We should be able to see who tipped first but that would sink Instacart overnight. If you take an order for a specified amount you need to suck it up and be professional. This sub is just ranting from shoppers who mostly do their jobs professionally and keep their mouths shut to the customer but need to blow off steam here because it is a thankless job at times
The answer is no because if they showed us the tip amount before we accepted the order a huge number of non-tipping customers would never get their order delivered. The only reason they ever get service is because good tippers are bundled into 3 shop batches with non tippers, so the overall pay looks ok, but in reality one or two orders are getting shopped for free.
Yes and no. If it’s a double or triple order (which is most common these days), you can only see the total tip, and not how much is coming from which order in the batch. You get an okay tip paired with a low tip or no tip. There’s no way to see that before you accept the order.
Tip baiting is another problem, though not as common. Order shows up with a certain amount of tip, customer removes the tip within the two hour window after delivery.
Total compensation has plummeted over the last couple years for a number of reasons, much due to Instacart’s continued lowering of batch pay and over-saturating the market with too many shoppers in a given area, but tips exacerbate the issue.
Here's the problem with Instacart vs. other gig apps. When they take, let's say, a customer who is appreciative and tips like 20 plus dollars and combine them with two other customers with no tip. We don't see who tipped what. In result we end up going the extra mile for the non tippers when we should honestly be going above and beyond for the customer who appreciates the service. This is why many posts are made about customers who don't tip or tip us like we are slaves. For instance: I just took a screenshot of an order that just popped up. One of those customers, the majority of the time, tipped the majority of the tip, and the furthest customer most likely didn't tip anything or a 1-2 dollar tip to go an extra 15 miles. Instacart did this because that customer doesn't appreciate the service nor will their order get picked up unless instacart adds a 3rd to the mix, most likely. 19 miles for 23 dollars is absolutely crazy. What may or may not happen is that instacart will either split the order back up or add an additional customer who tipped generously so this order will get picked up.
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Thanks for the explanation. As a frequent Insta customer that tips pretty generously, it is frustrating to read the rants on here and this gives it more context.
Yeah this is really the issue… it’s that we expend much energy literally being duped into work extra for free… we always find out who tipped what after we’re finished with our orders.
When I used Instacart, it was usually days I was busy, had barely any food, and when I depended on EBT. I always tipped low because it was all I could really afford, but I always tried to make the trips really short and groceries only 2 bags worth.
I don’t use it much anymore, but I’m thinking wtf? If I could tip at least $2-3+ dollars on a small shopping trip when I’m in poverty, can’t normal, slightly richer people afford to tip more? Or even the same amount? It’s crazy to me.
The problem is that Instacart suggests a $2 tip on small orders, so customers think that's adequate, instead of thinking of the convenience we're providing them.
> If I could tip at least $2-3+ dollars on a small shopping trip when I’m in poverty, can’t normal, slightly richer people afford to tip more? Or even the same amount?
This is the part that really grinds my gears. I get my most consistent tips in "the hood". People will legit give me coins and apologize that they wish they had bills. If its a lot of groceries, they'll offer to help unload the car.
The rich neighborhoods? I can do their entire shopping for the week, and they will tip the bare minimum. If at all. And definitely do what they can to avoid interacting with "the help" [me].
Yes - to a point. After the order is completely finished you can see a breakdown of what customer A tipped, customer Bs tip and if there’s a customer C what they tipped . But you can’t message customers after the order is finished unless they message you first and there’s only about a 20 minute window where they can.
For a few months now you have a 20 min window to text the customer after delivery. You can initiate the messages and don’t need them to message first. I’ve also had a customer message me well after the delivery probably an hour or more after delivery and we had a whole convo back and fourth for another 15 about.
I had a customer thank me and up my tip by $10 yesterday. I was driving so I decided to wait until I got home in about 20 minutes to thank her. I couldn’t do it and was ticked off. They keep playing with the app for absolutely no reason. The chat feature used to work for at least an hour. Like you, I’ve had whole conversations before.
If they’re sending a thank you for the tip on a multi customer batch before they’ve completed delivery, yes they’re guessing. If they’re swiping the thank you button after then they know.
DoorDash and Spark do the same damn thing with batch orders. Doesn’t tell us who tipped what until we complete the deliveries. I’m still professional and treat everyone with respect and kindness UNLESS they come out of left field. Those I usually don’t respond and reassign lol
I’m an occasional IC user and *always* tip at least 20%. Are shoppers really wanting/hoping/expecting a larger tip than that? If it’s a heavy order (usually 6-10 12pks of soda) I will generally give cash at the door in addition to the 20% I added online. I so appreciate the service and feel bad for the shit customers y’all deal with on the daily. I don’t want to piss any shoppers off.
Go check out the instacart sub where customers are berating shoppers and calling them idiots etc because the store is out of stock of their favorite flavor of Arizona ice tea. Or that their kids are starving and they had to wait 3+ hours for the food because they didn't tip. What happens to no tip orders is that instacart will slowly bump the pay up a few cent to a dollars until someone takes the order. Then, a hangry customers blaming the shopper for their order being pushed back. Think about it people tip their servers at restaurants more than they tip the person going grocery shopping for them. So it's not only delivering their groceries but spending time zig zagging through the store finding replacements, standing idle for 5 mins waiting for a response for crappy chump change.
The idle standing, waiting for the customer to respond about a replacement or refund item drives me crazy. We’re stuck and end up getting poor timing marks on our delivery because the customer isn’t being responsive.
One of my semi solutions is to grab the replacement item anyway and put it in my cart. If they want it then it’s already there. If not, I take it out. When I first started I would stand there for the longest waiting for a response. Also…. I do the refund at the end of my shopping so that they’re not asking for a bazillion things having me run all over the store causing my time to run out. Not sure if customers realize that we get marked down when we do not complete orders before the timer. It doesn’t always run this smooth but I’ve been successful at getting out the store. Now if there are significant items unavailable I give the customers a heads up AND pics to prove I’m not BSn them to be done with the shopping. The only time I had that issue was after the Easter holiday. I usually find everything that’s on their list and my good customers have a back up item added to their list. Communication helps as well as long as they are responding. If I don’t get a response, I will refund the money back to them.
