Costco nightmare.
I’m new to Instacart (only on my 2nd batch, trying to grind to Cart Stars), and I just had the absolute worst experience at Costco.
I accepted a double batch. Customer A had 22 items (dog food, soda, etc.), and Customer B ordered 12 cases of water. It took me 50 minutes to find everything.
I get to checkout, scan Customer A’s membership, swipe, and enter the PIN on my screen. Not Authorized.
The cashier makes me step aside to contact support. The agent tells me to refresh the app and try again. When I ask the cashier to jump back in, she rudely rolls her eyes and makes me wait. I try again. Not Authorized.
Step aside again. Support escalates the call, and I’m stuck on hold for 15 minutes. They tell me to try a manual override PIN (5454). By this time, they have to open a whole new register just for me because the line is backed up and people are staring daggers at me. I move everything over, try the 5454 PIN, and it still declines.
Support decides to cancel Order A, promises me I'll still get batch pay, and tells me to run Order B. Swipe Order B... Declined.
They ended up canceling the entire batch. They gave me the base batch pay, but removed the tips and I got zero delivery credit toward my Cart Star goal.
I went home frustrated as hell because of how embarrassing that experience was. I opened a chat to find out what actually happened. Support spoke to me like I was an idiot, claiming it declined because of an "incorrect security PIN." Total BS. Even their backup override PIN declined! This was 100% a backend server issue on Instacart's end.
I was planning on shopping all day, but this completely ruined my motivation. Has anyone else had Instacart cards completely fail like this?
Customer A's order was $250 and customer B i dont remember, but I wasnt willing to pay for their orders out of pocket and then wait the 30 days for reimbursement..
I bet they reassign the order as a deliver only since I did all the shopping for them.