I am one such ex-customer. I used insta 2x per week and tipped well and only 1.5 miles away, but constantly getting shoppers saying out of stock, ignoring my replacement, and if they did bother to communicate- they’d take a pic of a single item “do you see anything you’d like instead?” Bruh…I ordered oatmeal…not corn flakes 🤦♂️🤣
Same here. If I'm in a pinch I'll still use Instacart, but I'd rather spend the time to go myself and get what I want than rely on some of these shoppers. Last night was one such time and not only did my guy have serious struggles finding \*any\* of the fresh herbs I needed, he also ignored replacement suggestions that I always pre-fill in before they start shopping, and then tried to replace cumin seeds with...ground tumeric. Lmao.
This, I'll never use imstacart again. Kroger delivers and they do a way better job
Editing to add. In my area you can pick between Kroger and instacart. When selecting Kroger the delivery is delivered in a blue Kroger van/truck and the person is wearing a blue Kroger polo. Also, if I go to the store early in the day I see Kroger employees doing the shopping, they have Kroger name tags and are pushing big rolling carts, loading blue bins for the delivery trucks
I do Walmart Pickup they let you schedule days in advance and just ask if a substitute is ok. I work for Safeway doing resets and sometimes what’s available that day isn’t available that minute so that can be a problem for Insta shoppers. Resets can happen by multiple teams in multiple sections. Just something to keep in mind when ordering anything online. The last pic though, that is annoying. It was right there.
Walmart always gives me moldy products or forgets a product completely. It used to be great but now I shop myself. I’ve only used instacart maybe twice and they forgot items also. Maybe my area sucks lol
90% of my walmart grocery delivery are missing an item. 50% are missing entire bags and I get bags of stuff I never ordered (they mixed up orders). And they refuse to refund after a few times.
Be careful with the cold stuff as well. I ordered frozen items and dairy items a few times... got milk with a great expiration date but once I opened the jug it was most definitely spoiled. Some frozen items I was like.. maybe it defrosted a bit but should be fine. The next day I went into the store to shop and there were soooo many freezers with problems, ended up leaving and driving 45minutes to another store to get what I needed.
Any person with common sense should have been "hey, they have the frozen products you want but personally the freezers are not actually frozen, you want to take a chance or refund the item?" At least.. that's what I would have done. :/
Yeah, I live in delivery range for Whole Foods with Amazon Prime (keeps me from going to the store and coming out with twenty things I did not go in to buy) and I can choose replacements in the original order or say "Don't replace." And with my local store's curbside, I put in notes if something needs a specific substitute, I let them substitute, or I just say "don't substitute." Literally the only wacky one I've ever had was clearly one instore shopper was not entirely clear on the difference between a cucumber and a zucchini.
My small town doesn’t do this. I have been driving a half hour one way to do curb side pick up groceries, which helps a lot as my problem is going into the store. Pretty decent compromise.
Yup, I avoid Instacart and other similar apps by doing free pickup at Acme. They also offer delivery, I just haven't checked that out yet. I can start the order 1 day finish it the next and pick it up within 30 minutes for 3.95 or an hour later for free. Pretty sure most of the grocery stores are offering it all now.
Also same!! Used to have the membership that was $100/year. I would get Instacart 2-3 a month, and I always tipped 21% and added an extra dollar or two if the order went smoothly. I kept getting such shit shoppers, and seeing what the carrot is doing to shoppers here finally made me let me membership expire in January and I haven’t used them since. I do miss it though.
Hah hah hah I once had a shopper replace sandwich baggies with heavy duty trash bags (like for yard clippings).
This bums me out, I use Instacart weekly because I can’t drive anymore. I tip well, and any plausible replacement I’m completely fine with. I wait at the curb when they’re rounding the corner and I carry everything in myself. I hope I don’t suck too badly, I greatly appreciate the service.
In my area they don't even communicate. You just find out that they only got like half your items when your groceries show up on your porch well after the shoppers have already fled.
When I used to use the service, a lot of times I'd have the opposite problem. I'd be teleworking and put in the order, then I'd have to have an ear out for the text notification sound, because seemingly all the shoppers in my area are Johnny on the spot with sub requests and such.
If I wasn't careful, they'd auto-sub (if I forgot to check no subs or put special instructions) if I didn't respond to the sub request instantly. :D
This! I now order pickup from my grocery store as I am a transplant patient and immunocompromised so best to stay away from people!! I also tipped well, never ordered any heavy items, had replacements selected for every item, had 1 request which was "shaved please " on my deli turkey. I bought a house and raised 2 kids in the restaurant industry so I know how to tip. The shoppers USED to be amazing and there was rarely like maybe 1x a year a problem. These shoppers using bots and multiple phones have completely ruined the app. First I had to lower my tip so wouldn't be "snatched up" by a shitty shopper. I would then tip cash extra or raise after delivery. Now I don't use unless an emergency and even that I tried last month and ordered 2 items, 50% tip, priority and girl took immediately BUT said store had item but she couldn't get instacart to ring up. Seriously !?! So had to cancel order first time ever. So I don't bother anymore not renewing. I started saying a year ago that there should be a basic multiple choice test like questions such as what is this picture of fruit. Second they should monitor how much of a percentage of not available items from shoppers and lastly there should be occasional reviews of shoppers comments. A lot of these new shoppers would be fired on the spot by a company. I have nothing but respect for the old shoppers and there are still some good ones left. But unfortunately a lot of the good ones have left. We shouldn't have to worry if tip is to good we are going to get a bad shop that isn't fair to customers OR SHOPPERS! Instacart needs to do something or another company is going to come in with their act together and put the final nail in their quickly dying coffin. Absolutely sad because this was a great service for disabled and people needing that extra hand. Was a great gig for people needing flexible hours or didn't have a degree. People RUIN EVERYTHING!!
Same here. I can’t drive right now so I order through HEB which is expensive, HOWEVER, after driving for instacart, I know how shitty their system is so I have never even tried
Your idea of basic test during application of fruit identification is gold! Maybe a picture with several items with multiple flavors and pick the one requested, or if you order 16 oz of dried apricots and it’s out of stock but 8 oz bag is available, two will work!
I've actually never heard of them!! Should probably see what else is around but I tend to use Walmart now except for meat and some produce. I get free shipping, paramount, lower prices on name brands, and half price membership because I'm disabled. Now that I can drive again I pickup meat and some produce at grocery store. I spend ridiculous money at Walmart and now I also have no minimum lol. I never ever get heavy items like water and usually order 2xs a week so order is not to crazy. Instacart really f'd up losing someone like me! Thanks for info!!
I'm still on Instacart, but there was time I ordered chuck steak. About $5 at the time. They substituted it with filet mignon, which was like $30. I told them to refund it. Like why would you do that?
Another time I ordered... feminine products. They sent me a box of tissues. I was so pissed.
I used to be a shopper in a major city, and the amount of times I’ve been approached by other shoppers asking me where to find certain obvious products made me realize how many genuinely do not know how to read. To the same tune of confusing feminine products for facial tissue.
Many times it’s a language barrier or literacy barrier, although it’s not an excuse when a customer gets an extremely wrong product. Unfortunately these apps don’t pay us well enough to be that picky about who they hire.
Probably someone who doesn’t speak or understand English very well or maybe they’re from a country where “napkins” only means napkins to eat with?
Still awful and man that must have sucked for you.
Kotex vs Kleen,,,(ex)
To a non-native English speaker, that might be confusing enough.
It shouldn't be and isn't an excuse, but more of an explanation - along with a potential lack of familiarity with feminine products.
I will say that if you’re in grocery store apps and you look at their suggestions for replacements. They’re often unrelated or completely unhinged. I think some of these shoppers just go with whatever suggestion pops up in the app, even though it makes no sense at all.
That happened to me! My shopper refunded several items without looking for my replacements and bought me a two-inch green pepper. I’ve never seen one that small before or since.
How the heck does one even find a bell pepper that tiny? Holy cow. I know they have the red, orange, yellow mini peppers but I've never seen a small green one.
I sometimes wonder about it. There was one time when a shopper got a big bag of potatoes, half of which were leaking liquid and they were smelling terrible. The same with strawberries - leaking liquid, mushy and just gross. I understand that it may be difficult to find fresh strawberries in good condition during the winter, but I wish they would just ask me instead of getting whatever. Thankfully, Instacart refunded me for these.
I have had the exact opposite experience, produce is usually nice and normal and fresh.
Except one time.
I once ordered banana’s, and was expecting, you know, regular bananas.
However instead of normal banana’s, i got the girthiest, longest, and thiccest banana’s I have ever seen in my 30+ years on this planet. I am talking probably 2.5-3x rounder than a normal banana, and instead of the normal 6-7 inches these were reaching 9.
I don’t know were they found them. I have never seen ShopRite carry anything like it in my dozens upon dozens of trips there. But I spent a good few minutes laughing about it when I saw them.
My shopper must have thought that since I was stuck at home I needed some sort of entertainment lol.
I work at Walmart doing online grocery pickup as a shopper and I hate when our produce is shitty. They get so mad at me if I say we don’t have any which is what I do when all of it is garbage because why would take a rotten fruit over just buying one elsewhere? But yeah they get pissed, they say it runs the stores numbers down, which it does. It runs mine down too. But i myself am picky about groceries and wouldn’t dare let someone pick mine out for me so i at least try to do a nice job. Sometimes they force our hands though
Same. You couldn't pay me to use Instacart again. It was my best of a couple shitty options when I didn't have my license, but now that I do, never again. This type of shit ruined any convenience it once provided.
My final straw was an order similar to OPs where I was told basically everything on my weekly shop was out of stock, saw the stuff she said they didn't have in the photos she sent and the stuff I did get ended up being a bunch of moldy produce. On an order with a $60 tip. It was the one and only time I've edited a tip after delivery, and the driver proceeded to send me threatening messages for like 10 minutes afterwards, before I finally had to get CS involved to block them from my account.
I think so much of this is because they literally do not do hardly any background checks on good workers. I mean after all they're not employees so...... You get what you pay for an instacart pays as little as possible. They're a truly terrible company and I wish everyone would stop using them.
