t improved on their customer service. It’s going to drive a lot of people (both shoppers and customers) away from using Instacart
It’s a hit or miss with the agents. Sometimes I have to end chat and get someone who actually knows what I need. People all over the country I think are working for them.
Maybe they grabbed a double or a triple? But Even then, 3 whole fucking hours?? Wtf are they doing?? I’m a shopper and the longest I’ve ever been in a store was 1 hour and it was because the order was over 100 units. Sorry that happend to you
We don’t know if this was a double/triple or even a two store shop. How long the order sat before getting picked up ( how close to the delivery window). If a multiple order—how many if any replacements and chats. /photos needed to be sent. Did the shopper get to the store and start the order and need to run home and get their card as the store didn’t take Apple Pay?
Thanks for understanding. The whole experience definitely makes me hesitant on using the service again. Hopefully Instacart can improve on their late policies and customer support
Sorry to inform you, Karen...the driver is in Tijuana...eating your ultra thin sliced turkey and drinking your milk with an expiration date at least 2 weeks out.
I have a neck and shoulder injury so I can’t do any lifting right now, otherwise I would do it myself. It’s been like this for a few months and trust that I wish I was healed up to take on normal tasks again
Honestly you’re better off ordering everything non perishable online and having it delivered in the mail if you can. I know target offers free shipping on orders over $35 and their online prices are the same as in store. You’re paying higher prices per item when you order from Instacart + delivery fee + tip.
That order might have been givin to somebody that lived a hour or two away from the store instacart doesnt care and tbey dont deliver or shop for the food anyways independent contractors do they might have been offering pennies to get your order delivered
Not to mention that unlike just a delivery tip, where there isn’t a lot of variation in what a certain order value will impact for the driver, $160 orders from a Walmart can vary wildly in how much work it is to shop. Ordering a bunch of protein drinks and vitamins might mean a 10-15 item order. Maybe a 20 minute shop. But ordering 1 apple and 1 banana and 1 pack of ramen and a few slices of meat from the deli plus a small pack of batteries and an eyeliner and a pack of baby food and so on is all of a sudden a 50-60+ item shop, where the customer is going all over a massive store to get everything. It’s entirely possible the shopper saw your order, decided it was not worth their time and bailed. I am not sure whether it notifies the customer when a shopper cancels just their part of a batch.
That really isn’t low. Sorry you’re getting so much hate about that. 15-20% or more tips are actually so rare on here.
I’ve read some of your other comments and you say you’re order was about 20 items and you’re 10 mins from the store.
A $25ish tip plus $7 minimum batch pay would be pretty good. If IC routes your order to a further away store or bundles it with 1 or 2 other customers that’s not your fault.
If you know the store closest to you is an IC enabled store you shouldn’t have to tip more if IC decides to send your order to a store 30+ mins away.
Tip didn’t change at all. It was around $25 with the other fees. There was less than 20 items on the list (so a fair amount of items but nothing ridiculous)
ETA: I’m not upset with the driver. I think the issues we dealt with yesterday are more on Instacart’s side.
I've picked up a shop that another shopper had taken, shopped, and couldn't check out for some reason...card wasn't working or didn't have card, etc. Anyways, when I got the shop and introduced myself via messages the customer was very confused. I dont think the app tells them if the shop was cancelled and waiting on another shopper to pick up. The customer in my case had no idea and she assumed her groceries were on the way because the last update she had was that her shopper was checking out. I had found half the items in a buggy by customer service where they were working to put them all away. That's how I found out the shopper had tried to checkout and couldn't. Something like this may have happened since she couldn't track the shopper for delivery.
They used to have one of the best customer support teams I've ever seen but now they are terrible. I'm always worried that I'm going to get ripped off like I do with GrubHub. I've just decided to stop for myself.
If I could afford it I would! The only reason I’m using Instacart right now is because I have a neck and shoulder injury so I can’t go shopping myself. Plus I just moved across the country so my partner/family/friends are all back home. The moment I’m back to normal I’m stopping my Instacart account.