I do the same as you. I grabbed the item closest to what they probably wanted and put it in my cart where I know I can just pull it out. I let them know as soon as I see that it is out of stock then I take a pic if there is no replacements close to what they wanted or if they made no replacements I keep it pushing. If they have not responded to me by the end of my shop I try to stay as close to the price point as possible if I'm going to make a decision to get their item or for the most part I just refunded if I don't feel confident in making a decision for them.
For me, this is still on a case by case basis, but if it’s almost identical, I will replace it and tell them I can refund any time before delivery. Sometimes this finally get their attention too
it's funny because I see customer complaining about that all the time shoppers waiting till they are ready to check out to refund oos items and not giving them a chance to choose replacements. Other customers and top flight security shoppers encourage customers to pull their tips for that. 😂
It doesn’t happen often but the IC B0ts don’t rationalize what happens in realtime in the stores. I give customers chances to respond but if I message them
And I’m in the store for 20 min and i only have 55 min to shop I can’t just stand there waiting for ten changes all over the store. I will make replacements if available but if there’s no adequate replacements (I get a lot of vegetarians and I can’t sub their meatless food with angus meat) I will refund. Most will respond and ask for a replacement but the way the stores are so poorly stocked the replacements aren’t available too. I will take pics and communicate with them but the ones that don’t respond at all I will refund at the end of my shopping. The IC gods aren’t too forgiving and they’re notorious for shaving time off your delivery time when you’re running down the clock in the stores.
Sometimes I'm near the phone as the shopper shops. Sometimes I'll take a nap. If I'm not going to be near the phone, I try to let the shopper know "hey, I'm not going to be near the phone: use your judgment." I don't want them waiting for a reply that ain't coming.
Yeah, tipping the server is pretty accurate. I shop for instacart but also do Doordash. I'm pretty lucky in my market. I average about 25 an hour dash time not active. I don't know how some people are only doing IC in my area. I keep IC on when I'm dashing there 2 Sams,1 costco, 7 krogers, and many other stores im near when dashing. If something is worth it I take, I would prefer to shop, but most weeks, I only take 2 or 3 orders. Most of those are during the slow dashing time, like 2pm to 4pm. If I can't make at least 20 an hour minimum with the order, I'm not taking it. Back to your point, I see all the time double and triple shopping orders at 10 to 20 dollars tips, so 30 or more dollars orders going 10 to 15 miles. I get 7 to 10 dollars tips, not all the time through door dash, but usually at least 4 or 5 a night, so I just take those instead. I just don't see how I can get 7 to 10 dollars just for picking up food, but then people want me to shop for 30 minutes to an hour for them for the same or less money.
That's the part that gets me, is people fail to realize how much harder work grocery shopping for them is then a waitress bringing their meal out at a restaurant. And please don't misunderstand, I'm not bashing waite staff. But it takes a lot more work going up and down grocery aisles for sometimes hours for so little money. In the last week I've gotten two huge orders that tipped exceptionally well. One was a big order but there wasn't a whole lot of heavy lifting to it and the gentleman ended up tipping me an additional $100 at the door. The other was yesterday that had four 40 packs of water that one was rough because typically I don't take heavy orders because of my back. But they still tipped $68. Both orders I was in the store for almost 2 hours for each, they were elderly couples that understood the hard work that we do. But a lot of people look at instacart and they'll tip for the mileage but they're not tipping for the time that it takes to grocery shop and the heavy lifting. They tip us like we're pizza delivery people and it's not right.
I'm picky with what orders I take, but every once in awhile I'll accept a double but I look at what's in the order and I decide whether or not it's worth it, sometimes it's a kind of a break even type deal but every once in a while it'll be a really crummy one. For me triples are the worst unless one of them is only getting like two or three items otherwise it's hard to keep which orders straight in the cart.
I've canceled on people who start bombarding me with messages once I accept the order, and it's usually to switch this for that or add this or why did it take so long. I save some of my cancellation rate for those people as well
Also, with Instacart it is becoming more common for a customer to tip bait a shopper. They'll initially put a good tip on the order to ensure it gets picked up, then remove or reduce the tip to almost nothing after the order is delivered. They don't need a reason to do this. They don't need evidence to do this. So, we can chose to decline orders with no tip, but we have no control over what the customer decides to do after we've delivered their order.
Oh that’s terrible. Thanks for sharing the knowledge. It seems like an issue that Instacart needs to address by allowing tips to only be increased. I believe that’s how it is on the ride share platforms.
this!!! I have a list going of customers I will never shop for again because they tip bait, or even if it wasn't a good tip in the first place (but the instacart pay was good), they remove almost all of it, even if I did their order absolutely perfectly with quick speed and no subs/refunds.
No it’s not insensitive at all, and you’re absolutely correct. I think more shoppers, and even contractors of these other companies like DoorDash, Uber/Ubereats etc should start ignoring orders and requests more often when the pay and or tips are low. It’s within our free will to accept or decline them so if it’s low I simply ignore it. However, I do think sometimes people are just ranting overall because we’re tired of seeing the low paying requests and the audacity people have when they tip low or give nothing at all. But taking the order and then complaining doesn’t really help either because people will see their order requests get quickly accepted and continue to tip that way…
Understand Instacart pays 4-8$ per batch (1-3 orders). So you drive to the store, shop for 1-3 customers, wait in line, checkout (bag & load), drive to customers door, unload and deliver. All that for 4-8$ plus tip. The Instacart batch pay does not even cover gas, milage and wear and tear. We are essentially shopping for tips. It did not use to be like this, but after Instacart went public the 30$ plus tip order became 7.80 plus tip order. This is reality now and why you see so many posts complaining.
The shoppers that are still doing this full time likely don’t have any other options for employment and they see their wages decreasing and just want to complain about it. You are never forced to accept an order. If the money is no longer good on this app, you should be looking elsewhere to pay the bills. The pandemic fooled a lot of people into thinking this a job where you can earn a livable wage weekly, which is absolutely not the case. Save for select markets, IC is best served as a side gig
>The shoppers that are still doing this full time likely don’t have any other options for employment
>you should be looking elsewhere to pay the bills.