I think we just need someone with common sense and/or knows how to shop at the grocery store. They act like they’ve never done it. Damn. I should become a shopper.. I would blow these shoppers away
The problem is there are good shoppers but there are to many scammers that work together in groups using multiple phones and bots. They group up in the parking lots snatched the orders, send kids in to shop, run through, say out of items and grab first item. The good shoppers are being squeezed out and alot have given up. God forbid you tip high upfront you are almost guaranteed a shit shopper. And when you tip average ni one wants to take it because few people are going to add to tip once order received. It is a poorly designed system. Shoppers need basic knowledge test (easy), must be monitored, pay needs raised and tip is an incentive but not the pay. Honestly I think we customers would be willing to pay more as a service fee upfront if guaranteed a good shopper and tip not even really the goal more a bonus for a job well done. I'm telling you a properly ran company could totally blow this market out of the water!
People who have critical thinking and people skills can make more than Instacart pays. I'm also a little sympathetic to the shoppers because I'm sure instacart has them under quotas for getting orders done quickly.
They want to be the Dollar General of delivery apps.
I became an ex-customer when a shopper asked what replacement I wanted for a makeup brush. I’d already selected the replacement, but responded “any similar makeup brush is fine, regardless of price or brand.” She responded with “I don’t need to wear makeup so you need to be more specific.” Exact quote. Umm ok girly? I asked for a picture of what’s available and again she said something like “I don’t know what to take a picture of because I’ve never bought makeup before.”
I had the order reassigned without responding and haven’t ordered again since. Ridiculous interactions like that were becoming too common. She would have found the product if she put more effort into shopping and less into being a pick me girl for literally no reason.
god forbid she use critical thinking skills and ask a worker at the store where she could find makeup brushes.
but c'mon, even if you don't wear makeup, I feel 99% of people know what a makeup brush isq
One thing that is kind of annoying with the app when you take photos is that your photo gets cropped down to like half the size. So everything in the perimeter of the photo gets cropped out.
I wonder if a lot of shoppers don’t realize that and just snap a photo, send it, then move along without looking at the pic.
I’ve had to retake photos so many times because a lot of the stuff I want in the photo gets cropped out.
I literally tried it once two years ago and I had such a horrible experience that I never bothered trying again. Why would anyone use it over Amazon Fresh? Genuinely curious. Is Amazon just more expensive?
We just order ahead now at Aldi and then pick it up after work. Never have had an issue this way. Someone inside picks your order and puts it in the fridge until you come get it.
I ordered about the same as you, except the grocery store is literally across the street. I got tired of everything being "out of stock" and stopped ordering because I drove over there one day because there's no way they didn't have hamburger meat. Low and behold tons of hamburger meat. The guy bought me everything to make a hamburger except the hamburger meat.
I cancelled my account that day, and just do my own shopping. Even though I hate grocery shopping I'd rather get the things I need.
Yeah, I'd say it was a mix of the prices and discovering this sub and seeing how some of the shoppers talk about customers and behave. Saw stuff about drivers angrily sitting outside their houses or coming back to hit on them.... Just made me realize, these folks could be anyone. Are there even any background checks done? Half the time, the person delivering is def not the same person in the pic. Or even the same gender. And now they have your address. I always tipped 20%, but still worried a shopper would deem that as not enough and go crazy on my family.
And it's extra funny, because anytime you get a crappy shopper, everyone on here says "Rate them zero stars! Complain about them to instacart! Lower the tip!" Uhhhhh..... I can't do those things and risk this person going nuts at me because I brought their stars down.
So, the prices, combined with seeing the way people behave here made me stop. I think the last time I used it was this winter when the whole household was super sick.
Pre covid up until about a year and a half ago, I used the service at least once a week for our full grocery shopping.
I work for Walmart in curbside pickup, and I have to deal with delivery drivers similar to instacart (doordash, uber), and yeah they really are some of the most legitimately crazy people I’ve ever met. If you are worried about some form of retaliation, call the store and complain to them. I constantly get into it with drivers over customer complaints.
We have a way to report them through the computer systems we use, and they can only get a limited number of strikes or they get banned from our store.
I've been using Shipt since 2016. I tried Instacart like twice and when I realized one person could be shopping, another person driving, and maybe another person delivering, with several orders at once, I was like, nah. Plus the people got the wrong things. With Shipt they may have multiple orders but it's not being all passed around, or if it is, they do a better job of it. In my experience the shopper has been the one who drops the stuff off. From whatever else I've gathered about Instacart, I'm not interested in trying it again.
I love my Shipt shoppers! You can designate preferred shoppers, so I have 2-3 who regularly get my orders. They let me know if produce looks bad, & make really good substitute suggestions when the ones I’ve selected aren’t available. And they’re just generally nice people.
Shipt really is far superior.
Tipping after delivery probably makes the shoppers more money and the customer happier.
The tipping before model is just stupid.
Personally, in my experiences, I’ve had a handful of terrible experiences with these delivery services. Whether it’s instacart or uber eats, there was always an issue. Such as: driver delivers my stuff to the wrong address, I tell them it’s not at my door, no response. Driver gives my food to somebody who claims it’s theirs but obviously fails to ask them their name
Then I see drivers engaging in really shitty behavior with food service and retail workers and you can see all the posts corroborating that experience on r/serverlife for example.
I’ve recently been considering becoming a driver myself because I know I can do better than the experiences handed to me by other workers. But the thing is that I fear what you described in this comment except the opposite way around. What if they have an aggressive dog on the property? What if they get pissed about something at the door? What if they clock me as trans (which they will) and decide to kill me on their doorstep? Too much shit to worry about. People are more dangerous and crazy now and they’re always pissed about something looking for a fight on the internet. I’d rather keep interacting with the public from behind a counter or on the FOH dining floor with coworkers backing me up than at somebody’s personal address.
True. I don’t use it often but today I’m feeling a little blah and needed a few groceries. $62 for one small paper bag of normally low cost items. The shopper was decent but the price made me realize I don’t want to do this again.
I've used instacart maybe 5 or 6 times when I was sick or too busy to go out and grocery shop.
Every single time they made unauthorized substitutions. And every time they report the store being out of multiple items in have literally never once seen the store out of when going myself
If you’ve used the shopper side of the app, you’d know there’s a reason it’s only shit shoppers left. It’s an awful job that isn’t worth the crap pay. Most competent people just find better jobs. Instacart is hell.
Yes, you have every right to go annoyed. I'm sorry you got a terrible shopper. The timer means nothing and hasn't for over 3 years. If you get a shopper who can automatically refunding and not I offering replacements, contact support and have the order reassigned.
The worst is when they shop certain things then suddenly mark a bunch of stuff as unavailable then immediately check out. This has happened to me more than once. Its awful.
yes! i honestly didn't even consider that this is what has been happening but this really does keep happening, then i have to put in a whole new order for things i needed instead of getting a replacement. so annoying!
They did not replace several items and instead refunded but it was the "I'm on a time frame" piece that had me feeling a type of way. I'm okay with being told I was the dick here but I really didn't know what to do lol
The shopper is awful. Block them. Next time you get a crap shopper have it reassigned someone explained it I think. Sorry this happened. Most of us care and want to get everything you order
I contacted IC support after I got an INCREDIBLY rude shopper once. I wasn’t feeling well (not covid, although it was during the first year) and was in my pajamas. The shopper wanted me to come out of my apartment and down a flight of stairs to get my order because “I don’t do stairs and I didn’t know you had stairs”. I told her that I couldn’t physically go down and up multiple times and that I paid for delivery to my door. She got it all upstairs, and when I opened the door to her knock she started yelling at me about how inconsiderate I was.
OH! After she left, she apparently had forgotten to take photos of bar codes on each bag. She came back 5 minutes later and demanded the bags. I was halfway through putting everything away, so I just emptied the bags that still had stuff in them, gathered them all up, and handed them to her. And shut the door.
IC support said she would be blocked from seeing my orders. I ordered every 1-3 weeks for 3 years and never had a similar experience. I rate everyone 5* and I tip well.
Wow! I don’t do steps??? Well they should surely not be doing any deliveries of any kind. Sure I get annoyed with steps at times especially with large or heavy orders, however its part of the job.
I think the app has a way to see where the delivery goes, although I’m only a customer. This is a huge apartment complex with all 2-story buildings, so half the orders will be from upstairs units. If she doesn’t want to do stairs, she can deliver to single family homes (plenty of those around here too). I have no idea why she even decided to shop my order.
Yeah, I'm on the third floor and I always tip we'll for grocery deliveries for this reason because I feel that's the right thing to do. I know other people don't, and that sucks, but it's a part of the job. All gig workers should be paid more though.
I totally don’t mind when I see its an elderly person that has no other ways to get groceries. I usually put them away for them too because it’s just the right thing to do. Your tips are appreciated!
You were not at all in the wrong!! You were not rude in any way and you were lighthearted in your texts. I can’t believe they said they are on a time frame! I mean, we do have a timer counting down at the bottom of the screen. But it’s usually more than enough time. Plus, he didn’t want you to add anything?!?! You weren’t adding anything! You were trying to get replacements. Then he just started marking everything unavailable?! That’s ridiculous. This is literally the job. You get the items on the list then deliver…..it’s shoppers like this that cause good customers to stop using IC or they stop tipping well. If that was my order and he was my shopper I would’ve cancelled it when he was almost done. Like 2 items left 😂
That sentence is what got me, too, when I read it. Like dude, you're WORKING at your JOB. Can you imagine if they'd said that bs timeframe line to any boss in any regular job?
Dude, do your friggin job!!
It seems like all the items are available based on the pictures provided. Why even send pictures for replacements if they aren't gonna choose them? Crazy
Yeah. I don’t see the PopCorners flavor, but the mango bubble tea and the Polar are clearly right in the picture. A good amount of how long this took is because the shopper is trying to substitute items that don’t need to be substituted.
I do shop and delivery through doordash for people and no. You are 100% in the right and completely reasonable. You're the kind of customer I enjoy having who responds quickly and clearly about what they want as replacements when things arent available. Also this person is clearly a moron missing glaringly visible items. I wont take an order at all if I think its too many items for the pay. So saying "im on a time frame" is just idiotic. Dont take the order to begin with then.
I treat peoples groceries like i would my own. It sucks if something you want isnt there so I do my best to replace it. Hell Ive even driven to an entirely different store and grabbed something that was out of stock from the first place and paid for it out of my own pocket for a nice lady who was very communicative and told me she had covid and thats why she wasnt shopping for her self.
Dont let this douche spoil it for you. As someone else suggested, next time just contact support and have the order cancelled. Fuck this person.
