r/InstacartShoppers

I’m tired of instacart not allowing higher purchases. I had a Costco order for a weighted item. Said this is higher than Customer expects. They are for $14-16. So I search through all the meats to find the lowest and it still won’t go through. So I just lowered the weight to push it through. If instacart won’t let us do our jobs, they can handle after on their time after. Then they send me an email warning because of it. Like it’s my fault your app sucks.

Customer puts “please cancel / don’t deliver today” in the notes and expects ME to eat the cancellation hit so they don’t have to talk to support 🙃
Just delivered this 4 lb bag of organic strawberries because the note said:

“I need this items for tomorrow instead October 7
I will do an order tomorrow I will need more things please don’t deliver today thank you”

So instead of hitting the cancel button themselves (or, heaven forbid, contacting support like a normal person), they drop the “pretty please don’t deliver” in the notes and hope the shopper reads it, stops everything, and initiates the cancel so they don’t have to deal with the app or wait on hold.

I did not slow down. I did not message. I shopped it, bagged it, and delivered it. Because that’s what the batch paid me to do.

This is peak Instacart design: force the shopper and the customer into this awkward little standoff where one of us has to be the bad guy and lose money/time so the other one doesn’t have to talk to support. Customer doesn’t want the order? Cool. Cancel it. Don’t outsource the cancellation (and the hit) to the person who already drove to the store.

Anyone else getting these “please cancel in the notes so I don’t have to” specials lately?

Update: Just got the final payout.

Batch was $37.77 when I accepted it. Customer C (the one with the “please don’t deliver today” note) must have removed every item except one before I had already started, then left the cancel request in the notes.

Final payout: $26.23

So not only did they try to outsource the cancellation to me, they also gutted the order and dropped the batch pay by over $11.

Still delivered the one remaining item.

I know I am preaching to the choir here, but oh my god, here’s what’s annoyed me off so far:

— why can’t I just get one single order that doesn’t require a product substitution?!

—estimating that a trip to Lowe’s for three items should take five minutes is INSANE.

— the app not letting me choose which store to start at when shopping two orders in the same area.

—customers who aren’t available to chat while I’m shopping. How am I supposed to guess which of the 25 flavors of hummus you’d prefer if I need to make a substitution?

—holy shit there are a lot of places in a grocery store where they might put precessed meats. Is the cubed ham in with the cold cuts, the salami, the bacon, the pork, the hotdogs, or the deli items?

—why are people shopping from the most expensive grocery stores so stingy with tips??? Just saw a 76-item order from the organic food coop with a 20 mile rt drive offering a two dollar tip.

— people who ask for perfectly ripe avocados in. Vermont in October. What am I, some kind of miracle worker?

—people who add a ton of items while you're shopping