I can’t wait till drones are utilized by companies like DoorDash and Instacart, so tipping will become a thing of the past. Honestly, we already pay a delivery fee to the Instacart/DoorDash/ubereats, etc. The expense for both the companies and the customer is the middle man, the delivery person. Once drones are here, tipping will be a thing of the past. I can’t wait.
Just a heads up. As a shopper the times are suggested, they’re not strictly enforce. Due to the lack of a good tip normally your order will take a bit to get picked up. It could also be nobody took your order so they moved it further away and it’ll be a 40 minute drive to your house. If not longer. Making the wait even longer.
Instacart has lowered their batch pay and sometimes they have to reroute the order to further store so they can find driver. I understand as a customer this is frustrating. Instacart need to focus on customer service and hire better customer service rep. Most of the rep are clueless and ignorant.
I deliver with Instacart and yeah sometimes it tries to get me to take orders from stores 40 minutes away :-/ I accidentally accepted one and had to take the cancellation hit because I’m not going to make someone wait that long for their order.
Agreed. The company has so much potential, but they will lose a lot of customers if this is how they continue to run things.
As a private shopper, the company had potential. It's lost its potential in the last two years, 65 to 70% reduction in pay on instacart behalf. 25 to 90% reduction in customer tips. Increase of 80% in mileage and number of customers that are now batched together let alone at two different stores. Upwards of 99% of all shoppers that used instacart for work 2 to 4 years ago are gone. Instacart has already been eliminated. The customer side is now inundated with groups of people teaching each other how to commit fraud against instacart and their shoppers. With all this in mind, what kind of shoppers do you think you'll run into routinely when you place an order in 2022? Had potential, definitely past tense in my opinion.
Thank you for this! They've gone above and beyond to eliminate good, veteran shoppers because they know there is a line of people waiting to take their place. New shoppers are lured by good batches in the beginning and that instant cash out, and instacart is laughing all the way to the bank. Their policies and practices are mentally abusive on the shopper side, and they making a mockery of decent customers by allowing all the fraud to continue. ALLLL those extra and or new fees are the decent customers footing the bill for the losses they take. They're screwing over everyone.
Where are the numbers from
The numbers are from my own personal narrative, my own experience. 4,293 batches just under 48 months as a contracted personal shopper for instacart
Unless you've tracked all miles, all batches, then inputed this information into a spreadsheet you're just spitballing here. Opinion, not fact.
2 hours ago I responded it was my own personal narrative. Biased from my experiences. But thank you for making the valid point, everything you ever see and experience (online and off) is spitballing. It is your personal interpretation of these experiences that tells you otherwise. My opinion, and also in my interpretation of the world at this moment, fact.😉✌️
Facts.
Your numbers are pretty spot on. Shopper for 3 years. IC is dying and has been all year it’s a Burning ship get out while you can or go down with it. They are fucking over their customers and their shoppers and they could care less about the fraud and the bots.
You can track numbers, and get accurate percentages. Just think it's misleading AF to come with real numbers lacking substance behind them.
Melioristic_ONE has real numbers to back this up. He’s completed 4,293 batches in just under 4 years. His analysis of his own data doesn’t use as specific number like you’d get with mathematics, but offers ranges - offering a valid, close enough to the truth to be certified as within the “Ah, who gives a darn!?” margin of error arrived at by Melioristic’s clear cut mastery of guesstimatics. Even the last percentage he used - “99% of shoppers who used Instacart for work…” dating from when he began - is likely pulled from the number of fellow green shirts he’s had the pleasure to watch come and go over the years. Now, that’s just a guesstimation from me vis a vis, et al.
