Instacart is a failsite and I hate it. Tips?

[Dan Druff]

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."



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.

[Crowe Diddly]

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."



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.

[Dan Druff]

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."



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.

[Dan Druff]

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.

[Dan Druff]

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.

[Crowe Diddly]

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.

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.

[Dan Druff]

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.

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.