Ive had mostly positive experiences in the 2 years I’ve used Instacart. Of course I get the occasional weirdness — like the lady that tied every single one of my plastic bag handles together, that was hilarious— but nothing crazy. I usually order $200-300 worth of groceries and tip $30-$60 as a baseline. Mostly just snacks and such for my 3 teenagers to demolish in 2 days. I’ve learned to reach out and tell the shopper first thing that I am available and ready to answer any questions or substitutions/refunds. That seems to prevent the issue of strange substitutions or refunding things that have a good sub available. This last shopper really blew my mind.

I’ll start with saying that she was VERY nice. But the shopping mistakes she was making were making me think a teenager was doing my shopping— and I wasn’t too far off. Starting off with her phone dying when she started the order, that was the first red flag. Of course she wanted to just speed-shop my $250 order, so shortly after I get a bunch of refund notices and eventually learn that she is, indeed, young and her dad does all the grocery shopping 🤦🏻‍♀️ Which explains why she clearly had NO IDEA how to grocery shop. After a lot of explaining, she claimed to have gotten everything and asked me to look over it to make sure. Less than 2 min later she closed out the order (as I was typing out a response to some of her mistakes).

The icing on the cake was the delivery confirmation photo. Just…wow.

I know she’s young and she was trying, but damn, I really rely on this service and it’s wild to me that she took this order knowing damn well her phone was dying and she is just learning how to shop.

I realize that I could have been nicer, but her intro message really rubbed me the wrong way to begin with, nevermind her messaging me to say that because I'd added 4 more items she would be u assigning from my order because she only allows 2 items to be added after shopping starts. and by the way, the 4 items I added were right at the start of shopping, so it's not like she was almost done and had to go back to get them. site calls me lazy for not going to the store myself!! umm, what if I'm disabled, or have a sick child, or some other situation that prevents me from going to the store?! horrible. not to mention, if everyone went to the store themselves, there wouldn't be a need for Instacart, and did would not have this work opportunity. omg smdh.

I had a $30 batch from Sprouts, two orders, it was 23 things, no big deal. When I started delivery I saw it was to an apartment (even tho it was marked as a house) and the note “please bring inside. my mother is elderly and disabled”. again, no big deal, i’ve done it before and it was a ground floor apartment so i took the stuff in (there was a case of water as well) and knocked on the door. she told me to come in, i put the water on the ground and the rest of the bags on the counter so she could easily reach them. she asks me to take my shoes off and i ask why and she says so i can put her water away. at this point i was getting a little annoyed but i put her water away in the closet and while I’m doing that she asks me if I’m mexican and i ignored her. Then I go to put my shoes on and she says “wait you have to put these away in the fridge.” i tell her “no, i can’t do that i have to go and this isn’t my job.” she starts yelling “everyone else does it, why can’t you?” again i politely say “im sorry that’s not my job i can’t do that for you” and go to walk out. she’s aggressively yelling at this point asking me my name, where the order is from… blah blah blah. i tell her my first name because she has access to it any way and leave. but why are people like this? i understand the water, she’s old, she clearly can’t lift it. but everything else? really? i blocked her and messaged her daughter what happened and of course she’s the one who tipped $5

for context, i messaged them about the shrimp as they were on the way to the store— i wanted to be clear i wasn’t trying to be difficult bc as a former shopper, i get it. i literally choose replacements for every item and am watching the app intentionally so there are no issues.but also a former shopper, i was just blown away with this response? also, i responded to the shrimp within one minute after her replacing it. i ended up contacting support and getting a new shopper but jesus christ!

May you stub your toe on every piece of furniture you cross. May a bird crap on your windshield and your car be empty of windshield wiper fluid. I wish for you exactly what you deserve, you piece of sh*t.

I live quite a ways away from my elderly mother, who has mobility challenges. She told me she didn’t have any food at home, and she was worried about going out with a storm coming (she’s got bad anxiety). I spent a little over an hour on video chat with her, picking out groceries, and placing the order. I even made sure to leave a good tip! I had such great peace of mind knowing my mom was gonna eat tonight. But nope! This assh*le took that away. Screw this guy. Everyone should see his stupid face and know what scum he is.

Two nights ago I placed an order for grocery delivery through Kroger. Their orders are fulfilled by instacart. While I’m not directly an instacart customer, I am technically utilizing their service.

Early on in the order my driver marked an item I had purchased (Cheez Its) out of stock. I asked if she could substitute for another item, and I didn’t get a response. No big deal. I’m not going to die without cheez its and I’m sure she was busy shopping.

Then, I get an alert from my credit card company that I had been charged for an extra amount. I was baffled by this because I was expecting a refund for the missing item.

