bro you live in the fucking sticks you should be paying like 200 dollars to have anyone even come in contact with you
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bro you live in the fucking sticks you should be paying like 200 dollars to have anyone even come in contact with you
again the whole point is to not have contact with people and btw i get better ōtoro delivered to my door than i do in manhattan.
#blackgirlmagic
rofl do not re roll out black girl magic on me that shit is mine
I don't know if that last line was a slam at me, because if you notice, I wasn't arguing against tipping the driver.
I was stating that Instacart itself marks the prices up AND tacks on a lot of bullshit fees -- none of which helps the driver.
You can always tip the driver what you want with any service by leaving an envelope with cash at the door with clear instructions that it's a tip for them. You don't need to pay markups through something like Instacart to manage tips.
It's possible that the stores you're having delivered to you don't have their own delivery service or contracted delivery service, but if they do, you should cut out the middleman and then tip the driver whatever you want. Otherwise you're just enriching Instacart.
FYI you can still tip the driver through the Costco interface, just like on Instacart.
There's also a matter of common sense when it comes to tipping. If you have a lot of $5-$10 stuff which takes forever to grab, then a bigger % tip is warranted. If you are buying expensive items which are easy to grab but just cost a lot of money (such as prime steaks), then there's no reason they deserve the same high percentage as if they were grabbing a ton of small items. So the order of $100 worth of 15 cheap items deserves the same dollar amount tip as a $400 order of 15 more expensive items. This isn't a restaurant. Flat tipping, based upon time/effort to shop & deliver, should be encouraged rather than percentage.
I had instacart for 3 months and finally couldn't take it and they refunded me the yearly.
If the store was out of an item, half the time (literally) or more they wouldn't adjust what they charged me - I would just get dinged for the item that never showed up. I would often get wrong flavors, etc when I ordered drinks, etc. I'd suggest hiring a big 8 accounting firm to audit every delivery.
If there was a buy 1 get 1 free, I would buy the 1 and never get the freebie (and get charged full price instead of 50%), or choose 2 thinking the final charge would be less since the 1 item was free and you guessed it - I would get charged full price for 2 items and only get 2, not the 4 you would of otherwise expected.
In 3 months they probably made 15-20 mistakes, every single time it was in their favor. I was 0-15 to 0-20 on having a mistake go my way.
In 3 months I might of been 0-9 in trying to get the right price/items on a buy 1 get one free purchase..
If I remember correctly their call center closed at 6pm so if you got a delivery after that you had to wait till the next day to complain about your order. I might of called them 50 times in the 3 months.
Imagine a homeless person went grocery shopping and then a crack-head did the accounting. This would be better than almost every Instacart transaction I had.
In my adult life, it was without question the worst online commerce experience.
I would rather lick the floor of the E.R. than ever use Instacart.
But maybe I just got unlucky, alot...
Sounds reasonable.
Seriously, 15 screwed up items over 3 months is not terrible with someone else picking your groceries. I mean, if you ordered grape Gatorade and you got orange, you are still going to drink the orange. I just got delivered $200 worth of groceries. I ordered chicken thighs and it came with chicken breasts. The guy who delivered it probably picked it and he was maybe 21 years old so he did not know the difference, it was rather amusing. If $20 here and there prevents me from going into the grocery store, that is fine, that means most was correct. I was a little miffed I got the generic bag of chips rather than Lays, but I am assuming they were sold out. Don't sweat the small stuff in all of this.
The big delivery apps are inundated with customers. Lots of things out of stock, poor delivery options. On top of that, they have been playing the hidden fees game for quite a while now, trying to hide how overpriced they are via item size, how the price is advertised, and additional service/handing/tip charges.
In my experience, the smaller the service, the better the experience. A lot of the local stores you are used to might be in the delivery game right now. Check their website/call.
I also used some drive-by services and they are pretty good. I get to get out of the house, call as I pull up, and they will put my groceries in the trunk. Easy.