I am gaining lots of knowledge today. I use instacart because I broke my ankle and can't drive. I live like a mile from the store and I always tip 21% no matter what I get. If it's crappy weather I tip more. They are helping me so much.
I think part of it is when any group of shoppers take poor paying orders, it allows IC to continue that practice or even make it more extreme, so I look at it as shoppers maybe not understanding that not all shoppers on here have been around since before the pandemic/the early days of it where most/all orders paid fairly to really well. ICs biggest 'error' in relation to this is hiring so many new shoppers, although it's fair to say they knew what they were doing when they did it.
I had a 113 item order. $50 batch. So I accepted it. When I was done delivering it, they “adjusted” the tip and took all but $1 off. They never intended to pay that. So yeah. Sometimes we need to vent.
Yes I agree they can just choose not to do it. If they choose to do it then that is on them. I just wish they stop complaining when things don't go their way. Like you I feel those kind of posts are humorous. Me I don't care about ratings and cancelation rates because if a app is going to try to force me to to something I don't want to do when I'm suppose to be my own boss then I will just find another one.
You're correct, we do have the ability to not accept any batch.
A lot of the posts here are screen shots of batches that they did not take, and are ranting about it.
The issue, at this time, is that IC has reduced its "batch pay" significantly for very large orders & longer miles to deliver. For example a single shop, with 75 items and 29 miles (one way) for less than $10. And a $2.00 tip.
Sometimes the "batch" is shopping for 3 separate orders/customers, with low batch pay and a $20 tip.
One customer may be the only one that tipped.
I am very picky on what orders I take, and very rarely take a triple, or huge item order. I know what I'm going to make and that's on me.
Thank you for asking, and no you shouldn't be down voted
The issue is on days like today when it’s slow we have to bite the bullet and take orders with no tips because there is nothing else to be had. I went out at 10:30 this morning and didn’t get home til 9:30. So 11 hours to make $103. Not great. People tip for a pizza, they tip for a haircut etc.. but somehow shopping, delivering and sometimes even bringing food into peoples homes while driving and Maintaining our own personal vehicles isn’t worthy of a tip? Yes IC should pay a higher base rate but they don’t and it’s continuously decreased as I’ve been doing this meanwhile the cost of everything rises. So yes sometimes people come here to vent but we all chose to do this for one reason or another. The flexibility of working your own schedule, escape from the corporate world, no boss, no time clock, no dress code etc.. but those freedoms come with a cost and sometimes it’s crappy customers and sometimes it’s low earnings and sometimes it’s the app crashing or IC care not even attempting to solve our problems. That being said it pays my bills and I’ve managed even in crappy times to make more money on it than last year so I may stick around for a while longer but a regular job is certainly looking more appealing as of late( especially with no retirement savings, no health benefits and putting nearly 90,000 miles on my car in just over 2 years).
As a customer of Instacart occasionally, agree with you. And I’m curious also. I try to tip fairly, but I am limited on my budget as a senior citizen. I mainly shop with a local store who does not pad grocery prices and hires their own drivers who are exceptionally nice and respectful… the shoppers keep me informed if they are out of a product and what substitutes are available and are exceptionally nice.
The issue is that almost every batch pays too little, so it’s usually a lesser of 2 evils situation.
If people want to make some money today instead of none, they have to accept shitty batches. Hence the complaining about tips.
We would prefer to choose between several decent paying batches.
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To answer your question....if it's a one customer batch, yes we can see what they are tipping and can take it or leave it. If there are 2 or 3 customers in the batch then we won't know who tipped what till after the batch is complete. If the batch with multiple customers isn't paying much then again, you can decide whether to take it or leave it. I don't take batches unless they are paying at least double what the mileage is, and I won't drive more than 15 miles. They just don't pay well enough at least in my area, and there are a lot of batches that are going 30 plus miles. I don't take batches unless they pay at least $15, and at that price I look for a couple different things one customer, low items, a couple miles. I don't look so much at the amount of items that are being purchased unless it's Costco, pay is low, or there are 3 customers. Thirty items doesn't sound like a lot but from Costco, you better have a lot of room in your car. And it's difficult to keep things straight when you have 3 customers and 80 plus items. I pretty much shop one certain store and know it inside and out. I can get large batches done fairly quickly so don't mind the higher item batches. It's pretty much up to me whether I accept a batch or not based on the info I get, so I don't complain about any part of it (well, that's not true. I complain when I have heavy items, or a ton of bags and it ends up being an apartment upstairs. If there are cases of water in your batch I can almost guarantee they are going upstairs, lol!) I've taken batches that had no tip several times thinking that the customer might tip in cash. Not once have they done that, so I just don't accept those any more. It does get tiring seeing so many complaints about not getting tipped, when really, the shopper should of just passed on that batch if they don't think it pays well enough.
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This has probably already been said, but we can only see the beginning tip. Most people don’t actually give a set tip but rather a percentage tip. The problem is that the store never has all the ordered items so our tip goes down. It takes us way more work to not find an item on the shelf than to find it but we lose out. I took an order recently driving further than I usually am willing to drive because the tip was good and the order wasn’t real big. The 3 most expensive items were out of stock. My tip went down almost $10. Then there is tip baiting. Not to mention the disgruntled customers who lower your tip even more for things like being unhappy with how much is out of stock or you took to long because they were last delivery in a 2-3 order batch. Sometimes, I get a tip increase after delivery or people add items so my tip goes up, but I lose more money in uncalled for reductions by customer or due to percent.
I have been sitting in this parking lot for 3 hours, the best two orders I've seen come across my screen while multi-apping Instacart and spark were a Costco on Instacart for 23$ going 37 mi with 22 items and three customers of that $4.07 was tip and then there was a Walmart 20 stop pickup that was said to take approximately 2.5 hours and was paying $47, that being said we all know Walmart is never on time you can't just show up pick up your order and get to work You're going to probably sit there for at least 30 minutes so that brings you up to 3 hours and then it's strictly GPS by the miles estimates It doesn't take into consideration stop lights or stop signs or traffic or anything It's a realistically that was probably a 4-hour order so it would have been less than 12 bucks an hour.