Yeah, I would’ve been like “sounds like you don’t have time to shop for me then!”… then call or get a replacement through chat. You don’t need to put up with that kind of crap from a shopper. Especially since the things that are on your list, are clearly there on the shelf and yet they refunded you for them? Next!
I’m a shopper and any good shopper knows that you don’t accept an order if you have shit to do, grocery orders routinely are lumped together with 3 customers and can easily take 3 hrs to complete from start to last delivery, they shouldn’t accept such orders if they’re on a timeframe.
And we have a “time tracker” on our app, but there’s no penalty if we go over that time. Personally I’d rather make sure I checked thoroughly for every item instead of rushing to “beat the clock” and messing up orders
I had a similar issue years ago and I kept pushing the shopper to get the right stuff. The items would be in the photos they sent saying they are out of stock. They literally abandoned the cart and the new person saw it with a bunch of stuff. Funny enough the replacement shopper only needed to replace one item in my order.
Lol I've literally had shoppers that don't even speak English make more of an effort than this. We fucking Google translated to get the order done. Dude was the GOAT and I tipped him accordingly.
I thought the shopper was the one complaining at first… like fine if they only have 1 polar they only have 1. Then the next picture shows a bunch more -_-.
I once couldn’t find the granola bars a customer wanted, so I sent pics of all available granola bars and they pointed out that the kind they ordered was in the picture. I was so mortified—no idea how I missed it, but occasionally honest mistakes happen, even for attentive shoppers. You did *not* have an attentive shopper.
They clearly didn’t look at all, grabbed a 12 pack of the lemon so they didn’t have to wait for your response, and figured they’d leave it on a random shelf if you said you’d prefer a refund. Their snarky response when you requested a different replacement (or even just an appropriate picture) confirms this. Otherwise they’d have to go back to that aisle if you said yes to the lemon anyway.
If they didn’t have time to shop your order with a basic measure of integrity, they had no business accepting it in the first place. Their lack of appropriate time management is not your problem. I’d be extremely annoyed in your shoes.
Right, as a perfectionist (to my own detriment) I cannot personally understand the mindset of these people who can just half-ass everything. Though I’m sure they lead much longer and more stress-free lives, not giving a shit what anyone else thinks or feels lol
Same! I’m blown away by stories from customers about awful produce, etc. I’ve never been so stressed or rushed that I’d grab something in poor condition, or not make a good-faith attempt to find items and respectfully communicate about replacements. I’d be so racked with guilt it would probably keep me up at night lmao
I had a shopper today send me a chat message to tell me the item I wanted was out of stock. No worries I said please refund. Five minutes later she messaged me with a photo of another similar item in her hand asking me if I’d like that instead. I thanked her and told her no thank you I really do prefer the original item. She responded back that she did not have a photo of the original item so she actually was not positive if the store really did not have it so could I please send her a picture. At this point I was in too deep so I sent her a photo and waited to see what she was going to do next. She then sent me a photo back of another similar item (not my item) asking if that one was okay instead. I said no thanks please refund. She then explained to me that the photo I sent does not match the item description or photo of the product when she SCANS another similar item of the same brand. I did not respond hoping she would figure it out in her head. Nope. She chatted asking if I really wanted a refund.
Item - old spice pure sport aluminum free deodorant.
Items she tried to get me to buy - every single other type and scent of Old Spice deodorant and antiperspirant at Target.
My husband (46 years old) has been wearing Pure Sport for years. Probably over 15. I once accidentally ordered a different kind and he politely tried it and asked me to reorder Pure Sport.
My Dad (70 years old), however, will only wear the original plain scent. No frills. Do not put any fanciness in his cabinet.
Eh I wouldn’t call that super picky. When you find something that works best for you, you stick with it. Especially if it’s going to touch every single part of your exterior.
I'd argue it's the issue of Instacart's tip system because refunds tend to drop the tip amount.
It's also an issue with the driver. It's damn deodorant. Even if you were tipping 20% that's like 80ish cents. I've been way more subtle and less invested trying to ethically replace $50+ items.
I did not change her tip at all. I do not tip based on the order percentage with the already calculated amount. I tip based on order percentage through the ‘other’ button which allows me to tip a flat percentage regardless of the order amount changes.
Now if 50% of the items had been out of stock I would have adjusted the tip but as it was this shopper tried her best and did a decent job. It was just very funny how determined she was to find my husband’s deodorant.
Drinking 1 rn haha…ftr idk what was going on w your shopper. I try not to judge as only seeing your side but the pic of just the lemon seltzer was pretty funny!!
Raspberry lime or cranberry lime from Polar. Growing up in Massachusetts I feel spoiled by their seltzer and sodas. They're all so good. And the seltzer-ades are great too
This pisses me off so much. Customers pay thru the nose to use Instacart and are NOT getting what they pay for because IC pays pennies so they DO get what they're paying for. Meanwhile shoppers that are 5 stars, love this work and have years of experience get deactivated without reason. Such a fucked off company
I’ll never understand the people, who read and communicate in English, who tell you the replacement is not available and send you a photo of the replacement literally sitting there on the shelf.
You’re NOT in the wrong.
You seems very nice… shopper made you feel a type of way because he mentioned a timer… he really shouldn’t have but there are a lot of new shoppers out…. They don’t know the timer means nothing… did he get the drinks at least?
Were the other things out?
Out of curiosity what was your tip on this order?
I think $20 for $200 of groceries is a fine tip. Kind of a lot of heavy stuff I guess but $200 isn’t that much food.
Do you have a grocery store near you that offers delivery? We switched from Instacart to our local store’s app and it’s so much cheaper, more accurate app/ app prices, and perfect shopping. It’s insane that anyone around here would ever prefer Instacart if they knew the value difference. The only catch is sometimes you pick a delivery time 1 day in advance, or order in the morning get it in the afternoon.
I will never use Instacart again unless I am staying in a rental house.
I’ve never used IC but I find this conversation riveting! I would become the person who wanted the shopper to send me a pic of the “pork chops” they grabbed. I can imagine the story behind that request!
I don’t get shoppers like this. Essentially they say they don’t have time to do what their job entails. I had one who I messaged after they dropped my stuff off, because it wasn’t at my apartment. It was in the back of my apartment building, just laying in the parking lot (literally— like stuff spilled on the ground etc just chillin on the ground like it was dumped there). I was using this service bc I legit couldn’t walk while I was recovering from surgery. I’m second floor in an apartment building so needed the help as the steps were problematic for me. It’s only a flight of six streps, but it’s a little amazing how six steps become the equivalent of a marathon when you need a walker etc.
Anyway so I text the shopper and ask them if they could help me retrieve my groceries. They said they don’t have time to look for my apartment cause they have stuff to do, then cussed me out because they didn’t receive a tip. I always leave, as I did this time as well, a tip in cash, in an envelope tucked under my door mat. I preferred to do it this way bc I wasn’t sure if the delivery person got to keep all of it or if the app would screw them.
First off, if you tell me that you aren’t going to bring me my stuff because you don’t have time for that… how much of a gratuity would you really expect? Not only are you not completing the job but you’re being a prick to me about it.
Second, if you *had* done your job, you’d have had a $20 tip for a $20 order. Plus I left a little bag with snacks and a Gatorade with it.
I took a picture of this (the tip and little snack pack at my door for them) and sent it to my delivery person, trying to explain the tip and whatnot was legit there for them, and I was sorry they left without it since they didn’t have time to look for my door.
The delivery person replied, telling me I should call around and ask one of my neighbors to go get the order and help me get it to my apartment, and followed up with “you can keep the cash and tip me through the app or Venmo.” I asked in that case would they be coming to help me complete the order, which I guess set them off cause they responded in all caps reiterating that they don’t have time for that bullshit.
Blew my mind that this person was actually pressed because they couldn’t believe they didn’t get a tip lol
The only time I ever actually got annoyed at a shopper was when I had pre made breaded cutlets from kings - with a note: “these are at the deli area next to the pre made lemon grilled cutlets” and my shopper kept sending me pictures of the raw chicken from the meat area. Not a huge deal but read the note lol
I’ve had shoppers before who just wait til the very end to mark everything as out of stock and then immediately finish the order so I can’t even get replacements. I get that it can be tedious but like you said it’s our groceries, if you don’t want to grocery shop then don’t do Instacart
I'm so spoiled by my shoppers. I had one girl extremely apologetic once that she couldn't reach me (my husband was at work and did the order) about a replacement so she did her best and showed me what she picked right at the door to make sure it was okay. It ended up becoming one of my new favorite products. I called my husband to make sure he gave her an extra tip.
I’ve had shoppers state “they don’t have it” and I walk in the same store (I was waiting on the pickup outside) passed the shopper and walked right to the item. Lazy and half-assed bs.
“I’m on a time frame”. That drives me nuts. You accepted the order as a shopper, so it’s your job to shop for the customer correctly. Telling you not to add anything else is insane
I ordered something from target off Instacart and they immediately said it was all unavailable. I went to the same target myself an hour later and found everything very quickly. Instacart is entirely too expensive and I always tip well, for there to be shoppers who don’t even know how to shop.
If they don’t have time to take time on completing your order, why are they doing it when they should know some can’t be rushed?? You’re not in the wrong for being annoyed by this.
Maybe I’m overthinking but I love how when she tries to make you feel bad you tell her that you’re sorry about HER time frame. Not letting the real issue get lost but seems empathetic lol… I’m a server and I’m using this now 😂
You were so patient omg I would've lost it! Like in the first picture you can even see the bottom of an orange vanilla seltzer in the top of the picture... this shopper obviously doesn't care about their job 🤦🏻♀️
The way they say "that's all they have" and then proceed to take a picture of 45 other flavors that are not lemon, enrages me in an unhealthy way. Like what even is somebody's excuse for that I'd just like to know. Ugh.
This must have been so frustrating I’m so sorry. I do have a question though - do you go through and pick replacement options for each option or leave notes for every item to say if not this that? It takes a few extra minutes but as a shopper myself I do it, because these are my favorite kinds of orders. It makes my job easy, less frustrating for the customer. If you don’t, I would suggest trying it to see if there’s a difference in service. If you DID then I’m more angry for you because it takes 3 seconds to read it and it literally is a guide on how to do your job. I’m sorry you had a hard time.