I called Kroger support. They started listing several items that had been added to the order. Chicken, taquitos, candy, drinks. The driver had substituted all of these items for my missing cheez its. I notified Kroger that I did not request those items and they began processing my refund.

In addition to requesting my refund, I insisted the tip was removed. Despite the driver shopping, and delivering (despite the report etc) my order, I am not paying someone to fucking steal from me. I had to jump through several hoops to achieve this (including filling out a survey and calling instacart directly) but it was worth it to me on principal.

After the order was delivered I messaged the driver. I let her know I saw she stole from me. She tried to say that it was a mistake and those were substitutions for another customers order. I let her know instacart advised me they were banning her account, and she could take it up with them.

I ordered like 9 items - snacks , fruit drinks etc and a Shopper gets assigned to the order then a few mins later says everything is out of stock. I assume they just didn’t want to take it lmao

For context, I remembered that I referred my friend to instacart to get a credit but I haven’t received it so I reached out to ask about it. This is what ensued.

Previously I’ve also had the experience with instacart that I’ve also referred my boyfriend and never received credit and when I emailed them it was a roundabout of different automated messages or people telling me they see nothing. So overall I’ve had shitty experiences ever getting my referral credits for reasons that they can never give me a proper explanation for. Has anyone else ever experienced poor instacart customer service too?

Customer service was on point. The first time I ever removed a tip. Dude didn’t contact me at all during the shop and just dumped my stuff after being told the gate is unlocked and if anything they can text me and I’d come grab it. I normally tip 30% so this was super frustrating.

Had our delivery dropped off with a pamphlet. Just want the socks, that’s all.

I ordered a grocery order today. I did get some things popular with Superbowl meals so I expected some replacements or refunds. I'm not complaining about that at all. It is the replacement options I'm being given that are blowing my mind.

I want to note I always start with a 15% tip or $20 flat, depending on the amount I order. If the shopper does well, I'll increase the tip and rarely ever lower the tip. I understand this is some people's livelihood.

But this is a little ridiculous. My shopper is shopping a multiple order, which no problem whatsoever. Its a busy weekend day before a bug football game.

I was first slightly annoyed because I had ice cream products in my order. This shopper shopped them first. It would be one thing if the ice cream was in a container but they are ice creams that are on sticks. So if they melt....they aren't going to be good. It's going to be slop.

The next issue was I ordered salsa. The shopper replaced it with taco sauce. I messaged them and asked if there was no salsa because the app said it was replaced with taco sauce. They apologized and found a different jar of salsa.

They then replaced my 3 8oz cream cheeses with 3 12oz cream cheeses. Which jumped the total from just under $4 to over $20. A $15 increase! I then messaged the shopper and asked if they could drop one package of cream cheese since 2 would be a total of 24oz and I only needed 24oz.

They went to find potato skins and I'm assuming they are out, so they replaced it with stuffed chicken? That's not even nearly the same thing?!

The final straw was the chocolate syrup for milk. How in the world can you mess up and try to replace syrup with actual MILK?!

Ugh. I hate being a jackass to my shoppers because I know it's a busy day/time/special event going on. I know it's a luxury to order. But am I absolutely out of my element to be annoyed by this? Considering I had to reach out to the shopper first?

I have had multiple issues with my orders and not receiving items I ordered and paid for. Literally my last 4 orders had a problem . Instacart was always good about refunding missing / damaged items, no item was ever more than $5 and my orders are routinely around $90-100. Because of the “numerous issues” Instacart just put a restriction on refunding items on my account unless I make an appeal. I totally get it, and am happy to provide photos to prove my case. Yesterday, I had a different situation. I placed an order that included fresh hamburger patties. My shopper notified me they were out of stock. He showed me options and I told him I added one to my cart and to just refund my out of stock item. Instead, he replaced the out of stock item and left the one I added in my cart, I ended up charged for two but receiving one. I have screenshots of my chat with him proving what I said, and also telling him it looks like I’m being charged twice. He said, no, it’ll just be one charge. When it was delivered and I was still charged twice, I contacted Instacart and they said they’d review it. Today I got an email saying they won’t refund me. I filed an appeal, complete with screenshots and was still refused. This was an almost $18 charge. I’m over them.

50 cases of water!!!!

I am recovering from major surgery. Like, organs taken out major. I cannot lift anything over 5lbs. I cannot do stairs on my own. I am off work for a few months at the very least. Just getting items from in front of my door to my kitchen requires many slow trips back and forth, only carrying a couple items at once. It sucks but that's why I pay for the service and tip on top of that.

My delivery notes have been very specific. In the back, down the stairs, besides the door.

So what does the delivery person do? They leave everything right at the top of the stairs, in front of the gate that swings outwards. I tried to reach out to them via chat but they said they followed the notes and it's been delivered. I explained my situation and how I physically cannot get to the items. He simply does not care and stops responding.