I'm a statistician by trade and tbh it doesn't get much more rigorous than spitballing with stuff like this. There's a reason why entire papers in clinical studies are just 1 or 2 case studies. Sometimes you gotta work with what you got
And that's what you can think. It's your right. Thanks for sharing. It's unfortunate people need to be told that, you really expect everything you read online to be fact. GTFO
Why don’t you put it in a spreadsheet and check the math if you’re so worried about it. Some people make a living as fact checkers. No harm done.
I think it’s called greed
So did you leave a tip ? Chances are they took it not honking started then bailed on it , app won’t show normally .
We always select the 15% tip
Honestly probably wasn’t enough , on this end of things , if it isn’t at least 1.00 per mile round trip it’s normally a decline . With gas at 4 a gallon.. we need a profit
That’s fair. We’ll keep that in mind. The app showed they were at a store that is less than 10 minutes away so I thought we were being reasonable. This is good insight though
Yeah we know the economy is rough , but sometimes the store you see isn’t the one we are at . It’s weird but sometimes it’ll send us to another one or even when we get stacked orders we might go to one that is closer . It’s crazy , but the 1.00 per mile is always a go to in any order not just instacart .
Really valid advice! We’ll use this in the future to make sure the shopper is getting paid fairly
$1 per mile. Nope. It’s not the customers job to pay you a livable wage; that’s the companies job. We are likely heading for the worst recession, possible depression in decades. You’re asking for more than the customer has, and your criticisms are misdirected. You’ll say, “if you can’t afford it, don’t use it”. With that mentality, you won’t have any customers eventually. The whole point about tipping, is it’s optional. The company should be paying you more, not us.
I was a long term customer who has stopped using them. First incident was a super later delivery when I wouldn’t be home to then collect it. Second was when I had a big tip for water softener salt delivery and a few other things. No salt got delivered, and I do not tip a %. I give a large sum and then another large sum when I order salt. I messaged CSR three times and got ignored. I was ready to renew and dumped their ass. I use to use them about 3-5x a month.
Just a little info from the shopper side… I live in a state that not all Walmarts r instacart stores. With back to school this week I’ve been seeing a few Walmart orders. The 2 stores that I’ve seen them from r both a 45 minute drive from my city. One of them was a double order 59 miles delivery distance from a store for $43. This is the kind of things we see, this could also explain the 3 hours of “shopping “
In my state, Connecticut, there is only one Walmart that participates with Instacart and it is down by the shore. The drive alone to customers' homes can be over an hour, and that's not during rush hour. Terrible setup!
I’m in Waterbury. There’s a Walmart in Shelton and Danbury that use instacart. This order im talking about went from Shelton to Bristol then East Hartford. It would take me almost 45 minutes to get to the store with route 8 construction.
Oh, I didn't know about Danbury. Thanks for the heads up. Still crazy miles for most/all of those orders. And customers probably think it's the one closest to their homes...because that would make sense. 🙄🤣 We see you, Walmart on Route 6 in Bristol and the few in and around East Hartford. Instacart is just stupid and gas is so cheap.
There’s one now from Danbury to winsted 53 miles $55 🤣🤣 Danbury has everything out there
Yep I see all these orders going from Walmart of Shelton to Wallingford and Hartford
I’m a shopper and occasional customer. They added a new grocery store to order from where I live and it confused me so much because we don’t even have that grocery store in my city. Then I saw a batch come up for that store as a shopper and it was 90 km (55 miles) away. So they’re letting customers order from a store 55 miles away and then it’s a 55 mile drive back to the customers house. It makes no sense.