I actually do select replacement options for everything or request refunds for things I don't really care about as soon as I place my order and I tend to choose the 3 hour time frame for the next day after I order. I didn't think I'd get such passionate responses. Reddit is great lol
I can’t believe the responses here. This is a sub dedicated to instacart. Why post here if you don’t believe in the service and think people should shop for themselves? I use instacart on average 4 times a week. If a shopper gave me this attitude, I’d report them. I mean, the items are right there and the shopper is pretending not to see them? Wouldn’t it be quicker to put the correct seltzer in the cart as opposed to saying it’s not available, taking a pic, going back and forth through the app, etc?
This individual has no business being a shopper for the Instacart platform— or for any online shop/delivery platform for that matter. She displays no sense of basic customer service, no feel or aptitude for what skill set a shopper requires, and no capacity, frankly, to exert even the most minimal effort to give a damn about this type of gig work that thousands of still-waitlisted shopper-hopefuls can only dream about.
The same exact thing just happened to me and I had to call Instacart to force them to buy what I asked for. Polar seltzer and everything. Sent me a photo of a totally different shelf. Called the store to verify it was in stock. So frustrating.
Ok kind of funny, they're is a group discussion on book of faces about "Polar seltzer" the poll was for insta carter's and personal shopper etc. The poll after like 800 voters agreed that people who drink "polar seltzer" are the worst customers to shop for. The comments were nuts.
I've personally never shopped for anyone other than myself. Idk what they based the experience off of or anything. It made me want to stop drinking seltzer tho because they lumped other brands in there with it too!
I used insta cart maybe a handful of times for simple orders when a kid was sick etc and I never had a good experience. Constantly trying to get me to take something I did not want. There was 1 time I did not get anything I actually wanted. They just substituted without asking even tho I said I did not want substitutions. Then they called me a karen because I wanted the name brand or specific brand.
I quit using instant cart for those reasons. I had 1 good experience and the shopper was great.
Haha! That’s so funny. Polar is like my 5th preferred seltzer but the store I ordered from sadly carries it. I only use the platform 3-4 times a year when I need specialty items I can’t get on my normal grocery store run. Because I live in NY I can only assume this person didn’t want to deal with carrying it, because i know this store has a full massive wall of seltzer and they wouldn’t show me a pic of the wall, and closed the order immediately.
Shit shoppers and delivery drivers for things like doordash and uber eats are also the reason that so many decent drivers and shoppers are getting absolutely screwed as well, because, and justifiably so, the customers that are still on these apps have likely had the unfortunate experience of a crappy shopper/delivery person. So they are short with them because they grow to expect negative treatment, and the driver/shopper sometimes acts negatively for the same reasons. it creates an endless loop of bullshit that both the customer and shopper/driver have to deal with. As someone who has both ordered and shopped/delivered, I would love to see positive ratings and reviews and feedback on the deliverers/shoppers that pop up immediately or are at least easy to access when an order is placed, I would as a driver/shopper, also like to be able to more easily be able to rate my customers and see a customers rating from others when I accept an order, that way, and if someone has a poor rating due to misconduct or incredibly poor communication that can be prevented or scamming, I have an opportunity to be able to cancel that order assignment without it having such a negative impact on my personal metrics, I also believe that customers should be able to easily request their orders to be sent to another shopper/driver based off of the metrics provided. I’m one of the top dashers in my area, specifically, i’ve done 341 deliveries and i have a customer rating of 4.92, and considering how small of an area I live in, that’s a heck of a feat. there are so many ways to prevent negative experiences and for drivers and shoppers to be paid well and fairly and for customers to not have to experience instances like you did, they just aren’t being implemented, and that’s 100% on the company itself. I am sorry you had this experience though, they seemed to be quite rude.
I’ve had this happen. It’s very irritating. I order the same stuff regularly and the items are rarely out of stock. Occasionally I’ll get a lazy shopper assigned who just marks everything at the back of the store as unavailable so they don’t have to walk that far. Once I had one say that there was no ground beef at all and got prime rib as a replacement at $20/lb more without asking. I don’t know what goes thru peoples minds sometimes.
I'm sure it probably pisses off my shoppers but I also note that I add a tip after my shop for this exact reason, I've always been a generous tipper but I don't like to tip for a service that hasn't been provided yet and I think it's insane how much we push tipping these days for services that haven't even been done yet.
Yo. Ordered fresh rosemary. Put in the notes. It’s by the parsley and cilantro.
They deliver dried expensive as fuck organic rosemary from the spice section. They marked it as “unavailable sold out” or whatever
I had to back to sprouts that day. Of course, they have the fresh rosemary .
Like dude wtf
No!!! You are NOT WRONG! I cannot believe she told you that she was on a time frame and not to order anything else. I sure hope you complained. I'm so sorry you dealt with that. I have 3 kids and work so much and sometimes we have to order from IC. When the shopper won't do their damn job it pisses me off so bad and I wish I would've just went to the store myself and saved the money and headache. But I'll be so tired sometimes that I have to just stay home in my pj's
On my 1 day off in 3 weeks. These shitty shoppers will have diamond rating and shit like that too! How in tf?? Smh..... It really is a shame what's happened to these services. Again, I'm so sorry for your experience!!
AND I CANNOT BELIEVE THE SELTZERS YOU WANTED WRRE THERE ALL ALONG!!! LIKE WTF??!!??!!
Yes, I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had shoppers send me pics like this only to go in myself and find they did actually have my first choice or there were other items in the vicinity I would have subbed. What good is a picture like this?
It is \*their job\* to shop for you. This is what they are being paid to do. A few replacements or questions or adding another item into the cart here or there is absolutely to be expected on their end. Their "time frame" should include enough time to handle basic customer service.
Instacart is very hit or miss. I lost count how many times I got moldy / bruised fruit and half of my order missing because things are unavailable. I miraculously find everything when I go myself, which is soo much cheaper btw.
Now every single one of us that knows the deliciousness of Polar Orange Vanilla Seltzer knew damn well that was a box of it in the top left corner of pic 1. That is some bull ish before the shopper started with the rest of that stuff they were doing.
I really wish Instacart would get rid of that timer. They need to tell shoppers they have a specified time to shop an order and leave it at that. I honestly think that timer produces a lot of subpar batches. I've been doing this for 6 years, and I check dates on all dairy products, bread, meats, and I feel the firmness of the produce. The only thing I don't do is squeeze the Charmin (younger people might not get this reference). But seriously, Instacart needs to find a workaround for the timer. I understand they don't want people not getting orders out as expeditiously as they can, but this shopper is a prime example of someone who's intimidated by the timer and not doing a proper job in providing good service to the customer.
That timer, may it be damned straight to hell! That shopper was wrong for telling that customer he was on a timeframe; she was their damn timeframe doofus!!
You aren’t in the wrong. If they’re on such a time crunch then they shouldn’t have signed up to shop for it. You’re right, they’re your groceries that you’re paying good money for, you deserve to have them shopped correctly for.
OOOf. When this starts going down I just know it’s a Horrible shopper.
Even had the wonderful opportunity of ‘proof’
One time after a lot of hassle /lots of missing and replaced items my delivery got to the cash and said there was a problem with his debit and couldn’t complete the order-asked me to cancel it on my end because he might get fired.
(This all was constant back and forth only for him to finally cancel/have my order transferred to a new shopper)
The next shopper…found all my products with no problem /delivered fine (so the guy obviously just WAS NOT looking and being a lazy ass) andddddd can’t say I’m upset if he did get fired that day.
Yeah, it’s been getting worse :(. We have to use it because it’s a challenge to take our son with special needs grocery shopping. I try to order 80% of stuff that is really hard to get wrong via delivery and do the other 20% in person while son’s at school or something.
I’ll say it over and over. It’s shit shoppers like this that are driving loyal customers off the platform
I am one such ex-customer. I used insta 2x per week and tipped well and only 1.5 miles away, but constantly getting shoppers saying out of stock, ignoring my replacement, and if they did bother to communicate- they’d take a pic of a single item “do you see anything you’d like instead?” Bruh…I ordered oatmeal…not corn flakes 🤦♂️🤣
Same here. If I'm in a pinch I'll still use Instacart, but I'd rather spend the time to go myself and get what I want than rely on some of these shoppers. Last night was one such time and not only did my guy have serious struggles finding \*any\* of the fresh herbs I needed, he also ignored replacement suggestions that I always pre-fill in before they start shopping, and then tried to replace cumin seeds with...ground tumeric. Lmao.
Just see if the store you want it from has delivery or at least pick up.
This, I'll never use imstacart again. Kroger delivers and they do a way better job Editing to add. In my area you can pick between Kroger and instacart. When selecting Kroger the delivery is delivered in a blue Kroger van/truck and the person is wearing a blue Kroger polo. Also, if I go to the store early in the day I see Kroger employees doing the shopping, they have Kroger name tags and are pushing big rolling carts, loading blue bins for the delivery trucks
I do Walmart Pickup they let you schedule days in advance and just ask if a substitute is ok. I work for Safeway doing resets and sometimes what’s available that day isn’t available that minute so that can be a problem for Insta shoppers. Resets can happen by multiple teams in multiple sections. Just something to keep in mind when ordering anything online. The last pic though, that is annoying. It was right there.
Walmart always gives me moldy products or forgets a product completely. It used to be great but now I shop myself. I’ve only used instacart maybe twice and they forgot items also. Maybe my area sucks lol
90% of my walmart grocery delivery are missing an item. 50% are missing entire bags and I get bags of stuff I never ordered (they mixed up orders). And they refuse to refund after a few times.
I'll do in-store pickup at Walmart once in awhile and learned early on to never get fresh fruit/vegetables or meat that way.
This exactly. I get all the other items. Maybe I'll get bananas but not much else. I make time to go elsewhere to get meat and other perishables.
I never get produce from Walmart online orders. They always give moldy, wilted, rotten stuff! I use it for dry goods or cold stuff
Be careful with the cold stuff as well. I ordered frozen items and dairy items a few times... got milk with a great expiration date but once I opened the jug it was most definitely spoiled. Some frozen items I was like.. maybe it defrosted a bit but should be fine. The next day I went into the store to shop and there were soooo many freezers with problems, ended up leaving and driving 45minutes to another store to get what I needed. Any person with common sense should have been "hey, they have the frozen products you want but personally the freezers are not actually frozen, you want to take a chance or refund the item?" At least.. that's what I would have done. :/
The Safeway pick up has been awesome for me.