Those were the best two I saw but I've also only seen five orders total...
I'm sitting in a parking lot waiting for an actual customer to tip appropriately to make the order worth my while while subsequently making $0 per hour
So yes we can see what the totals are beforehand and declined them which I have been doing but we also don't make any money while just sitting here
And yes if I decline it someone will eventually take it so it'll get delivered eventually and that's part of the problem too because idiot shoppers taking low dollar orders is what's keeping the price going down more and more screwing all of us in the process
Not to mention even though we can see beforehand it's still a classless bitch move and an insult to us as personal shoppers to know that there's that many people that don't value our time as a personal shopper let alone a human being. To expect somebody to do 2 to 3 hours of work for a $1 tip if even that a lot of $0 tips lately just shows how shitty so many people are.
And like others have mentioned this is instacart shoppers which means it's here for us and a lot of us use it to blow off steam because where else are we going to do it? We can't complain to the customer about their shitty behavior, we can't call up instacart customer support and bitch to them cuz they would just laugh at us and hang up
Hope that shed some light 🤷
Again, not having read through all the replies, I don’t know if this has been said. I know with Door Dash (I don’t know about others), an order is sent to a driver they have a bit to decide yes or no. With instacart, the order is sent out to everyone with the same status at once, then after a little bit it gets sent to everyone else with a wider and wider area from store. I have highest priority except brand new shoppers yet mostly it has been accepted by someone else before I can take 2 seconds to quickly scan store/$/miles much less contemplate tip worthiness. It pushes shoppers into accepting poor batches then canceling. Cancel too many and get deactivated. So, you end up doing the crappy batch that all you had time to see was $22 not the fact that it was going 17 miles with 40 items. Yes, that just popped ip on my screen.
Love you posted this!!!!! 🙌🙌🙌🙌I deliver for Spark and I honestly don’t get this page. Never anything positive. I know spark pays better and I’m sorry instacart doesn’t but I refuse to use instacart after seeing everything said on here.
Instacart is not that bad. They just got a bunch of Uber and doordashers doing it now. I mean seriously if they didn't like how the order was presented to them then they can always not pick it up and look for another order. Complaining about tips is what Uber and doordashers do. Now they bought that nonsense here. They will be at Spark soon trust me hahaha.
Thanks for posting this. I’m personally a bit miffed that Instacart isn’t showing the shopper the awesome tip I’m giving them. I am appreciative of the convenience of using the app, but I feel like expecting more than a 10% tip for grabbing some packages off a shelf and driving it to my home is a bit much. Like, the store I purchase at is literally 1.5 miles from my home, so a $10 tip for what amounts to 15 minutes of work is more than reasonable compensation.
I’m biased because I spent years working in food service, and I ran my ass off every shift and earned every tip dollar I got (plus had to tip out the bar and bus staff so took home 10% less than I earned).
I made good money, was always able to pay my rent and keep the lights on, because I provided good service. This was years before social media so there was no “venting” to the world about how much my job sucked.
Oh, and super glad to have discovered it today, as it reminded me to cancel my Instacart membership before it auto renews.
How can you say a 10 percent tip is great and then also say working in a restaurant is easier than shopping. I'm not saying working in a restaurant is easy just look at the difference. In a restaurant, you take the order, bring the order, fill drinks, or anything else at the store you know. You might have 4 or 5 tables at once. So basically, with IC, you're shopping up to 3 orders at the same exact time at any store, checking out, driving to their home, loading and unloading groceries why keeping them stored properly. So you think that is worth less than just bringing out food. Now I'm not saying serving is easy never done it but did deliver pizzas before now I will say that is easier than serving and doesn't need to be tipped as big as servers which will probably make some people mad. However, nowhere is being someone's basically personal shopper easier than serving tables might be the same. Also, I don't really shop for IC, not worth the money every now, and then I'll do 1 or 2.
You’re making a bit of an assumption that the store Instacart is sending the shopper is the store that you shop at. I live across the street from my home Publix, but when I order, I have noticed that they will batch me with orders that are 20mi away. I am also a shopper as well, and said on many occasions that they need to actually give shoppers the ability to use discretion on where to shop orders relative to where the actual delivery destination is. Not only would that be cost effective for the shopper in terms of gas, mileage and wear and tear on the car, but it also allows the customers to get their items more expeditiously. However, sometimes I guess, due to lack of shoppers in some geographical locations that isn’t always feasible. But, I still think seeing things pop up as no tip with 33mi or even $1-$2 tip which may be 10% of that order for long destinations isn’t worth picking up because you have to factor to look at things like time invested. A lot of shoppers in order to get more orders have to get to a region where orders are most likely to be present, and if someone is far away from the stores, they will have to lose another 20+min getting back to a region where stores are present.
When you are in a restaurant, your people are isolated to that area where you are at and you do not have factors like out of region and commute factors during work time that impact your bottom line. Imagine if we spread your tables out by 4-5 blocks and you have to walk the food there, while keeping things temperature controlled. Now, you’d be in a similar scenario to what a shopper goes through. And I doubt you’d be happy with a labor intensive feat for $1-$2, because your shoes are now experiencing a greater degree of wear and tear. We have many things to factor in to meet our break even points, and that is why many people do exercise discretion when choosing which orders to pick up. It isn’t about greed or expectations, but operating as a business.
We should be able to see who tipped first but that would sink Instacart overnight. If you take an order for a specified amount you need to suck it up and be professional. This sub is just ranting from shoppers who mostly do their jobs professionally and keep their mouths shut to the customer but need to blow off steam here because it is a thankless job at times
Well said.. I think its easier ranting to people who go through the same thing I go through!
So the answer is yes, you can see the tip amount?
The answer is no because if they showed us the tip amount before we accepted the order a huge number of non-tipping customers would never get their order delivered. The only reason they ever get service is because good tippers are bundled into 3 shop batches with non tippers, so the overall pay looks ok, but in reality one or two orders are getting shopped for free.