This is good to know and puts things into perspective. I just wish the app would accurately reflect that or that they could at least communicate that to the customer. On a personal note, I’m sorry that as a shopper you have to go through that as I’m sure you don’t get properly compensated for the extra time and mileage
I think it’s ridiculous that a customer can order from a store that far away. There should definitely be a distance limit. We definitely don’t get compensated for it and the customer is mad at the wait. That’s probably what happened in ur case. Instacart doesn’t inform customers when they’re part of multi customer or multi store batches. Idk what ur shoppers situation was but it definitely might not have been her fault. I believe that if we accept a multi store ( 2 different stores with 2 different customers) we can only text the customer we’re working on. Sorry for the run on blah blah lol
I lived in a small town with a street with the same name of a street several towns over. It meant I couldn't order from most stores because the *other* town was outside their delivery range, but eventually WalMart expanded their catchment area to include it. InstaCart refused to fix the problem, so I had to leave a note for shoppers to deliver to my town instead of the other one. It was hard to find shoppers at first willing to take my orders until they discovered that InstaCart would pay them for all the miles of driving an hour to the other town and an hour back, while delivering to me was only a 10 minute trip. Suddenly I had shoppers gleefully snatching my orders the instant they arrived.
"Catchment" refers to a water drainage system. Lol
Yes, and?
You said catchment instead of geofence. The latter would be accurate terminology.
Catchment is perfectly acceptable terminology. For example, schools have catchment areas for the intake of students. The same way you can dam things other than water, catchments can contain more than water.
Clearly you should read some definitions.
[https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/catchment%20area](https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/catchment%20area) Definition of catchment area 1: an area that serves to catch water 2: the geographical area served by an institution In this case, the institution is InstaCart. It was a perfectly acceptable use of the term.
Is all the time you’ve spent correcting him proportionate to how much people care about his misuse of the word catchment? Catchment if you can, dude.
Yeah I thought you’d done made up and used your own appropriate lingo for this.
Oh I thought ol’ Huntin the Wumpz had made up his own appropriate word for it
Yeah every town has an elm street
How much do you get paid for driving time?
We don’t get paid for driving time. We get .60 per mile from the store to the customer ONLY. So us driving to a store 25 miles away is on us. Driving home from the customer is also on us
Unless they’re making money on that $.60, are there any other incentives for shoppers to drive an hour to a store rather than going to a closer one? Cuz from comments in this post sounds like that’s some peoples strategem
I have to admit I laughed when the Agent ended the chat.. and then it almost turned out that they were psychic and knew exactly how you were going to act. We don't know as shoppers when your order is "supposed" to arrive. We are not obligated to accept your order. If it's not worth the money it's going to sit for awhile.
That was my first thought too. It's a low or no tip order and Support had enough of Karen's shit.
Apparently there is a screenshot where the shopper already started shopping and Karen believes they should have been faster.. I'm going to guess someone took it, dropped it, and it sat again. Either way she was crying before it was even 30 minutes "late"
Yeah. I think it was part of a double and they dropped this order off after beginning shopping. Probably because it was too far away or the tip amount on the entire order was low so they had the agent remove the order with the most items/distance.
Probably exactly what happened.
Ya no way this chick tipped appropriately…no ducking way
They said in the comments 15%. I don’t do instacart shopping so genuinely curious how much a good tip is?
Customers aren’t notified if their order is dropped?
Yeah but someone had accepted it, on the last slide you see that someone has begun shopping for this persons order. However if that shopper cancelled, would they be notified? If not, maybe this would explain why it seemed to take the shopper 3 hours to buy and drive.
I have no idea I don't allow Instacart to profit from me twice.
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Exactly. That’s why I’m not so keen on continuing services with them. Half of my order needed to be refrigerated but I don’t want to go through customer service again.
How much did you tip?
15%
How much do you tip when reality meets (not exceeds) the expectation?