Last but not least, just as there are bots for Ticketmaster, there are bots for delivery services. The bots/extensions vary in complexity. Some will just check which stores have open delivery, some will monitor, some will alert, some will insta-grab spots for you. Some will even check out for you if a certain delivery window becomes available. If you are determined to order from a specific place, these bots/extensions might be worth playing with.
Yeah I forgot to mention the drive-up service. I use that at Target. It's free and there's no markups.
However, they don't do perishables for this service. So that's a little bit annoying, but whatever, I just get my perishables from Costco or the supermarket.
Anyway, bit of a hassle from the first time I used it:
I knew the location near me had drive-up service, so I used target.com and put all the things we needed into my account's cart, and made sure items were all marked for "pick up". I was a bit nervous that "pick up" and "drive up" were different, but there was not an option for drive-up, despite knowing that this location did it, so I figured they had to mean the same thing.
My girlfriend volunteered to get it, and I told her she should call them before she was going, to make sure everything was okay, because their email was having problems that day and not going out to us, so we didn't have instructions. My girlfriend figured she'd just call on the way there, which was a
:baddecision
... because it turned out the order had a major problem. Pick up meant you had to go in the store, and there was no way to change it They told her this on the phone when she was on her way there, and some bitchy chick on the phone refused to help her further, basically telling her to either come in to get it or cancel the order.
So she hung up, called me, told me what happened, and I said I'd call myself. So I called, got someone nicer, who told me that the website target.com only offers pick-up, while the app orders pick-up AND drive-up!
:wtf2
How is anyone supposed to know that? It said nothing while ordering that only the app had the drive-up option, and even the website said "drive-up available", so how was I supposed to know that pick up meant something different?
The employee I spoke to agreed that it's very confusing. I asked if he could make an exception and convert the order, and he said, "We were told we aren't allowed to", but I talked him into it.
Unfortunately by that point my girlfriend was almost back at the house, meaning she'd need to make another round trip back there to actually get the stuff now. I felt bad about this and said that I'd go this time, but she insisted she'd go, turned around, and indeed the drive-up was ready.
The next time I ordered, I found it was best to use the website to put everything in my cart (because using apps for this type of thing is cumbersome and slow), and then use the app to switch delivery to drive-up for each item, which I found was fairly quick to do.
Second order went very smoothly for drive-up, which I drove to get this time.
So now this is basically what I do:
Target: Drive-up
Supermarket: Their own delivery service
Costco: Instacart through costco.com
Prescriptions: By mail
Took awhile to figure all this out, but I have a pretty good routine going now.
Actually I still hate all of this. I would much rather go myself.
There are still all kinds of fail doing this, where there are missing items or ridiculous substitutions where I'm given something cheaper but charged the original amount.
And when it comes to things you pick, such as fruit, items with expiration dates, or meat, you have zero control and they just grab whatever is in front of them.
The Target drive-up is probably the only one I'll continue using once corona is over and I'm not DD from it, because that's non-perishable stuff, so others choosing for you is less of a big deal, and the time saved might be worth the billing/order fail which sometimes occurs.
Amazon Primenow, which has Amazon Groceries and Whole Foods in my area is basically flawless.
The difference between Instacart and Primenow cannot be exaggerated or explained by any mathematical model or a set of Grocery Delivery Power Ratings.
If it were a football game, Amazon Primenow is like a 70 point favorite.
The larceny at Instacart is so omnipresent and shameless it cannot be on accident. This is top down carnie scam run by Gypsy rejects who were too dishonest to live in the Gypsy camps.
It is impossible there is a faker "legit" company than Instacart.
I swore off shopping apps the first time I tried it a few years ago, because everything seemed to be marked up 30%. Sneaky way to hide the true delivery/convenience fees.
Anyway I tried out Shipt today and the experience was fantastic. Regular store pricing, plenty of time slots, $10 delivery fee, the shopper was courteous and didn't fuck anything up.
With a $15 tip, it works out to ~8% vig on a $300 grocery bill. 100% worth saving an hour+ of my time, nevermind the reduced exposure to covid. I might continue using this when it blows over.