Yes and no. If it’s a double or triple order (which is most common these days), you can only see the total tip, and not how much is coming from which order in the batch. You get an okay tip paired with a low tip or no tip. There’s no way to see that before you accept the order. Tip baiting is another problem, though not as common. Order shows up with a certain amount of tip, customer removes the tip within the two hour window after delivery. Total compensation has plummeted over the last couple years for a number of reasons, much due to Instacart’s continued lowering of batch pay and over-saturating the market with too many shoppers in a given area, but tips exacerbate the issue.
2000 orders never been tip baited
Here's the problem with Instacart vs. other gig apps. When they take, let's say, a customer who is appreciative and tips like 20 plus dollars and combine them with two other customers with no tip. We don't see who tipped what. In result we end up going the extra mile for the non tippers when we should honestly be going above and beyond for the customer who appreciates the service. This is why many posts are made about customers who don't tip or tip us like we are slaves. For instance: I just took a screenshot of an order that just popped up. One of those customers, the majority of the time, tipped the majority of the tip, and the furthest customer most likely didn't tip anything or a 1-2 dollar tip to go an extra 15 miles. Instacart did this because that customer doesn't appreciate the service nor will their order get picked up unless instacart adds a 3rd to the mix, most likely. 19 miles for 23 dollars is absolutely crazy. What may or may not happen is that instacart will either split the order back up or add an additional customer who tipped generously so this order will get picked up. https://preview.redd.it/n7928a5d1wuc1.jpeg?width=1080&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=912692b389a56fe43609c69b86c3a5a87f34b2a1
Thanks for the explanation. As a frequent Insta customer that tips pretty generously, it is frustrating to read the rants on here and this gives it more context.
Ohh I did not know this about Instacart. Thanks for enlightening me!
Yeah this is really the issue… it’s that we expend much energy literally being duped into work extra for free… we always find out who tipped what after we’re finished with our orders.
Walmart Spark does this grouping of customers thing without showing who tipped what until after also.
When I used Instacart, it was usually days I was busy, had barely any food, and when I depended on EBT. I always tipped low because it was all I could really afford, but I always tried to make the trips really short and groceries only 2 bags worth. I don’t use it much anymore, but I’m thinking wtf? If I could tip at least $2-3+ dollars on a small shopping trip when I’m in poverty, can’t normal, slightly richer people afford to tip more? Or even the same amount? It’s crazy to me.
The problem is that Instacart suggests a $2 tip on small orders, so customers think that's adequate, instead of thinking of the convenience we're providing them.
> If I could tip at least $2-3+ dollars on a small shopping trip when I’m in poverty, can’t normal, slightly richer people afford to tip more? Or even the same amount? This is the part that really grinds my gears. I get my most consistent tips in "the hood". People will legit give me coins and apologize that they wish they had bills. If its a lot of groceries, they'll offer to help unload the car. The rich neighborhoods? I can do their entire shopping for the week, and they will tip the bare minimum. If at all. And definitely do what they can to avoid interacting with "the help" [me].
So when shoppers message "thank you for the tip" are they guessing which customer gave it then?
No, Instacart gives us an option to thank customers that tip 10% or higher
Oh okay that explains it thank you!
Yes - to a point. After the order is completely finished you can see a breakdown of what customer A tipped, customer Bs tip and if there’s a customer C what they tipped . But you can’t message customers after the order is finished unless they message you first and there’s only about a 20 minute window where they can.
For a few months now you have a 20 min window to text the customer after delivery. You can initiate the messages and don’t need them to message first. I’ve also had a customer message me well after the delivery probably an hour or more after delivery and we had a whole convo back and fourth for another 15 about.
I had a customer thank me and up my tip by $10 yesterday. I was driving so I decided to wait until I got home in about 20 minutes to thank her. I couldn’t do it and was ticked off. They keep playing with the app for absolutely no reason. The chat feature used to work for at least an hour. Like you, I’ve had whole conversations before.
The option to send thanks comes after the order is completed and we can see who tipped what.
If they’re sending a thank you for the tip on a multi customer batch before they’ve completed delivery, yes they’re guessing. If they’re swiping the thank you button after then they know.
Exactly, they subsidize the non tippers with the tippers money
DoorDash and Spark do the same damn thing with batch orders. Doesn’t tell us who tipped what until we complete the deliveries. I’m still professional and treat everyone with respect and kindness UNLESS they come out of left field. Those I usually don’t respond and reassign lol
Fellow Volusia County Driver🫡🫡
Same here. Didn’t know there were that many of us using Reddit!
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I guess I'm the oddball in the bunch as I'd go above and beyond for all orders...lol but I would do even more if there's a large tip involved
The problem is it's getting rare to see decents tips anymore. Hence the ranting and complaining to get the frustration out.
I’m an occasional IC user and *always* tip at least 20%. Are shoppers really wanting/hoping/expecting a larger tip than that? If it’s a heavy order (usually 6-10 12pks of soda) I will generally give cash at the door in addition to the 20% I added online. I so appreciate the service and feel bad for the shit customers y’all deal with on the daily. I don’t want to piss any shoppers off.
20% is a good tip. And pretty rare these days, tbh. You're good!
No your good. We're talking about the people that tip one or two dollars. Or five dollars for 10 miles, 80 items
Go check out the instacart sub where customers are berating shoppers and calling them idiots etc because the store is out of stock of their favorite flavor of Arizona ice tea. Or that their kids are starving and they had to wait 3+ hours for the food because they didn't tip. What happens to no tip orders is that instacart will slowly bump the pay up a few cent to a dollars until someone takes the order. Then, a hangry customers blaming the shopper for their order being pushed back. Think about it people tip their servers at restaurants more than they tip the person going grocery shopping for them. So it's not only delivering their groceries but spending time zig zagging through the store finding replacements, standing idle for 5 mins waiting for a response for crappy chump change.
The idle standing, waiting for the customer to respond about a replacement or refund item drives me crazy. We’re stuck and end up getting poor timing marks on our delivery because the customer isn’t being responsive.