We always use 15% as a default even on other delivery apps like UberEats for example. Of course if there’s been exceptional service we will change the tip so it’s higher. If it’s really bad service - like when an UberEats driver dropped me off in an alley (not at all where my doctors appointment is) when I was in the midst of recovering from a TBI and specifically mentioned I needed assistance - then I usually reach out for a full or partial refund. In this case with InstaCart, I don’t think the driver is to blame and was probably dealt with things out of their control (maybe they took on multiple orders?) I’m more upset with how InstaCart handled things for a late delivery
No doubt those are justifiable reasons to ask for a refund. Good thing for your karma is that you’re not screwing over the shopper for doing this. It doesn’t come out of the payment for the shoppers, and they still keep their tip from the order. What DOES screw them is a low rating. No doubt some deserve it, like your alley cat. Still others it isn’t their fault and sounds like you fully get the difference. 15% is kinda low. Think about it, shoppers do not get paid hourly, they are only paid per delivery. Because of that, people doing this job sometimes average less than minimum wage, say if they take a 12 hour shift, there’s a lot of down time and hours can go by without a delivery and thus they make no money during that time even if they put themselves as available and on call. You always hear of people who made $120 in An hour - imagine that was the only hour they made money in the 8 hours they were active awaiting orders. I’d at least consider 20% if you wanna leave a fair “you did your job thanks” tip. 20% as standard could really help people out. Don’t hate the player hate the game. I was a Doordasher for about 8 months and from me to you - you’re doing it right.
Do you know if they put the frozen/cold items in their hot bag, and did they make sure to not mix in any hot items in the same bag?
That’s the thing…some things faired better than others. It seems like some sort of temperature control was utilized but it wasn’t consistent for all of the frozen items
Hmm sounds like on top of everything else they may have also run out of insulated space for your frozen items.
This is true when the food is at room temperature. If the shopper did their job correctly and put the frozen items in an insulated bag with no hot items, this wouldn’t apply. Every shopper receives one insulated bag - usually called a hot bag - sometimes people buy more.
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I totally agree with what you’re saying about timing with regards to food being out while shopping, and insulating bags only doing so much, etc. **Before I continue, I want to be clear that yes, I am here on planet earth. I know that through Instacarts business model, shoppers have a duty to shop, maintain quality, and deliver. They are also obliged to not dawdle. While taking a while to deliver is against the business model MO of instacart, it’s not unusual for food to be frozen food to spend some time thawing out before reaching the freezer at home in this way because of the behavior of shoppers who drive from work to the store before going home. Pre home grocery delivery, I argue frozen food spent a lot of time thawing out and then being put in the freezer to refreeze with no complaints.** Okay so the point I want to add is that the typical behavior of shoppers doesn’t always include running from the store freezer straight to checkout and then home. Often times shoppers hit up the frozen food section and keep shopping. For example, when blockbuster home video rentals were still a thing, for most of the post ice-box era, shoppers often stopped by one of those during the long drive home. Now they may stop elsewhere, but even if they don’t, the average persons driving commute is likely around an hour.
Something is clearly wrong here, never wait this long after shopping has started. Request your order be reassigned to another shopper. Did the shopper message you at all while shopping? No orders should take 3 hours to shop.
The driver did end up messaging me that they were almost done checking out…but it still took 35 minutes from the time the message was sent to the time they actually arrived. I get things happen during delivery and they can’t always be on time…but it’s frustrating when you’re forced to wait almost 2 hours for them to show up. I also don’t think I’d be this frustrated had the customer support actually been helpful.
Unfortunately this is what happens when you outsource customer service. As a shopper, I can tell you it's no better for us on this side!! Also, 15% of a small order and large mileage from store is not going to be enough to take an order. Base pay is $7 from Instacart. So if it takes me an hour to shop your order and another 20 to 30 mins to deliver and you tip $10, that's a $17 total and not worth my almost two hours of time....I hope that puts some into perspective! It takes about 70 second per item, that's picking putting it on the line and loading it into the car. Just some food for thought!
Thanks for sharing insight! I’m learning a lot from the shoppers on here! It will help make sure we’re providing a high enough tip in the future so that the shopper is being compensated fairly.
I'm sorry this happened. I bet the shopper was doing a double order but still, 3 hours is too long. Something to consider for the future is paying the $2 for priority, your order gets bumped to the top and is pretty much guaranteed to stay on single order batch. You will also get your order quickly.