So here is another example of why Instacart sucks. Kinda minor, but it really speaks volumes about the way they conduct business.
As I mentioned already, I was only using them for Costco, yet I found that Costco uses them to delivery anyway, and doesn't mark up the prices as much as Instacart does. So Instacart through Costco is cheaper than Instacart itself, AND it doesn't require a monthly subscription to get free delivery. That by itself is already shitty.
Anyway, knowing this was the case, I attempted to cancel my auto-renewing subscription last week. It said, "Wait! You have 10 days left on your subscription! Are you sure you want to cancel now?"
Just in case I needed it for something else, I figured I might as well not cancel yet and throw away 10 days I paid for. So I said no.
Fast forward to today. There's only 2 days left, so I cancelled.
Same message came up, "Wait! You have 2 days left. Are you sure you really want to cancel now?"
I said yes, knowing I wouldn't be using it in the next 2 days, so I had no issue throwing those days away.
Once cancelled, it said, "Okay, your auto-billing has been turned off, and your subscription will expire in 2 days."
:what
So wait a minute... here they were trying to trick me into thinking that I'd lose the remaining days I paid for if I cancelled the auto-billing, and then once I actually turn it off, it turns out they do NOT cancel my remaining days? So that entire message was a trick to prevent people from cancelling, hoping they forget when he deadline comes?
Dirty.
Seriously fuck them.
Pretty much almost every monthly online subscription service works this way, no? (I'm not justifying, just surprised you haven't seen this before, from almost everyone.)
Amazon prime does this, most of the streaming video services do, Netflix, Hulu, WWE Network, UFC Fightpass, ESPN+, etc. They are almost never gonna give you a pro-rated refund, so they just tell you over and over that you will lose your membership benefits, but they never say when. If they don't mention a refund, then you can be pretty confident you will get the rest of the paid-for month. I have very few subs I let run forever, so I often sign up for, and cancel, services within 10 minutes. You still get the full month regardless. Mostly...
Here's a service you'll never have to deal with, but you'd hate if you did. Once or twice a year, I sub to New Japan Pro Wrestling World, for their big new years shows, and sometimes another one or two during the year. They sell subs by the month, and they cancel you when you cancel them. Example: They run their yearly big shows on 1/4, or 1/5 here. I buy the month on 1/4, and they let you know your shit ends at 1/31, not 2/4. A week after the show, if nothing is coming up that month, I cancel so I won;t forget to later, and they turn your shit off immediately.
Maybe I have seen it before, but this is the first time I remember it being this blatantly misleading. It tells me the exact number of days I have left, and warns me not to cancel for that reason. I was actually pretty shocked when the cancellation didn't actually rob me of those days (which, come to think of it, might have been illegal for them to do).
Anyway, I put in a request for a refund for the Instacart Express service I just had, because it was misleading. And seriously, it was. Had they been honest about the fact that they upcharge Costco deliveries compared to their exact same service through costco.com, I wouldn't have bought the Instacart Express, which is supposed to be a money-saving subscription.
It's not like I just found a competing service which is cheaper, and am now crying foul. That wouldn't be justified, obviously. When they're doing the Costco deliveries and upcharging me because I go through their direct site instead of Costco's site (plus making me subscribe to a monthly service to avoid the delivery charge), that's a lot of bullshit.
Legal, but bullshit and very customer unfriendly.
We'll see if they refund the month of Instacart Express I paid for. I'm guessing they won't. I'm not going to put up a huge fight over this, but it just annoys me that I was tricked into buying a service I not only didn't need, but ended up costing me extra money on top of it.
Anyway, while I have this online grocery shopping experience down to a science now, it's still frustrating and time consuming. I'll explain why.
Stock is low on a lot of items in general. Some of this is because people are hoarding things, and some of this is because people are cooking at home more and also using household items more often. So, for example, yeast has been very hard to come by (I had to buy it from eBay).