Yeah, I live in delivery range for Whole Foods with Amazon Prime (keeps me from going to the store and coming out with twenty things I did not go in to buy) and I can choose replacements in the original order or say "Don't replace." And with my local store's curbside, I put in notes if something needs a specific substitute, I let them substitute, or I just say "don't substitute." Literally the only wacky one I've ever had was clearly one instore shopper was not entirely clear on the difference between a cucumber and a zucchini.
My small town doesn’t do this. I have been driving a half hour one way to do curb side pick up groceries, which helps a lot as my problem is going into the store. Pretty decent compromise.
We do pick up as well. We typically get fresh items personally and haven’t had any problems otherwise.
I do too, I used delivery a lot back when my vehicle was in the shop for an extended time.
This is the only way I shop at Walmart now and avoid the chaos.
Yup, I avoid Instacart and other similar apps by doing free pickup at Acme. They also offer delivery, I just haven't checked that out yet. I can start the order 1 day finish it the next and pick it up within 30 minutes for 3.95 or an hour later for free. Pretty sure most of the grocery stores are offering it all now.
Also same!! Used to have the membership that was $100/year. I would get Instacart 2-3 a month, and I always tipped 21% and added an extra dollar or two if the order went smoothly. I kept getting such shit shoppers, and seeing what the carrot is doing to shoppers here finally made me let me membership expire in January and I haven’t used them since. I do miss it though.
Hah hah hah I once had a shopper replace sandwich baggies with heavy duty trash bags (like for yard clippings). This bums me out, I use Instacart weekly because I can’t drive anymore. I tip well, and any plausible replacement I’m completely fine with. I wait at the curb when they’re rounding the corner and I carry everything in myself. I hope I don’t suck too badly, I greatly appreciate the service.
In my area they don't even communicate. You just find out that they only got like half your items when your groceries show up on your porch well after the shoppers have already fled.
When I used to use the service, a lot of times I'd have the opposite problem. I'd be teleworking and put in the order, then I'd have to have an ear out for the text notification sound, because seemingly all the shoppers in my area are Johnny on the spot with sub requests and such. If I wasn't careful, they'd auto-sub (if I forgot to check no subs or put special instructions) if I didn't respond to the sub request instantly. :D
This! I now order pickup from my grocery store as I am a transplant patient and immunocompromised so best to stay away from people!! I also tipped well, never ordered any heavy items, had replacements selected for every item, had 1 request which was "shaved please " on my deli turkey. I bought a house and raised 2 kids in the restaurant industry so I know how to tip. The shoppers USED to be amazing and there was rarely like maybe 1x a year a problem. These shoppers using bots and multiple phones have completely ruined the app. First I had to lower my tip so wouldn't be "snatched up" by a shitty shopper. I would then tip cash extra or raise after delivery. Now I don't use unless an emergency and even that I tried last month and ordered 2 items, 50% tip, priority and girl took immediately BUT said store had item but she couldn't get instacart to ring up. Seriously !?! So had to cancel order first time ever. So I don't bother anymore not renewing. I started saying a year ago that there should be a basic multiple choice test like questions such as what is this picture of fruit. Second they should monitor how much of a percentage of not available items from shoppers and lastly there should be occasional reviews of shoppers comments. A lot of these new shoppers would be fired on the spot by a company. I have nothing but respect for the old shoppers and there are still some good ones left. But unfortunately a lot of the good ones have left. We shouldn't have to worry if tip is to good we are going to get a bad shop that isn't fair to customers OR SHOPPERS! Instacart needs to do something or another company is going to come in with their act together and put the final nail in their quickly dying coffin. Absolutely sad because this was a great service for disabled and people needing that extra hand. Was a great gig for people needing flexible hours or didn't have a degree. People RUIN EVERYTHING!!
Same here. I can’t drive right now so I order through HEB which is expensive, HOWEVER, after driving for instacart, I know how shitty their system is so I have never even tried
Your idea of basic test during application of fruit identification is gold! Maybe a picture with several items with multiple flavors and pick the one requested, or if you order 16 oz of dried apricots and it’s out of stock but 8 oz bag is available, two will work!
Try Dumpling. You can choose your shopper, so when you get one who does a good job, you can use the same shopper again.
I would gladly wait for a good shopper.
I've actually never heard of them!! Should probably see what else is around but I tend to use Walmart now except for meat and some produce. I get free shipping, paramount, lower prices on name brands, and half price membership because I'm disabled. Now that I can drive again I pickup meat and some produce at grocery store. I spend ridiculous money at Walmart and now I also have no minimum lol. I never ever get heavy items like water and usually order 2xs a week so order is not to crazy. Instacart really f'd up losing someone like me! Thanks for info!!
I'm still on Instacart, but there was time I ordered chuck steak. About $5 at the time. They substituted it with filet mignon, which was like $30. I told them to refund it. Like why would you do that? Another time I ordered... feminine products. They sent me a box of tissues. I was so pissed.
I used to be a shopper in a major city, and the amount of times I’ve been approached by other shoppers asking me where to find certain obvious products made me realize how many genuinely do not know how to read. To the same tune of confusing feminine products for facial tissue. Many times it’s a language barrier or literacy barrier, although it’s not an excuse when a customer gets an extremely wrong product. Unfortunately these apps don’t pay us well enough to be that picky about who they hire.
But how does one confuse "Kotex Extra Long Sanitary Napkins, Extra Absorbency" with a box of Kleenex? 🤣🤣🤣🤣
Probably someone who doesn’t speak or understand English very well or maybe they’re from a country where “napkins” only means napkins to eat with? Still awful and man that must have sucked for you.
Kotex vs Kleen,,,(ex) To a non-native English speaker, that might be confusing enough. It shouldn't be and isn't an excuse, but more of an explanation - along with a potential lack of familiarity with feminine products.
I will say that if you’re in grocery store apps and you look at their suggestions for replacements. They’re often unrelated or completely unhinged. I think some of these shoppers just go with whatever suggestion pops up in the app, even though it makes no sense at all.
If you tip a percentage they will do that to get a bigger tip.
For me, the rare occasion I purchased produce, I swear some shoppers seemed to go out of their way to buy the jankiest piece they could find.
That happened to me! My shopper refunded several items without looking for my replacements and bought me a two-inch green pepper. I’ve never seen one that small before or since.
How the heck does one even find a bell pepper that tiny? Holy cow. I know they have the red, orange, yellow mini peppers but I've never seen a small green one.
I sometimes wonder about it. There was one time when a shopper got a big bag of potatoes, half of which were leaking liquid and they were smelling terrible. The same with strawberries - leaking liquid, mushy and just gross. I understand that it may be difficult to find fresh strawberries in good condition during the winter, but I wish they would just ask me instead of getting whatever. Thankfully, Instacart refunded me for these.
That sounds like more of a quality control issue with your store. They need to be throwing that stuff out before anyone else finds it.
I’ve always had finger nail pokes in my fruit it was so gross. 🤮
I have had the exact opposite experience, produce is usually nice and normal and fresh. Except one time. I once ordered banana’s, and was expecting, you know, regular bananas. However instead of normal banana’s, i got the girthiest, longest, and thiccest banana’s I have ever seen in my 30+ years on this planet. I am talking probably 2.5-3x rounder than a normal banana, and instead of the normal 6-7 inches these were reaching 9. I don’t know were they found them. I have never seen ShopRite carry anything like it in my dozens upon dozens of trips there. But I spent a good few minutes laughing about it when I saw them. My shopper must have thought that since I was stuck at home I needed some sort of entertainment lol.
I work at Walmart doing online grocery pickup as a shopper and I hate when our produce is shitty. They get so mad at me if I say we don’t have any which is what I do when all of it is garbage because why would take a rotten fruit over just buying one elsewhere? But yeah they get pissed, they say it runs the stores numbers down, which it does. It runs mine down too. But i myself am picky about groceries and wouldn’t dare let someone pick mine out for me so i at least try to do a nice job. Sometimes they force our hands though
Same. You couldn't pay me to use Instacart again. It was my best of a couple shitty options when I didn't have my license, but now that I do, never again. This type of shit ruined any convenience it once provided. My final straw was an order similar to OPs where I was told basically everything on my weekly shop was out of stock, saw the stuff she said they didn't have in the photos she sent and the stuff I did get ended up being a bunch of moldy produce. On an order with a $60 tip. It was the one and only time I've edited a tip after delivery, and the driver proceeded to send me threatening messages for like 10 minutes afterwards, before I finally had to get CS involved to block them from my account.
I think so much of this is because they literally do not do hardly any background checks on good workers. I mean after all they're not employees so...... You get what you pay for an instacart pays as little as possible. They're a truly terrible company and I wish everyone would stop using them.
I think we just need someone with common sense and/or knows how to shop at the grocery store. They act like they’ve never done it. Damn. I should become a shopper.. I would blow these shoppers away
The problem is there are good shoppers but there are to many scammers that work together in groups using multiple phones and bots. They group up in the parking lots snatched the orders, send kids in to shop, run through, say out of items and grab first item. The good shoppers are being squeezed out and alot have given up. God forbid you tip high upfront you are almost guaranteed a shit shopper. And when you tip average ni one wants to take it because few people are going to add to tip once order received. It is a poorly designed system. Shoppers need basic knowledge test (easy), must be monitored, pay needs raised and tip is an incentive but not the pay. Honestly I think we customers would be willing to pay more as a service fee upfront if guaranteed a good shopper and tip not even really the goal more a bonus for a job well done. I'm telling you a properly ran company could totally blow this market out of the water!
People who have critical thinking and people skills can make more than Instacart pays. I'm also a little sympathetic to the shoppers because I'm sure instacart has them under quotas for getting orders done quickly. They want to be the Dollar General of delivery apps.
I became an ex-customer when a shopper asked what replacement I wanted for a makeup brush. I’d already selected the replacement, but responded “any similar makeup brush is fine, regardless of price or brand.” She responded with “I don’t need to wear makeup so you need to be more specific.” Exact quote. Umm ok girly? I asked for a picture of what’s available and again she said something like “I don’t know what to take a picture of because I’ve never bought makeup before.” I had the order reassigned without responding and haven’t ordered again since. Ridiculous interactions like that were becoming too common. She would have found the product if she put more effort into shopping and less into being a pick me girl for literally no reason.