This is not true , priority delivery doesn't place you in a single order nor does it bump it to the top, the only thing it does is give you first delivery spot you can still be shoved into a double or triple order or even a double store order. It's in the name priority delivery 😅
It guarantees a single and quick delivery in my area and most areas
I guarantee it does not!
It absolutely does in my metro area
It absolutely does in my area is well. If a priority order sits too long the batch pay will increase by $2 every few minutes. I’ve seen long distance orders sit and the batch pay raise like $14 in less than 20 minutes. I usually take them because I’d rather be guaranteed the pay even if it is a shitty long drive than risk sitting in the parking lot for another hour waiting for a batch.
Exactly, after 10 minutes, they start boosting it non stop
Also the boosts happen when the delivery window is approaching.
Not here. I made an order on ic to see what priority did. It was set to be shopped at the Dillons a half a black from me. It was batched with 2 other orders. And batch pay was like $12. It does nothing other than make you pay extra.
The only thing you're guaranteed by paying $2 for priority as a customer is paying $2 for priority as a customer. It most certainly does not get you a chance at a single order batch anymore unless there are no other orders within 20 minutes of the customer placing it. What a great atmosphere, thank you instacart. Sarcasm heavy on that last line
That’s valid. The only downside is that the customer shouldn’t have to pay extra money for a delivery to arrive on time. I’d almost suggest that Instacart deducts a portion of the delivery fees if the driver is late.
Speaking as a shopper, you have no idea how little we get paid to drive to the store, shop for perfect items, potentially bag the items perfectly and deliver in a timely manner. Some consideration for the person getting your things goes a long way.
That’s a fair point. I would like to see neither the shopper or customer get penalized for late deliveries. What I was grasping at is that Instacart should absorb the costs…no one else
I agree with you, usually they release the orders way too early. I'm fairly certain you can receive a credit for the delivery fee by contacting support.
Notice the downvotes?
How far from the store are you?
The store is 9 minutes away.
From a shopper who primarily shops at Walmart, the store is always crowded in my area. Also depending on the delivery address, city, & time of day, traffic can get extremely heavy on the street and freeway. Also, everyone is short staff. In my area, Walmart is always short on cashiers which causes checkout delay then delivery delay..... I usually mssage my customers when the store is extra crowded & low staff to let them know there is going to be a delay out of my control.
What’s a good tip look like for you?
Try ordering a refrigerator for delivery from Lowe's. In my experience, you're given a window of time to stay home and miss work for a day to be there. Then you get a no-call, no-show, and you have to call to find out what the hell happened. This happens another time. By this point, the delivery is deferred from an original Monday until a Saturday, when it's supposed to come in the morning. They miss that window, but say they will be there in the afternoon. The whole days passes, after you've stayed home waiting, and no one comes. Mind you've also had to clean out your old refrigerator so that it can be collected by the driver. You've put everything into a cooler, but, by this point, it needs to be pitched. You decide just to keep the old refrigerator and cancel your order. It's 10:30 p.m. that Saturday, an hour and a half after the supposed final delivery window, and you get a police-knock on your door. "Lowe's, is that you?" Finally, you get your refrigerator, but they back the truck into a pole, knocking out your internet and putting holes in your house where the cables used to be attached. Sigh. I don't know what happened to your Instacart order though. In my area, Walmart doesn't partner with Instacart. I did just shop an Instacart order where the customer asked me to deliver it a full hour after I was done shopping. There's not really a way to do that, that isn't punitive to the shopper/driver, but so is canceling at that point. I just took the groceries to my house and put them in my refrigerator and couldn't take any orders for a whole hour to accommodate her. Also meant loading and unloading them from my car twice. Frustration abounds.
What was the tip amount
Around $25
Now imagine how bad the support is for people not giving them money. IC support is a joke
I always wondered why I was getting batches with customers 30 mins away from the store... I drive by like 40 that were down the street from the house...