But even items in lesser demand than yeast still go out of stock often. So I go to both my grocery store website and Target's website. When one is out, I try the other. My grocery store will only deliver, and they're more expensive than Target, but I can get perishable foods there. Target is cheaper and allows both drive-up and shipping, but no same-day delivery. However, Target does NOT do any perishable items, and many items are restricted to drive-up/pickup-only or shipping-only. Some allow both.
So when I find something which the grocery store does not have and Target only ships but doesn't allow for drive-up (or is out at the local store), then I have to find $35 worth of total stuff to ship, which isn't always easy.
It also doesn't help that the grocery store's website is a buggy failsite with all kinds of issues. Target's is much better, aside from a dumb user-unfriendly issue where you need to use the app to choose the drive-up option.
Anyway, by the time I do the online shopping between Target and the grocery store, I find a long time has passed -- often longer than had I visited the store during normal times.
One good thing about the Target shipping is that you're getting it from their warehouse and not the local store, so the selection is much better, and things don't run out as fast. But some items simply won't ship, because they are too difficult (such as glass jars) or too bulky/heavy for it to be cost-effective for a relatively cheap item.
I will say that Target has been pretty good about not fucking up my orders.
The grocery store has already had a number of fails, including a week ago when they delivered our cold items lukewarm, and I had to get most of them replaced. They also stopped responding to e-mail (not sure if just me or everyone), so now the only way to get customer service for the grocery store items is to call and luck into getting someone on the phone. If I get someone, they're in the US and typically very nice/helpful. But sometimes it's an endless wait and no one comes on.
In short, this all kinda blows, but at least I'm able to get what we need without setting foot in a store, which has been the goal.
I post-adjusted a tip for the first time, two days ago.
I have been tipping Instacart drivers $20 flat for each Costco order. This is because my orders typically contain about 10 items which are fairly expensive like steak, so a percentage tip is just stupid. They aren't spending much time in the store because I'm not presenting them with a huge list of things, plus they're likely shopping for other people's stuff at the same time.
Anyway, I adjusted my last shopper's tip down from $20 to $10.
That's because she forgot two fairly large/bulky items, yet marked them as found. So I got billed for a 24-pack of Perrier and a big two-pack of Shredded Mozarella -- about $40 between the two of them -- yet she didn't deliver either of those items.
I'm sorry, but there's no way you're forgetting that you didn't grab a 24-pack of Perrier or leaving accidentally that bulky thing in your car. She probably just hastily grabbed stuff on our list and marked everything as "found", without really checking it.
Since this happened with TWO items, I docked half the tip, in addition to requesting the $40 BACK.
The previous order, the driver (a different person) didn't deliver our $6 Artisan bread, which is also fairly bulky, but he was otherwise very good and tried really hard to get a replacement for something that was out, so I decided not to penalize him tip-wise. I just had the $6 taken off the bill. Also, it was just one item that time. In this case it was two, including one very large item (Perrier) which couldn't have been overlooked.
Keep in mind most stores, or a lot of them anyway, make everyone wait in line to get in so as to keep capacity down, including instacart and other delivery people, so even if they only have to pick up a few things in the store, they still might be spending anywhere from 15 minutes to 60 minutes in line outside the store procuring your order.
The Costco by me is huge, and when we were going ourselves before I decided to start using Instacart, there was never a line ouside. I know that some areas have that, but I've never seen one here.
I think the $20 tip is fine. They're also getting paid on top of that, and they're also likely doing multiple orders at once. These Instacart people are also making more money (even after vehicle expenses) than the Costco employees themselves, who have a harder job and are at greater danger getting COVID by a wide margin.
I'm all for fair tipping, but I'm also not one who tips huge just to feel great about myself.
Quote:
Hello Todd,
We at Instacart are deeply saddened by the series of disturbing and tragic events that have taken place over the last few weeks related to the violence and injustice toward the Black community including George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, and countless others. The resulting protests have created a flashpoint for awareness, action, and change—one that we recognize is long overdue.
As we grapple with the senseless loss of life and continued systemic inequality, we’re stepping back to examine what more Instacart can do. We believe this work starts by supporting our internal teams, as well as helping black communities across North America. To that end, we’re investing $1 million to help support actionable change within both the Instacart family—including our shoppers and employees—and the broader community that needs our support right now.