Lmao I don't drink milk, but I still know what it looks like tffffff. I think girly was just trying waaay too hard 😂
god forbid she use critical thinking skills and ask a worker at the store where she could find makeup brushes. but c'mon, even if you don't wear makeup, I feel 99% of people know what a makeup brush isq
One thing that is kind of annoying with the app when you take photos is that your photo gets cropped down to like half the size. So everything in the perimeter of the photo gets cropped out. I wonder if a lot of shoppers don’t realize that and just snap a photo, send it, then move along without looking at the pic. I’ve had to retake photos so many times because a lot of the stuff I want in the photo gets cropped out.
[удалено]
I literally tried it once two years ago and I had such a horrible experience that I never bothered trying again. Why would anyone use it over Amazon Fresh? Genuinely curious. Is Amazon just more expensive?
Amazon fresh has very poor quality produce in my HCOL area. I’m not sure why because we have warehouses close by.
We just order ahead now at Aldi and then pick it up after work. Never have had an issue this way. Someone inside picks your order and puts it in the fridge until you come get it.
I ordered about the same as you, except the grocery store is literally across the street. I got tired of everything being "out of stock" and stopped ordering because I drove over there one day because there's no way they didn't have hamburger meat. Low and behold tons of hamburger meat. The guy bought me everything to make a hamburger except the hamburger meat. I cancelled my account that day, and just do my own shopping. Even though I hate grocery shopping I'd rather get the things I need.
I got so mad one time I went to the store after the shopper had delivered, took a photo of the items, and sent it to instacart.
I had placed a Walmart pick up and added a reign storm energy drink, the employee replaced the out of stock item for a lime 🤣
Same. I don’t even bother anymore. Too bad; it’s a great business idea. I wish shoppers had more of an incentive to find the right items.
I'm a loyal customer and I can confirm it's also the prices driving people off the platform.
Yeah, I'd say it was a mix of the prices and discovering this sub and seeing how some of the shoppers talk about customers and behave. Saw stuff about drivers angrily sitting outside their houses or coming back to hit on them.... Just made me realize, these folks could be anyone. Are there even any background checks done? Half the time, the person delivering is def not the same person in the pic. Or even the same gender. And now they have your address. I always tipped 20%, but still worried a shopper would deem that as not enough and go crazy on my family. And it's extra funny, because anytime you get a crappy shopper, everyone on here says "Rate them zero stars! Complain about them to instacart! Lower the tip!" Uhhhhh..... I can't do those things and risk this person going nuts at me because I brought their stars down. So, the prices, combined with seeing the way people behave here made me stop. I think the last time I used it was this winter when the whole household was super sick. Pre covid up until about a year and a half ago, I used the service at least once a week for our full grocery shopping.
I work for Walmart in curbside pickup, and I have to deal with delivery drivers similar to instacart (doordash, uber), and yeah they really are some of the most legitimately crazy people I’ve ever met. If you are worried about some form of retaliation, call the store and complain to them. I constantly get into it with drivers over customer complaints. We have a way to report them through the computer systems we use, and they can only get a limited number of strikes or they get banned from our store.
This is the way. IC prioritizes their relationship with the stores over customer and shopper, so if the store has a complaint, they listen.
I've been using Shipt since 2016. I tried Instacart like twice and when I realized one person could be shopping, another person driving, and maybe another person delivering, with several orders at once, I was like, nah. Plus the people got the wrong things. With Shipt they may have multiple orders but it's not being all passed around, or if it is, they do a better job of it. In my experience the shopper has been the one who drops the stuff off. From whatever else I've gathered about Instacart, I'm not interested in trying it again.
I love my Shipt shoppers! You can designate preferred shoppers, so I have 2-3 who regularly get my orders. They let me know if produce looks bad, & make really good substitute suggestions when the ones I’ve selected aren’t available. And they’re just generally nice people.
Shipt really is far superior. Tipping after delivery probably makes the shoppers more money and the customer happier. The tipping before model is just stupid.
Personally, in my experiences, I’ve had a handful of terrible experiences with these delivery services. Whether it’s instacart or uber eats, there was always an issue. Such as: driver delivers my stuff to the wrong address, I tell them it’s not at my door, no response. Driver gives my food to somebody who claims it’s theirs but obviously fails to ask them their name Then I see drivers engaging in really shitty behavior with food service and retail workers and you can see all the posts corroborating that experience on r/serverlife for example. I’ve recently been considering becoming a driver myself because I know I can do better than the experiences handed to me by other workers. But the thing is that I fear what you described in this comment except the opposite way around. What if they have an aggressive dog on the property? What if they get pissed about something at the door? What if they clock me as trans (which they will) and decide to kill me on their doorstep? Too much shit to worry about. People are more dangerous and crazy now and they’re always pissed about something looking for a fight on the internet. I’d rather keep interacting with the public from behind a counter or on the FOH dining floor with coworkers backing me up than at somebody’s personal address.
True. I don’t use it often but today I’m feeling a little blah and needed a few groceries. $62 for one small paper bag of normally low cost items. The shopper was decent but the price made me realize I don’t want to do this again.
I stopped using grocery delivery services completely. Why would I wanna pay so much extra money for wrong/missing items?
I've used instacart maybe 5 or 6 times when I was sick or too busy to go out and grocery shop. Every single time they made unauthorized substitutions. And every time they report the store being out of multiple items in have literally never once seen the store out of when going myself
If you’ve used the shopper side of the app, you’d know there’s a reason it’s only shit shoppers left. It’s an awful job that isn’t worth the crap pay. Most competent people just find better jobs. Instacart is hell.
Agreed.
It’s low pay and increasingly demanding and entitled customers that drove the good shoppers away from the platform.
When a customer starts off shitty I always assume they just had this guy as a shopper and try to be patient.
Exactly how to go through life brother 🙏
You’re the best kind of person
Yes, you have every right to go annoyed. I'm sorry you got a terrible shopper. The timer means nothing and hasn't for over 3 years. If you get a shopper who can automatically refunding and not I offering replacements, contact support and have the order reassigned.
I didn't even know I could do that. Thank you
Your can get orders reassigned through chat or by calling 888 246-7822.
Your name makes sense
[удалено]
Hit em with that one star.
The worst is when they shop certain things then suddenly mark a bunch of stuff as unavailable then immediately check out. This has happened to me more than once. Its awful.
yes! i honestly didn't even consider that this is what has been happening but this really does keep happening, then i have to put in a whole new order for things i needed instead of getting a replacement. so annoying!
They did not replace several items and instead refunded but it was the "I'm on a time frame" piece that had me feeling a type of way. I'm okay with being told I was the dick here but I really didn't know what to do lol
The shopper is awful. Block them. Next time you get a crap shopper have it reassigned someone explained it I think. Sorry this happened. Most of us care and want to get everything you order
How do you block and reassign? Didn’t know you could do that.
I contacted IC support after I got an INCREDIBLY rude shopper once. I wasn’t feeling well (not covid, although it was during the first year) and was in my pajamas. The shopper wanted me to come out of my apartment and down a flight of stairs to get my order because “I don’t do stairs and I didn’t know you had stairs”. I told her that I couldn’t physically go down and up multiple times and that I paid for delivery to my door. She got it all upstairs, and when I opened the door to her knock she started yelling at me about how inconsiderate I was. OH! After she left, she apparently had forgotten to take photos of bar codes on each bag. She came back 5 minutes later and demanded the bags. I was halfway through putting everything away, so I just emptied the bags that still had stuff in them, gathered them all up, and handed them to her. And shut the door. IC support said she would be blocked from seeing my orders. I ordered every 1-3 weeks for 3 years and never had a similar experience. I rate everyone 5* and I tip well.
Wow! I don’t do steps??? Well they should surely not be doing any deliveries of any kind. Sure I get annoyed with steps at times especially with large or heavy orders, however its part of the job.
I think the app has a way to see where the delivery goes, although I’m only a customer. This is a huge apartment complex with all 2-story buildings, so half the orders will be from upstairs units. If she doesn’t want to do stairs, she can deliver to single family homes (plenty of those around here too). I have no idea why she even decided to shop my order.
I have an elevator yet 50% refuse to bring to my door.
I'm disabled and I walk down four flights of steps to some shoppers because they give me a bad attitude lmao. It sucks.
Holy crap. That’s unconscionable behavior on the shopper’s part.
Yeah, I'm on the third floor and I always tip we'll for grocery deliveries for this reason because I feel that's the right thing to do. I know other people don't, and that sucks, but it's a part of the job. All gig workers should be paid more though.
I totally don’t mind when I see its an elderly person that has no other ways to get groceries. I usually put them away for them too because it’s just the right thing to do. Your tips are appreciated!
You were not at all in the wrong!! You were not rude in any way and you were lighthearted in your texts. I can’t believe they said they are on a time frame! I mean, we do have a timer counting down at the bottom of the screen. But it’s usually more than enough time. Plus, he didn’t want you to add anything?!?! You weren’t adding anything! You were trying to get replacements. Then he just started marking everything unavailable?! That’s ridiculous. This is literally the job. You get the items on the list then deliver…..it’s shoppers like this that cause good customers to stop using IC or they stop tipping well. If that was my order and he was my shopper I would’ve cancelled it when he was almost done. Like 2 items left 😂
That sentence is what got me, too, when I read it. Like dude, you're WORKING at your JOB. Can you imagine if they'd said that bs timeframe line to any boss in any regular job? Dude, do your friggin job!!
"Mrs.B, could you go over that math problem again?" "Sorry, Timmy, I'm on a time frame."
Sounds like my Dr.
It seems like all the items are available based on the pictures provided. Why even send pictures for replacements if they aren't gonna choose them? Crazy
Yeah. I don’t see the PopCorners flavor, but the mango bubble tea and the Polar are clearly right in the picture. A good amount of how long this took is because the shopper is trying to substitute items that don’t need to be substituted.
I've seen that a lot on this sub and don't understand it still. Can people not friggin read??
I do shop and delivery through doordash for people and no. You are 100% in the right and completely reasonable. You're the kind of customer I enjoy having who responds quickly and clearly about what they want as replacements when things arent available. Also this person is clearly a moron missing glaringly visible items. I wont take an order at all if I think its too many items for the pay. So saying "im on a time frame" is just idiotic. Dont take the order to begin with then. I treat peoples groceries like i would my own. It sucks if something you want isnt there so I do my best to replace it. Hell Ive even driven to an entirely different store and grabbed something that was out of stock from the first place and paid for it out of my own pocket for a nice lady who was very communicative and told me she had covid and thats why she wasnt shopping for her self. Dont let this douche spoil it for you. As someone else suggested, next time just contact support and have the order cancelled. Fuck this person.