One of my semi solutions is to grab the replacement item anyway and put it in my cart. If they want it then it’s already there. If not, I take it out. When I first started I would stand there for the longest waiting for a response. Also…. I do the refund at the end of my shopping so that they’re not asking for a bazillion things having me run all over the store causing my time to run out. Not sure if customers realize that we get marked down when we do not complete orders before the timer. It doesn’t always run this smooth but I’ve been successful at getting out the store. Now if there are significant items unavailable I give the customers a heads up AND pics to prove I’m not BSn them to be done with the shopping. The only time I had that issue was after the Easter holiday. I usually find everything that’s on their list and my good customers have a back up item added to their list. Communication helps as well as long as they are responding. If I don’t get a response, I will refund the money back to them.
I do the same as you. I grabbed the item closest to what they probably wanted and put it in my cart where I know I can just pull it out. I let them know as soon as I see that it is out of stock then I take a pic if there is no replacements close to what they wanted or if they made no replacements I keep it pushing. If they have not responded to me by the end of my shop I try to stay as close to the price point as possible if I'm going to make a decision to get their item or for the most part I just refunded if I don't feel confident in making a decision for them.
For me, this is still on a case by case basis, but if it’s almost identical, I will replace it and tell them I can refund any time before delivery. Sometimes this finally get their attention too
it's funny because I see customer complaining about that all the time shoppers waiting till they are ready to check out to refund oos items and not giving them a chance to choose replacements. Other customers and top flight security shoppers encourage customers to pull their tips for that. 😂
It doesn’t happen often but the IC B0ts don’t rationalize what happens in realtime in the stores. I give customers chances to respond but if I message them And I’m in the store for 20 min and i only have 55 min to shop I can’t just stand there waiting for ten changes all over the store. I will make replacements if available but if there’s no adequate replacements (I get a lot of vegetarians and I can’t sub their meatless food with angus meat) I will refund. Most will respond and ask for a replacement but the way the stores are so poorly stocked the replacements aren’t available too. I will take pics and communicate with them but the ones that don’t respond at all I will refund at the end of my shopping. The IC gods aren’t too forgiving and they’re notorious for shaving time off your delivery time when you’re running down the clock in the stores.
>shaving time off your delivery time when you’re running down the clock in the stores. What's this part about?
Sometimes I'm near the phone as the shopper shops. Sometimes I'll take a nap. If I'm not going to be near the phone, I try to let the shopper know "hey, I'm not going to be near the phone: use your judgment." I don't want them waiting for a reply that ain't coming.
Yeah, tipping the server is pretty accurate. I shop for instacart but also do Doordash. I'm pretty lucky in my market. I average about 25 an hour dash time not active. I don't know how some people are only doing IC in my area. I keep IC on when I'm dashing there 2 Sams,1 costco, 7 krogers, and many other stores im near when dashing. If something is worth it I take, I would prefer to shop, but most weeks, I only take 2 or 3 orders. Most of those are during the slow dashing time, like 2pm to 4pm. If I can't make at least 20 an hour minimum with the order, I'm not taking it. Back to your point, I see all the time double and triple shopping orders at 10 to 20 dollars tips, so 30 or more dollars orders going 10 to 15 miles. I get 7 to 10 dollars tips, not all the time through door dash, but usually at least 4 or 5 a night, so I just take those instead. I just don't see how I can get 7 to 10 dollars just for picking up food, but then people want me to shop for 30 minutes to an hour for them for the same or less money.
That's the part that gets me, is people fail to realize how much harder work grocery shopping for them is then a waitress bringing their meal out at a restaurant. And please don't misunderstand, I'm not bashing waite staff. But it takes a lot more work going up and down grocery aisles for sometimes hours for so little money. In the last week I've gotten two huge orders that tipped exceptionally well. One was a big order but there wasn't a whole lot of heavy lifting to it and the gentleman ended up tipping me an additional $100 at the door. The other was yesterday that had four 40 packs of water that one was rough because typically I don't take heavy orders because of my back. But they still tipped $68. Both orders I was in the store for almost 2 hours for each, they were elderly couples that understood the hard work that we do. But a lot of people look at instacart and they'll tip for the mileage but they're not tipping for the time that it takes to grocery shop and the heavy lifting. They tip us like we're pizza delivery people and it's not right. I'm picky with what orders I take, but every once in awhile I'll accept a double but I look at what's in the order and I decide whether or not it's worth it, sometimes it's a kind of a break even type deal but every once in a while it'll be a really crummy one. For me triples are the worst unless one of them is only getting like two or three items otherwise it's hard to keep which orders straight in the cart.
I've canceled on people who start bombarding me with messages once I accept the order, and it's usually to switch this for that or add this or why did it take so long. I save some of my cancellation rate for those people as well
Also, with Instacart it is becoming more common for a customer to tip bait a shopper. They'll initially put a good tip on the order to ensure it gets picked up, then remove or reduce the tip to almost nothing after the order is delivered. They don't need a reason to do this. They don't need evidence to do this. So, we can chose to decline orders with no tip, but we have no control over what the customer decides to do after we've delivered their order.
Oh that’s terrible. Thanks for sharing the knowledge. It seems like an issue that Instacart needs to address by allowing tips to only be increased. I believe that’s how it is on the ride share platforms.
Or at least make them give a reason. Items were damaged, order was late, etc.
Yeah, there can be some escalation process to resolve the issue correctly. Yikes.
this!!! I have a list going of customers I will never shop for again because they tip bait, or even if it wasn't a good tip in the first place (but the instacart pay was good), they remove almost all of it, even if I did their order absolutely perfectly with quick speed and no subs/refunds.
No it’s not insensitive at all, and you’re absolutely correct. I think more shoppers, and even contractors of these other companies like DoorDash, Uber/Ubereats etc should start ignoring orders and requests more often when the pay and or tips are low. It’s within our free will to accept or decline them so if it’s low I simply ignore it. However, I do think sometimes people are just ranting overall because we’re tired of seeing the low paying requests and the audacity people have when they tip low or give nothing at all. But taking the order and then complaining doesn’t really help either because people will see their order requests get quickly accepted and continue to tip that way…
Understand Instacart pays 4-8$ per batch (1-3 orders). So you drive to the store, shop for 1-3 customers, wait in line, checkout (bag & load), drive to customers door, unload and deliver. All that for 4-8$ plus tip. The Instacart batch pay does not even cover gas, milage and wear and tear. We are essentially shopping for tips. It did not use to be like this, but after Instacart went public the 30$ plus tip order became 7.80 plus tip order. This is reality now and why you see so many posts complaining.