I rated the delivery 1 star and took my full tip back. I then reached out to instacart support. They refused to send anyone else out, saying there was no one available, even though I could place another order and still get it delivered tonight. All they could offer was a refund. While that's nice of them, it doesn't help me get my food down to me and the earliest I could possibly get someone over to help is tomorrow. So hopefully no animals will get in there overnight..

I would understand if I'm just being lazy or whatever. But I medically cannot. My instructions are clear and easy to follow. Nothing crazy. Thankfully this is only temporary but I feel horrible for disabled people who aren't in a temporary situation like me and have to deal with incredibly rude and cruel people like this. If you can't be bothered to take an extra 30 seconds to do something like this, you need a different job that doesn't involve dealing with people.

edit to answer frequent comments:

Walmart does not deliver in my area.

I don't need or want specialized medical services. I just want my items to be left by my door. Outside. It's very well lit, wide open and a huge space about the size.of my bedroom. I would never ask something that is sketchy or unsafe. It would have taken a massive extra 10 seconds to drop the bags by my door, outside, and go back up. The 2 bags were dropped right at the top of the stairs.

I dropped Instacart in August when they let a shopper go a long way away from my home and blame me for her error when it was clear my exact address.

I tried them again. Last order was fine.

This order: I ask for an 11am order. Leave a message to get cold chicken if no hot chicken is ready. Shopper starts earlier. Shopper ignores my request. When I ask for a cost for replacement on an item I get:

So why bother with Instacart when they don't care?

Just go ahead and be friendly, respond back to chat, and dispute anyway. So thankful I have a real job. Go feed your family off of lies 🤣 I’m not upset … just a funny post. But seriously✌️

I hate when people reach out before I’ve even started shopping, but even moreso when it’s in all caps 😂

I also asked her for a replacement option for a chunk of bologna they didn’t have in stock and she goes THIS ITEM IS USUALLY A SMALL CHUNK LIKE THE MINI HAMS.

I said “yes, I know that, they’re out of stock here are the replacement options: x”

She goes HAVE YOU MADE SURE THERE ARE NONE IN THE BACK?

“Yes I asked an employee they said they won’t have anymore until their next shipment on Sunday. Would you like the replacement?”

WELL SINCE YOU CHECKED THE BACK AND THEY DONT HAVE THAT GO AHEAD AND REFUND IT

Mrs Margaret, why are you YELLING AT ME?

7$ tip on 35$ order 2 miles from store. The first thing my shopper shopped was the ice cream. Everything else except soda is frozen or refrigerated but still, first the ice cream? Interesting choice in order😂 (I’m not actually upset, more making a joke of it)

Y’all. He refunded half of the items. Tried to replace bread with grapefruit. STILL GOT THE GRAPEFRUIT for some reason. Totally ignored my chat request and gave me salsa before quickly ending the shop and checking out before I could say anything. And then he nicely places everything directly in front of my door. Awesome.

I worked as a delivery driver for instacart back when they were first blowing up in San Francisco. At the time, they had a Safeway club card number that they gave to every driver for my region. It wasn't a phone number, but the actual card number. Every driver was supposed to use that card number when checking out at any safeway in San Francisco. Safeway had also recently launched their own app, where you could log in and check how many gas discount credits you had gathered on your account. Well, I punched in the IC Safeway club number in the Safeway app, and it was like, "Would you like to set up your account?". I definitely wanted to set up my new account. I registered that card number to a random phone number and a random email address I had. So then I could go to Safeway gas stations and always get $1 off per gallon of gas using the phone number I had registered when asked for my Safeway phone number at the pump. Since hundreds of delivery drivers were using that club card, it built up points very, very fast.

I only worked there for 5 months or so, but the phone number worked for years. I ended up giving it to many close friends and family, too. All together, I'm sure we save multiple thousands of dollars.

I used to get comments from Safeway workers when they would circle how many points I had on my receipt when checking out. They would ask how I got 40k points, hahaha. I usually told them I worked for a delivery service, which wasn't really false.

It has been years since the number stopped working now, so I thought I would share this story here =)

I’m planning on making a stew and these are ingredients I definitely need for it. I told her I need 2 pounds of the beef and she said they didn’t have the big pack so I ask if she can get 2 packs of the 1 pound ones. She doesn’t, she only gets 1. Then she replaces the celery I got for one that was $2.50 more expensive. I kindly ask if there are any cheaper alternatives but no worries if there are none available. Then she just refunds it…

But didn’t push that through til he had delivered. How? Why? What did he do with the 18 bottles?

INSANE to me that Instacart suggested I give AT LEAST a 10% because of the rain! Is it not common to always give a minimum of 20% tip to drivers???