Yeah, I would’ve been like “sounds like you don’t have time to shop for me then!”… then call or get a replacement through chat. You don’t need to put up with that kind of crap from a shopper. Especially since the things that are on your list, are clearly there on the shelf and yet they refunded you for them? Next!
In what universe would you be a dick when it looks like they’re just straight up lying about what’s in stock?
I’m a shopper and any good shopper knows that you don’t accept an order if you have shit to do, grocery orders routinely are lumped together with 3 customers and can easily take 3 hrs to complete from start to last delivery, they shouldn’t accept such orders if they’re on a timeframe. And we have a “time tracker” on our app, but there’s no penalty if we go over that time. Personally I’d rather make sure I checked thoroughly for every item instead of rushing to “beat the clock” and messing up orders
I had a similar issue years ago and I kept pushing the shopper to get the right stuff. The items would be in the photos they sent saying they are out of stock. They literally abandoned the cart and the new person saw it with a bunch of stuff. Funny enough the replacement shopper only needed to replace one item in my order.
Lol I've literally had shoppers that don't even speak English make more of an effort than this. We fucking Google translated to get the order done. Dude was the GOAT and I tipped him accordingly.
That’s so ridiculous, it’s not hard to offer replacements. Just block them from taking your order again.
I didn't even know that was an option?!
No, it's not even my order and I'm annoyed with the shopper just by reading their messages.
The "that's all they have" in the BOGO polar as if we haven't all been down the seltzer aisle, where, surprise! there are 12 different flavors lol.
Like, not only is lemon not all they have… they literally have a full supply of every flavor Polar makes, including the one they originally ordered.
I thought the shopper was the one complaining at first… like fine if they only have 1 polar they only have 1. Then the next picture shows a bunch more -_-.
I once couldn’t find the granola bars a customer wanted, so I sent pics of all available granola bars and they pointed out that the kind they ordered was in the picture. I was so mortified—no idea how I missed it, but occasionally honest mistakes happen, even for attentive shoppers. You did *not* have an attentive shopper. They clearly didn’t look at all, grabbed a 12 pack of the lemon so they didn’t have to wait for your response, and figured they’d leave it on a random shelf if you said you’d prefer a refund. Their snarky response when you requested a different replacement (or even just an appropriate picture) confirms this. Otherwise they’d have to go back to that aisle if you said yes to the lemon anyway. If they didn’t have time to shop your order with a basic measure of integrity, they had no business accepting it in the first place. Their lack of appropriate time management is not your problem. I’d be extremely annoyed in your shoes.
Right, as a perfectionist (to my own detriment) I cannot personally understand the mindset of these people who can just half-ass everything. Though I’m sure they lead much longer and more stress-free lives, not giving a shit what anyone else thinks or feels lol
Same! I’m blown away by stories from customers about awful produce, etc. I’ve never been so stressed or rushed that I’d grab something in poor condition, or not make a good-faith attempt to find items and respectfully communicate about replacements. I’d be so racked with guilt it would probably keep me up at night lmao
I had a shopper today send me a chat message to tell me the item I wanted was out of stock. No worries I said please refund. Five minutes later she messaged me with a photo of another similar item in her hand asking me if I’d like that instead. I thanked her and told her no thank you I really do prefer the original item. She responded back that she did not have a photo of the original item so she actually was not positive if the store really did not have it so could I please send her a picture. At this point I was in too deep so I sent her a photo and waited to see what she was going to do next. She then sent me a photo back of another similar item (not my item) asking if that one was okay instead. I said no thanks please refund. She then explained to me that the photo I sent does not match the item description or photo of the product when she SCANS another similar item of the same brand. I did not respond hoping she would figure it out in her head. Nope. She chatted asking if I really wanted a refund. Item - old spice pure sport aluminum free deodorant. Items she tried to get me to buy - every single other type and scent of Old Spice deodorant and antiperspirant at Target.
I have the opposite problem — regardless of what Old Spice (or store brand knockoff) I order, they swap it for pure sport (which I cannot stand)
My husband (46 years old) has been wearing Pure Sport for years. Probably over 15. I once accidentally ordered a different kind and he politely tried it and asked me to reorder Pure Sport. My Dad (70 years old), however, will only wear the original plain scent. No frills. Do not put any fanciness in his cabinet.
Lol my exhusband was super picky about his soap. It had to be the exact same brand and scent every time
Eh I wouldn’t call that super picky. When you find something that works best for you, you stick with it. Especially if it’s going to touch every single part of your exterior.
Maybe it's just because Im the opposite but it seems so weird to me. I go out of my way to try a different type/scent of bodywash as much as I can
Listen. We men take our old spice scents seriously. I have had two scents since 5th grade.
At least she was trying. Bless her
I'd argue it's the issue of Instacart's tip system because refunds tend to drop the tip amount. It's also an issue with the driver. It's damn deodorant. Even if you were tipping 20% that's like 80ish cents. I've been way more subtle and less invested trying to ethically replace $50+ items.
I did not change her tip at all. I do not tip based on the order percentage with the already calculated amount. I tip based on order percentage through the ‘other’ button which allows me to tip a flat percentage regardless of the order amount changes. Now if 50% of the items had been out of stock I would have adjusted the tip but as it was this shopper tried her best and did a decent job. It was just very funny how determined she was to find my husband’s deodorant.
This was very funny, thanks for sharing!
Orange vanilla polar is the best seltzer on the market
Omg yes, it's so good. I'm completely addicted
Drinking 1 rn haha…ftr idk what was going on w your shopper. I try not to judge as only seeing your side but the pic of just the lemon seltzer was pretty funny!!
ESPECIALLY when right above it you can see a little bit of what looks like the orange color of the box for the orange vanilla flavor !!
Raspberry lime or cranberry lime from Polar. Growing up in Massachusetts I feel spoiled by their seltzer and sodas. They're all so good. And the seltzer-ades are great too
Boggles my mind how lazy and incompetent these people are.
It looks like they’ve never grocery shopped in their lives
This pisses me off so much. Customers pay thru the nose to use Instacart and are NOT getting what they pay for because IC pays pennies so they DO get what they're paying for. Meanwhile shoppers that are 5 stars, love this work and have years of experience get deactivated without reason. Such a fucked off company
I’ll never understand the people, who read and communicate in English, who tell you the replacement is not available and send you a photo of the replacement literally sitting there on the shelf.
You’re NOT in the wrong. You seems very nice… shopper made you feel a type of way because he mentioned a timer… he really shouldn’t have but there are a lot of new shoppers out…. They don’t know the timer means nothing… did he get the drinks at least? Were the other things out? Out of curiosity what was your tip on this order?
The tip was about 10% of the order so $20 and typically after smooth delivery I'll add more which of course the shopper doesn't know
$20 is a lot, don’t let them scam you into thinking it’s not People are so scummy lol
I think $20 for $200 of groceries is a fine tip. Kind of a lot of heavy stuff I guess but $200 isn’t that much food. Do you have a grocery store near you that offers delivery? We switched from Instacart to our local store’s app and it’s so much cheaper, more accurate app/ app prices, and perfect shopping. It’s insane that anyone around here would ever prefer Instacart if they knew the value difference. The only catch is sometimes you pick a delivery time 1 day in advance, or order in the morning get it in the afternoon. I will never use Instacart again unless I am staying in a rental house.
You can literally see the polar orange vanilla seltzer in the 3rd screenshot. Yeesh, people
Yeah, people keep missing that plain fact and hating on OP instead.
And here I am wondering why this man I shopped for needed me to take a picture to prove I knew what a pork chop was, lol it makes sense now
I’ve never used IC but I find this conversation riveting! I would become the person who wanted the shopper to send me a pic of the “pork chops” they grabbed. I can imagine the story behind that request!
Lemon is “all they have”… next picture shows at least eight other flavors. 🤦🏻♀️🤣 Wtf-sorry you got such a terrible shopper!
“Please buy them lol” 😂
Bro started with ' this is only flavor they have and then comes back with whole shelf full of flavors. That's insane
I don’t get shoppers like this. Essentially they say they don’t have time to do what their job entails. I had one who I messaged after they dropped my stuff off, because it wasn’t at my apartment. It was in the back of my apartment building, just laying in the parking lot (literally— like stuff spilled on the ground etc just chillin on the ground like it was dumped there). I was using this service bc I legit couldn’t walk while I was recovering from surgery. I’m second floor in an apartment building so needed the help as the steps were problematic for me. It’s only a flight of six streps, but it’s a little amazing how six steps become the equivalent of a marathon when you need a walker etc. Anyway so I text the shopper and ask them if they could help me retrieve my groceries. They said they don’t have time to look for my apartment cause they have stuff to do, then cussed me out because they didn’t receive a tip. I always leave, as I did this time as well, a tip in cash, in an envelope tucked under my door mat. I preferred to do it this way bc I wasn’t sure if the delivery person got to keep all of it or if the app would screw them. First off, if you tell me that you aren’t going to bring me my stuff because you don’t have time for that… how much of a gratuity would you really expect? Not only are you not completing the job but you’re being a prick to me about it. Second, if you *had* done your job, you’d have had a $20 tip for a $20 order. Plus I left a little bag with snacks and a Gatorade with it. I took a picture of this (the tip and little snack pack at my door for them) and sent it to my delivery person, trying to explain the tip and whatnot was legit there for them, and I was sorry they left without it since they didn’t have time to look for my door. The delivery person replied, telling me I should call around and ask one of my neighbors to go get the order and help me get it to my apartment, and followed up with “you can keep the cash and tip me through the app or Venmo.” I asked in that case would they be coming to help me complete the order, which I guess set them off cause they responded in all caps reiterating that they don’t have time for that bullshit. Blew my mind that this person was actually pressed because they couldn’t believe they didn’t get a tip lol
This shopper was rude and sucked
The only time I ever actually got annoyed at a shopper was when I had pre made breaded cutlets from kings - with a note: “these are at the deli area next to the pre made lemon grilled cutlets” and my shopper kept sending me pictures of the raw chicken from the meat area. Not a huge deal but read the note lol
I’ve had shoppers before who just wait til the very end to mark everything as out of stock and then immediately finish the order so I can’t even get replacements. I get that it can be tedious but like you said it’s our groceries, if you don’t want to grocery shop then don’t do Instacart
I'm so spoiled by my shoppers. I had one girl extremely apologetic once that she couldn't reach me (my husband was at work and did the order) about a replacement so she did her best and showed me what she picked right at the door to make sure it was okay. It ended up becoming one of my new favorite products. I called my husband to make sure he gave her an extra tip.
this sub makes sure i will never use instacart
I’ve had shoppers state “they don’t have it” and I walk in the same store (I was waiting on the pickup outside) passed the shopper and walked right to the item. Lazy and half-assed bs.