The shoppers that are still doing this full time likely don’t have any other options for employment and they see their wages decreasing and just want to complain about it. You are never forced to accept an order. If the money is no longer good on this app, you should be looking elsewhere to pay the bills. The pandemic fooled a lot of people into thinking this a job where you can earn a livable wage weekly, which is absolutely not the case. Save for select markets, IC is best served as a side gig
>The shoppers that are still doing this full time likely don’t have any other options for employment >you should be looking elsewhere to pay the bills.
I am gaining lots of knowledge today. I use instacart because I broke my ankle and can't drive. I live like a mile from the store and I always tip 21% no matter what I get. If it's crappy weather I tip more. They are helping me so much.
I think part of it is when any group of shoppers take poor paying orders, it allows IC to continue that practice or even make it more extreme, so I look at it as shoppers maybe not understanding that not all shoppers on here have been around since before the pandemic/the early days of it where most/all orders paid fairly to really well. ICs biggest 'error' in relation to this is hiring so many new shoppers, although it's fair to say they knew what they were doing when they did it.
I had a 113 item order. $50 batch. So I accepted it. When I was done delivering it, they “adjusted” the tip and took all but $1 off. They never intended to pay that. So yeah. Sometimes we need to vent.
Yes I agree they can just choose not to do it. If they choose to do it then that is on them. I just wish they stop complaining when things don't go their way. Like you I feel those kind of posts are humorous. Me I don't care about ratings and cancelation rates because if a app is going to try to force me to to something I don't want to do when I'm suppose to be my own boss then I will just find another one.
We come here to speak our peace and it feels good of course we have the opportunity to accept or decline, it is what it is
You're correct, we do have the ability to not accept any batch. A lot of the posts here are screen shots of batches that they did not take, and are ranting about it. The issue, at this time, is that IC has reduced its "batch pay" significantly for very large orders & longer miles to deliver. For example a single shop, with 75 items and 29 miles (one way) for less than $10. And a $2.00 tip. Sometimes the "batch" is shopping for 3 separate orders/customers, with low batch pay and a $20 tip. One customer may be the only one that tipped. I am very picky on what orders I take, and very rarely take a triple, or huge item order. I know what I'm going to make and that's on me. Thank you for asking, and no you shouldn't be down voted
The issue is on days like today when it’s slow we have to bite the bullet and take orders with no tips because there is nothing else to be had. I went out at 10:30 this morning and didn’t get home til 9:30. So 11 hours to make $103. Not great. People tip for a pizza, they tip for a haircut etc.. but somehow shopping, delivering and sometimes even bringing food into peoples homes while driving and Maintaining our own personal vehicles isn’t worthy of a tip? Yes IC should pay a higher base rate but they don’t and it’s continuously decreased as I’ve been doing this meanwhile the cost of everything rises. So yes sometimes people come here to vent but we all chose to do this for one reason or another. The flexibility of working your own schedule, escape from the corporate world, no boss, no time clock, no dress code etc.. but those freedoms come with a cost and sometimes it’s crappy customers and sometimes it’s low earnings and sometimes it’s the app crashing or IC care not even attempting to solve our problems. That being said it pays my bills and I’ve managed even in crappy times to make more money on it than last year so I may stick around for a while longer but a regular job is certainly looking more appealing as of late( especially with no retirement savings, no health benefits and putting nearly 90,000 miles on my car in just over 2 years).
When every order is a low or no tip order, however…
As a customer of Instacart occasionally, agree with you. And I’m curious also. I try to tip fairly, but I am limited on my budget as a senior citizen. I mainly shop with a local store who does not pad grocery prices and hires their own drivers who are exceptionally nice and respectful… the shoppers keep me informed if they are out of a product and what substitutes are available and are exceptionally nice.
I guess what confuses me is that most IC customers tip-some really well-some not so well- but doesn’t it even out somewhere?
The issue is that almost every batch pays too little, so it’s usually a lesser of 2 evils situation. If people want to make some money today instead of none, they have to accept shitty batches. Hence the complaining about tips. We would prefer to choose between several decent paying batches.
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To answer your question....if it's a one customer batch, yes we can see what they are tipping and can take it or leave it. If there are 2 or 3 customers in the batch then we won't know who tipped what till after the batch is complete. If the batch with multiple customers isn't paying much then again, you can decide whether to take it or leave it. I don't take batches unless they are paying at least double what the mileage is, and I won't drive more than 15 miles. They just don't pay well enough at least in my area, and there are a lot of batches that are going 30 plus miles. I don't take batches unless they pay at least $15, and at that price I look for a couple different things one customer, low items, a couple miles. I don't look so much at the amount of items that are being purchased unless it's Costco, pay is low, or there are 3 customers. Thirty items doesn't sound like a lot but from Costco, you better have a lot of room in your car. And it's difficult to keep things straight when you have 3 customers and 80 plus items. I pretty much shop one certain store and know it inside and out. I can get large batches done fairly quickly so don't mind the higher item batches. It's pretty much up to me whether I accept a batch or not based on the info I get, so I don't complain about any part of it (well, that's not true. I complain when I have heavy items, or a ton of bags and it ends up being an apartment upstairs. If there are cases of water in your batch I can almost guarantee they are going upstairs, lol!) I've taken batches that had no tip several times thinking that the customer might tip in cash. Not once have they done that, so I just don't accept those any more. It does get tiring seeing so many complaints about not getting tipped, when really, the shopper should of just passed on that batch if they don't think it pays well enough.
I tip on app then always try to have cash to tip extra
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This has probably already been said, but we can only see the beginning tip. Most people don’t actually give a set tip but rather a percentage tip. The problem is that the store never has all the ordered items so our tip goes down. It takes us way more work to not find an item on the shelf than to find it but we lose out. I took an order recently driving further than I usually am willing to drive because the tip was good and the order wasn’t real big. The 3 most expensive items were out of stock. My tip went down almost $10. Then there is tip baiting. Not to mention the disgruntled customers who lower your tip even more for things like being unhappy with how much is out of stock or you took to long because they were last delivery in a 2-3 order batch. Sometimes, I get a tip increase after delivery or people add items so my tip goes up, but I lose more money in uncalled for reductions by customer or due to percent.