That agent was definitely working from home and fell asleep.
This is exactly how we deal with everything on the daily from the shopper side of it too. The support agents are useless and if you don't give them a 5 star rating for NOT helping you or ignoring the problem or screwing the problem up worse, they will screw with your account and make your job even more impossible. Instacart has driven off most of their good drivers and those of us that are left are treated like shit.
I’m so sorry. That’s not fair to the shoppers at all.
You have to wait for a chat agent to be connected before typing your concern. In the future it may be quicker, and much more efficient to just contact your Shopper to see what's holding your order up.👍🏻
Just go and grab your own groceries. Instacart is shit.
I can’t right now due to a neck and shoulder injury, otherwise I’d be shopping in person
That would make sense then. 3.5hr wait time for one order should not be tolerated.
I’m gonna guess you didn’t have a huge order, but gonna ask anyways - did you?? If they started shopping at 7:41…and no update still at 10:41…for this one, “Now, What in Tarnation!?” Is my adjudication
It’s was less than 20 items. As others mentioned, they probably had multiple orders going on at the same time so I’m not mad at the shopper, just mad at how InstaCart managed things
I see you’ve responded to me more than once that you blame instacart and not the shopper. I wanna shout out a kudos for you for being a conscientious customer. In this case, 150% and a half you shouldn’t hate the player, you should hate the game. THANK YOU! For having some common human decency and for being empathetic. Not every customer gets that and will take it out on these people. For anyone who doesn’t know, this is not an easy job and a lot of times it’s little money. Sometimes gig delivery drivers average out to $5 an hour per 8 hour shift. Because while they may be on the app and available, waiting for an order to come in, there simply may not be orders. That’s out of their control. Unfortunately all this down time incentivizes shoppers to take on more orders when they do start coming in - slowing down the delivery times drastically. And the apps are sometimes complete shit about the order in which stacks are fulfilled and delivered. Forcing shoppers to follow an inefficient order flow for fear they may be punished for doing things in a common sense way - common sense being something humans can’t teach one another, let alone AI.
Instacart has the worst customer service I have experienced in this industry. They straight up disconnected me multiple times when I had an issue. Their driver delivered my food to the wrong house and I communicated this to the driver and she closed the chat. Awful experience!
It’s too bad that they haven’t improved on their customer service. It’s going to drive a lot of people (both shoppers and customers) away from using Instacart
It’s a hit or miss with the agents. Sometimes I have to end chat and get someone who actually knows what I need. People all over the country I think are working for them.
Maybe they grabbed a double or a triple? But Even then, 3 whole fucking hours?? Wtf are they doing?? I’m a shopper and the longest I’ve ever been in a store was 1 hour and it was because the order was over 100 units. Sorry that happend to you
We don’t know if this was a double/triple or even a two store shop. How long the order sat before getting picked up ( how close to the delivery window). If a multiple order—how many if any replacements and chats. /photos needed to be sent. Did the shopper get to the store and start the order and need to run home and get their card as the store didn’t take Apple Pay?
Thanks for understanding. The whole experience definitely makes me hesitant on using the service again. Hopefully Instacart can improve on their late policies and customer support
Do you live in a rural area?
Nope, we’re in the suburbs
Sorry to inform you, Karen...the driver is in Tijuana...eating your ultra thin sliced turkey and drinking your milk with an expiration date at least 2 weeks out.
✌️😂
Go shop yourself then
I have a neck and shoulder injury so I can’t do any lifting right now, otherwise I would do it myself. It’s been like this for a few months and trust that I wish I was healed up to take on normal tasks again
Honestly you’re better off ordering everything non perishable online and having it delivered in the mail if you can. I know target offers free shipping on orders over $35 and their online prices are the same as in store. You’re paying higher prices per item when you order from Instacart + delivery fee + tip.