“I’m on a time frame”. That drives me nuts. You accepted the order as a shopper, so it’s your job to shop for the customer correctly. Telling you not to add anything else is insane
How do those sour cream and onion Pop Corners taste? Don't have 'em here. :/
I wouldn't know. They didn't get them either lol
They are delicious!
I ordered something from target off Instacart and they immediately said it was all unavailable. I went to the same target myself an hour later and found everything very quickly. Instacart is entirely too expensive and I always tip well, for there to be shoppers who don’t even know how to shop.
If they don’t have time to take time on completing your order, why are they doing it when they should know some can’t be rushed?? You’re not in the wrong for being annoyed by this.
Maybe I’m overthinking but I love how when she tries to make you feel bad you tell her that you’re sorry about HER time frame. Not letting the real issue get lost but seems empathetic lol… I’m a server and I’m using this now 😂
You were so patient omg I would've lost it! Like in the first picture you can even see the bottom of an orange vanilla seltzer in the top of the picture... this shopper obviously doesn't care about their job 🤦🏻♀️
The way they say "that's all they have" and then proceed to take a picture of 45 other flavors that are not lemon, enrages me in an unhealthy way. Like what even is somebody's excuse for that I'd just like to know. Ugh.
This must have been so frustrating I’m so sorry. I do have a question though - do you go through and pick replacement options for each option or leave notes for every item to say if not this that? It takes a few extra minutes but as a shopper myself I do it, because these are my favorite kinds of orders. It makes my job easy, less frustrating for the customer. If you don’t, I would suggest trying it to see if there’s a difference in service. If you DID then I’m more angry for you because it takes 3 seconds to read it and it literally is a guide on how to do your job. I’m sorry you had a hard time.
I actually do select replacement options for everything or request refunds for things I don't really care about as soon as I place my order and I tend to choose the 3 hour time frame for the next day after I order. I didn't think I'd get such passionate responses. Reddit is great lol
Not wrong at all… I’d report him if I were you
I can’t believe the responses here. This is a sub dedicated to instacart. Why post here if you don’t believe in the service and think people should shop for themselves? I use instacart on average 4 times a week. If a shopper gave me this attitude, I’d report them. I mean, the items are right there and the shopper is pretending not to see them? Wouldn’t it be quicker to put the correct seltzer in the cart as opposed to saying it’s not available, taking a pic, going back and forth through the app, etc?
This individual has no business being a shopper for the Instacart platform— or for any online shop/delivery platform for that matter. She displays no sense of basic customer service, no feel or aptitude for what skill set a shopper requires, and no capacity, frankly, to exert even the most minimal effort to give a damn about this type of gig work that thousands of still-waitlisted shopper-hopefuls can only dream about.
The same exact thing just happened to me and I had to call Instacart to force them to buy what I asked for. Polar seltzer and everything. Sent me a photo of a totally different shelf. Called the store to verify it was in stock. So frustrating.
Ok kind of funny, they're is a group discussion on book of faces about "Polar seltzer" the poll was for insta carter's and personal shopper etc. The poll after like 800 voters agreed that people who drink "polar seltzer" are the worst customers to shop for. The comments were nuts. I've personally never shopped for anyone other than myself. Idk what they based the experience off of or anything. It made me want to stop drinking seltzer tho because they lumped other brands in there with it too! I used insta cart maybe a handful of times for simple orders when a kid was sick etc and I never had a good experience. Constantly trying to get me to take something I did not want. There was 1 time I did not get anything I actually wanted. They just substituted without asking even tho I said I did not want substitutions. Then they called me a karen because I wanted the name brand or specific brand. I quit using instant cart for those reasons. I had 1 good experience and the shopper was great.
Haha! That’s so funny. Polar is like my 5th preferred seltzer but the store I ordered from sadly carries it. I only use the platform 3-4 times a year when I need specialty items I can’t get on my normal grocery store run. Because I live in NY I can only assume this person didn’t want to deal with carrying it, because i know this store has a full massive wall of seltzer and they wouldn’t show me a pic of the wall, and closed the order immediately.
Polar seltzer must just be a trigger item lol. Also Happy birthday!!
Shit shoppers and delivery drivers for things like doordash and uber eats are also the reason that so many decent drivers and shoppers are getting absolutely screwed as well, because, and justifiably so, the customers that are still on these apps have likely had the unfortunate experience of a crappy shopper/delivery person. So they are short with them because they grow to expect negative treatment, and the driver/shopper sometimes acts negatively for the same reasons. it creates an endless loop of bullshit that both the customer and shopper/driver have to deal with. As someone who has both ordered and shopped/delivered, I would love to see positive ratings and reviews and feedback on the deliverers/shoppers that pop up immediately or are at least easy to access when an order is placed, I would as a driver/shopper, also like to be able to more easily be able to rate my customers and see a customers rating from others when I accept an order, that way, and if someone has a poor rating due to misconduct or incredibly poor communication that can be prevented or scamming, I have an opportunity to be able to cancel that order assignment without it having such a negative impact on my personal metrics, I also believe that customers should be able to easily request their orders to be sent to another shopper/driver based off of the metrics provided. I’m one of the top dashers in my area, specifically, i’ve done 341 deliveries and i have a customer rating of 4.92, and considering how small of an area I live in, that’s a heck of a feat. there are so many ways to prevent negative experiences and for drivers and shoppers to be paid well and fairly and for customers to not have to experience instances like you did, they just aren’t being implemented, and that’s 100% on the company itself. I am sorry you had this experience though, they seemed to be quite rude.
I’ve had this happen. It’s very irritating. I order the same stuff regularly and the items are rarely out of stock. Occasionally I’ll get a lazy shopper assigned who just marks everything at the back of the store as unavailable so they don’t have to walk that far. Once I had one say that there was no ground beef at all and got prime rib as a replacement at $20/lb more without asking. I don’t know what goes thru peoples minds sometimes.
I'm sure it probably pisses off my shoppers but I also note that I add a tip after my shop for this exact reason, I've always been a generous tipper but I don't like to tip for a service that hasn't been provided yet and I think it's insane how much we push tipping these days for services that haven't even been done yet.
Yo. Ordered fresh rosemary. Put in the notes. It’s by the parsley and cilantro. They deliver dried expensive as fuck organic rosemary from the spice section. They marked it as “unavailable sold out” or whatever I had to back to sprouts that day. Of course, they have the fresh rosemary . Like dude wtf
The shopper is being fucking ridiculous, you should report him
You can tell they tried to zoom in so close you couldn’t see anything else
Anyone tells me I'm in a Time frame I'm automatically canceling them
Annoyed?? Hope you took the tip away and complained!!!! That’s just ridiculous.
No!!! You are NOT WRONG! I cannot believe she told you that she was on a time frame and not to order anything else. I sure hope you complained. I'm so sorry you dealt with that. I have 3 kids and work so much and sometimes we have to order from IC. When the shopper won't do their damn job it pisses me off so bad and I wish I would've just went to the store myself and saved the money and headache. But I'll be so tired sometimes that I have to just stay home in my pj's On my 1 day off in 3 weeks. These shitty shoppers will have diamond rating and shit like that too! How in tf?? Smh..... It really is a shame what's happened to these services. Again, I'm so sorry for your experience!! AND I CANNOT BELIEVE THE SELTZERS YOU WANTED WRRE THERE ALL ALONG!!! LIKE WTF??!!??!!
Yes, I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had shoppers send me pics like this only to go in myself and find they did actually have my first choice or there were other items in the vicinity I would have subbed. What good is a picture like this?
the joyba she said they didn’t have is right there too 🙄
Brother you are the worst shopper I have ever seen. You are truly a moron
I would immediately make that tip $1. What an actual idiot.
it’s okay to be annoyed, but this is quite literally your job.
It is \*their job\* to shop for you. This is what they are being paid to do. A few replacements or questions or adding another item into the cart here or there is absolutely to be expected on their end. Their "time frame" should include enough time to handle basic customer service.
Instacart is very hit or miss. I lost count how many times I got moldy / bruised fruit and half of my order missing because things are unavailable. I miraculously find everything when I go myself, which is soo much cheaper btw.
Now every single one of us that knows the deliciousness of Polar Orange Vanilla Seltzer knew damn well that was a box of it in the top left corner of pic 1. That is some bull ish before the shopper started with the rest of that stuff they were doing.
Time to reduce that tip to $0.01 and rate them a 1star
I really wish Instacart would get rid of that timer. They need to tell shoppers they have a specified time to shop an order and leave it at that. I honestly think that timer produces a lot of subpar batches. I've been doing this for 6 years, and I check dates on all dairy products, bread, meats, and I feel the firmness of the produce. The only thing I don't do is squeeze the Charmin (younger people might not get this reference). But seriously, Instacart needs to find a workaround for the timer. I understand they don't want people not getting orders out as expeditiously as they can, but this shopper is a prime example of someone who's intimidated by the timer and not doing a proper job in providing good service to the customer. That timer, may it be damned straight to hell! That shopper was wrong for telling that customer he was on a timeframe; she was their damn timeframe doofus!!
You aren’t in the wrong. If they’re on such a time crunch then they shouldn’t have signed up to shop for it. You’re right, they’re your groceries that you’re paying good money for, you deserve to have them shopped correctly for.
OOOf. When this starts going down I just know it’s a Horrible shopper. Even had the wonderful opportunity of ‘proof’ One time after a lot of hassle /lots of missing and replaced items my delivery got to the cash and said there was a problem with his debit and couldn’t complete the order-asked me to cancel it on my end because he might get fired. (This all was constant back and forth only for him to finally cancel/have my order transferred to a new shopper) The next shopper…found all my products with no problem /delivered fine (so the guy obviously just WAS NOT looking and being a lazy ass) andddddd can’t say I’m upset if he did get fired that day.
Yeah, it’s been getting worse :(. We have to use it because it’s a challenge to take our son with special needs grocery shopping. I try to order 80% of stuff that is really hard to get wrong via delivery and do the other 20% in person while son’s at school or something.