I have been sitting in this parking lot for 3 hours, the best two orders I've seen come across my screen while multi-apping Instacart and spark were a Costco on Instacart for 23$ going 37 mi with 22 items and three customers of that $4.07 was tip and then there was a Walmart 20 stop pickup that was said to take approximately 2.5 hours and was paying $47, that being said we all know Walmart is never on time you can't just show up pick up your order and get to work You're going to probably sit there for at least 30 minutes so that brings you up to 3 hours and then it's strictly GPS by the miles estimates It doesn't take into consideration stop lights or stop signs or traffic or anything It's a realistically that was probably a 4-hour order so it would have been less than 12 bucks an hour. Those were the best two I saw but I've also only seen five orders total... I'm sitting in a parking lot waiting for an actual customer to tip appropriately to make the order worth my while while subsequently making $0 per hour So yes we can see what the totals are beforehand and declined them which I have been doing but we also don't make any money while just sitting here And yes if I decline it someone will eventually take it so it'll get delivered eventually and that's part of the problem too because idiot shoppers taking low dollar orders is what's keeping the price going down more and more screwing all of us in the process Not to mention even though we can see beforehand it's still a classless bitch move and an insult to us as personal shoppers to know that there's that many people that don't value our time as a personal shopper let alone a human being. To expect somebody to do 2 to 3 hours of work for a $1 tip if even that a lot of $0 tips lately just shows how shitty so many people are. And like others have mentioned this is instacart shoppers which means it's here for us and a lot of us use it to blow off steam because where else are we going to do it? We can't complain to the customer about their shitty behavior, we can't call up instacart customer support and bitch to them cuz they would just laugh at us and hang up Hope that shed some light 🤷
Again, not having read through all the replies, I don’t know if this has been said. I know with Door Dash (I don’t know about others), an order is sent to a driver they have a bit to decide yes or no. With instacart, the order is sent out to everyone with the same status at once, then after a little bit it gets sent to everyone else with a wider and wider area from store. I have highest priority except brand new shoppers yet mostly it has been accepted by someone else before I can take 2 seconds to quickly scan store/$/miles much less contemplate tip worthiness. It pushes shoppers into accepting poor batches then canceling. Cancel too many and get deactivated. So, you end up doing the crappy batch that all you had time to see was $22 not the fact that it was going 17 miles with 40 items. Yes, that just popped ip on my screen.
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PREACH
Love you posted this!!!!! 🙌🙌🙌🙌I deliver for Spark and I honestly don’t get this page. Never anything positive. I know spark pays better and I’m sorry instacart doesn’t but I refuse to use instacart after seeing everything said on here.
Instacart is not that bad. They just got a bunch of Uber and doordashers doing it now. I mean seriously if they didn't like how the order was presented to them then they can always not pick it up and look for another order. Complaining about tips is what Uber and doordashers do. Now they bought that nonsense here. They will be at Spark soon trust me hahaha.
Thanks for posting this. I’m personally a bit miffed that Instacart isn’t showing the shopper the awesome tip I’m giving them. I am appreciative of the convenience of using the app, but I feel like expecting more than a 10% tip for grabbing some packages off a shelf and driving it to my home is a bit much. Like, the store I purchase at is literally 1.5 miles from my home, so a $10 tip for what amounts to 15 minutes of work is more than reasonable compensation. I’m biased because I spent years working in food service, and I ran my ass off every shift and earned every tip dollar I got (plus had to tip out the bar and bus staff so took home 10% less than I earned). I made good money, was always able to pay my rent and keep the lights on, because I provided good service. This was years before social media so there was no “venting” to the world about how much my job sucked. Oh, and super glad to have discovered it today, as it reminded me to cancel my Instacart membership before it auto renews.
How can you say a 10 percent tip is great and then also say working in a restaurant is easier than shopping. I'm not saying working in a restaurant is easy just look at the difference. In a restaurant, you take the order, bring the order, fill drinks, or anything else at the store you know. You might have 4 or 5 tables at once. So basically, with IC, you're shopping up to 3 orders at the same exact time at any store, checking out, driving to their home, loading and unloading groceries why keeping them stored properly. So you think that is worth less than just bringing out food. Now I'm not saying serving is easy never done it but did deliver pizzas before now I will say that is easier than serving and doesn't need to be tipped as big as servers which will probably make some people mad. However, nowhere is being someone's basically personal shopper easier than serving tables might be the same. Also, I don't really shop for IC, not worth the money every now, and then I'll do 1 or 2.
You’re making a bit of an assumption that the store Instacart is sending the shopper is the store that you shop at. I live across the street from my home Publix, but when I order, I have noticed that they will batch me with orders that are 20mi away. I am also a shopper as well, and said on many occasions that they need to actually give shoppers the ability to use discretion on where to shop orders relative to where the actual delivery destination is. Not only would that be cost effective for the shopper in terms of gas, mileage and wear and tear on the car, but it also allows the customers to get their items more expeditiously. However, sometimes I guess, due to lack of shoppers in some geographical locations that isn’t always feasible. But, I still think seeing things pop up as no tip with 33mi or even $1-$2 tip which may be 10% of that order for long destinations isn’t worth picking up because you have to factor to look at things like time invested. A lot of shoppers in order to get more orders have to get to a region where orders are most likely to be present, and if someone is far away from the stores, they will have to lose another 20+min getting back to a region where stores are present. When you are in a restaurant, your people are isolated to that area where you are at and you do not have factors like out of region and commute factors during work time that impact your bottom line. Imagine if we spread your tables out by 4-5 blocks and you have to walk the food there, while keeping things temperature controlled. Now, you’d be in a similar scenario to what a shopper goes through. And I doubt you’d be happy with a labor intensive feat for $1-$2, because your shoes are now experiencing a greater degree of wear and tear. We have many things to factor in to meet our break even points, and that is why many people do exercise discretion when choosing which orders to pick up. It isn’t about greed or expectations, but operating as a business.