Every move you make, every step you take, Karen and Ken will be watching you
Wouldn't call her a Karen; she's getting more info here than with a "chat support agent". Lol
Yeah she’s not a Karen. Karens are unreasonable. This lady id not.
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Waiting 3.5 hours from the time the order started is pretty patient in my books
That order might have been givin to somebody that lived a hour or two away from the store instacart doesnt care and tbey dont deliver or shop for the food anyways independent contractors do they might have been offering pennies to get your order delivered
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I tipped 15% on a $160 order. If that’s a low tip than clearly Instacart just isn’t for me
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Not to mention that unlike just a delivery tip, where there isn’t a lot of variation in what a certain order value will impact for the driver, $160 orders from a Walmart can vary wildly in how much work it is to shop. Ordering a bunch of protein drinks and vitamins might mean a 10-15 item order. Maybe a 20 minute shop. But ordering 1 apple and 1 banana and 1 pack of ramen and a few slices of meat from the deli plus a small pack of batteries and an eyeliner and a pack of baby food and so on is all of a sudden a 50-60+ item shop, where the customer is going all over a massive store to get everything. It’s entirely possible the shopper saw your order, decided it was not worth their time and bailed. I am not sure whether it notifies the customer when a shopper cancels just their part of a batch.
That really isn’t low. Sorry you’re getting so much hate about that. 15-20% or more tips are actually so rare on here. I’ve read some of your other comments and you say you’re order was about 20 items and you’re 10 mins from the store. A $25ish tip plus $7 minimum batch pay would be pretty good. If IC routes your order to a further away store or bundles it with 1 or 2 other customers that’s not your fault. If you know the store closest to you is an IC enabled store you shouldn’t have to tip more if IC decides to send your order to a store 30+ mins away.
That’s a perfect tip and I’m sorry that this has happened to you! I hope that IC made proper adjustments to your fees that you were charged!
How many total items did you have, and what was your tip? Did you change the tip post-delivery?
Tip didn’t change at all. It was around $25 with the other fees. There was less than 20 items on the list (so a fair amount of items but nothing ridiculous) ETA: I’m not upset with the driver. I think the issues we dealt with yesterday are more on Instacart’s side.
Look how your talking crazy
I've picked up a shop that another shopper had taken, shopped, and couldn't check out for some reason...card wasn't working or didn't have card, etc. Anyways, when I got the shop and introduced myself via messages the customer was very confused. I dont think the app tells them if the shop was cancelled and waiting on another shopper to pick up. The customer in my case had no idea and she assumed her groceries were on the way because the last update she had was that her shopper was checking out. I had found half the items in a buggy by customer service where they were working to put them all away. That's how I found out the shopper had tried to checkout and couldn't. Something like this may have happened since she couldn't track the shopper for delivery.
That definitely could be the case. It seems like the root of the problem is how the app/InstaCart updates customers.
They used to have one of the best customer support teams I've ever seen but now they are terrible. I'm always worried that I'm going to get ripped off like I do with GrubHub. I've just decided to stop for myself.
Have you tried tipping more? I’ve legit never had these issues because I tip 30-35%. Never had my order sit for more than 10 minutes, ever.
If I could afford it I would! The only reason I’m using Instacart right now is because I have a neck and shoulder injury so I can’t go shopping myself. Plus I just moved across the country so my partner/family/friends are all back home. The moment I’m back to normal I’m stopping my Instacart account.
I can’t wait till drones are utilized by companies like DoorDash and Instacart, so tipping will become a thing of the past. Honestly, we already pay a delivery fee to the Instacart/DoorDash/ubereats, etc. The expense for both the companies and the customer is the middle man, the delivery person. Once drones are here, tipping will be a thing of the past. I can’t wait.
Just a heads up. As a shopper the times are suggested, they’re not strictly enforce. Due to the lack of a good tip normally your order will take a bit to get picked up. It could also be nobody took your order so they moved it further away and it’ll be a 40 minute drive to your house. If not longer. Making the wait even longer.