Supporting our Shopper Community
First, we’re prioritizing the safety of our shoppers by investing $500,000 to support this important community. This investment will go towards compensating in-store shoppers and teams for any disruption to their shifts due to store closures or local curfews, as well as additional tools and features that support shopper safety.
Supporting Black Communities
Our mission is focused on giving people access to food and we believe we have an opportunity to more prominently show up for communities of color that are disproportionately struggling with food insecurity. Through our work with Feeding America and Food Banks Canada, Instacart is in a unique position to support underserved counties with the highest food insecurity rates in North America. To better support these communities, we’re making a $250,000 donation to go to food banks in the Feeding America and Food Banks Canada network.
As a company, we’re committed to speaking up and taking action against discrimination. In the spirit of this commitment, we’re donating $250,000 to the Equal Justice Initiative. The EJI is a non-profit organization that challenges racial and economic injustice on behalf of marginalized communities by confronting inequalities within our criminal justice system - offering support to those wrongly convicted, denied a fair trial, or offered poor legal representation.
Deepening Our Diversity & Inclusion Investment
The events of the past week have prompted much reflection about how we can make meaningful and lasting changes at Instacart to ensure the diverse voices across our employees, customers, and shopper community are heard and represented. From holding ourselves accountable to fostering an inclusive work environment to giving employees space to participate in meaningful conversations and activism—we’re committed to taking action within our own community.
We’ll continue to use our voice to be a positive force for change and look forward to continuing to listen, learn, and evolve as an organization.
Thank you,
Apoorva Mehta
Founder & CEO, Instacart
:facepalm4
Uber Eats and Postmates are doing free delivery for black restaurants. Not sure what they do if they're half black.
You Jew customers need to be careful. They are also going to stop the practice where you fish with big tips and then adjust down to the minimum upon delivery.
They are obviously torn about it because in the end they don’t really care if you fuck Over the delivery people as they are not employees but they need them at this point otherwise they can’t generate fees for them.
The system is idiotic. They could fix it by stopping making tips determine your priority in delivery, and instead making tipping something you only do after-the-fact, which would also encourage drivers to do a better job. This would stop drivers from prioritizing based upon tips (which doesn't help Instacart any), and would allow Instacart to start charging for a premium delivery service where you are a higher priority.
This reminds me a lot of 1980s Vegas, where if you wanted a good seat at a show, you had to tip the mafioso-looking doorman. If you didn't, you'd get stuck way in the back. The better you tipped, the better your seat/table. When the 1990s great corporate takeover of Vegas started, the bean counters quickly realized that these leech doormen provided no benefit to the company, and were sucking money which otherwise could have gone to the casino and the show. They changed it to where you would buy your seating section in advance (and pay more for the better ones), and the exact location would usually be assigned either by computer or by some disinterested front employee.
I've thought a lot about it and going to the grocery store is for peasants.
Whatever Instacart robs you for emotionally or financially on each transaction is worth the trade-off of driving to the store, parking your car, going inside and all the random subterfuge and annoyance that accompanies this.
Uh oh
Quote:
Xu says DoorDash and its sister company Caviar will highlight and support black-owned businesses and black entrepreneurs. They pledged to donate $500,000 to Black Lives Matter and use another $500,000 to create a fund managed by Black@DoorDash Employee Resource Group. A Dashers of Color Council will be formed to advise on issues facing black employees.
All those tech delivery companies are on board with BLM. It's like when tech companies started posting the rainbow flag when gay marriage was legal and conservatives said they would lol boycott them. Who are they going to use? Good luck finding an anti-LGBT tech company. Have fun living off the grid I guess.
So like I said, go ahead and pick up the food yourself like a poor person. Apparently you're already doing that.
First time at a grocery store not at rope drop in 3 months. It’s a gigantic shit show. These people are underpaid for sure.
Wtf is wrong with you cucks first time at a grocery in 3 months seriously