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Comment by clay_the_ripper | Hacker News Reader

I have never had a good experience with instacart. I’ve ordered from them probably 10-15 times and every single time, without fail, they either forget an item or replace an item with another item that I don’t want. This makes the service unusable, because if I’m cooking dinner that night and want to order instacart, there’s a high likelyhood I’ll be missing something crucial for my recepie, meaning I’ll have to go to the store anyway.

Not to mention the shady fees. The last time I used instacart, there was a box checked called “service fee”, I clicked on it to see what it was and it said “this $10 charge is optional and helps us keep running instacart”. Meanwhile the tip for your driver box is not checked. I bet a large number of people assume the service fee is the tip, and leave tip blank. Blatant tip stealing.

Plus they mark up everything you buy, and obfuscate this so it’s impossible to really know how much extra instacart is skimming off the top.

Amazing prime now on the other hand has never messed up an order. They always deliver on time. The prices are actually cheaper in some cases than in store.

I can’t wait for instacart to go out of business.

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A few more things instacart does that really bother me:

1. The time slot changes as soon as you click checkout, what I mean is while browsing I'll always see "Available Within 1 hour" then when it actually is time to checkout that option is gone. It happens virtually every time and I've never seen it happen the other way around or happen while shopping and refreshing or going back and forth between shopping and checking out. This leads me to believe it's an intended trick they are using to get people to shop even if the time they want isn't available.

2. They don't provide drivers with any sort of cart to actually deliver the groceries with. One delivery driver had to lug water bottles and other heavy items from down the street where he could find parking into my building and up to my apartment. Amazon Fresh gives their drivers a handcart to help with deliveries.

3. After several orders of mine were never delivered and Instacart offering a $5 credit (after wasting hours of my time waiting for their large delivery window) I had a driver tell me that drivers get to keep orders that are not delivered and sometimes they pick really good orders and say they couldn't be delivered.

I still use them because it's convenient but wish they would treat their users with more integrity and also manage their delivery drivers better by providing supporting tools like a cart or keeping tabs on drivers that may be taking orders for themselves.

Instacart not supporting their contractors - well, I guess they're still contractors, I don't know what happened to wanting to switch them to employees - is my biggest gripe.

While I was pregnant and stuck at home, I received a bunch of my roommate's 1-2x weekly Instacart deliveries. Without fail the majority of Instacart drivers tried to refuse to go up our one flight of stairs with 1-2 grocery bags. One cursed me out while bringing the bags upstairs. Some left the bags next to the gate. Mostly only women would bring it up without complaining, "you're sooo biiig giiirl go put your feet up!" And then fuck me, we misunderstood the $$$ Instacart fee as a tip so the people doing their jobs didn't get tipped :(

This is omitting the stupid shopping mistakes like 1 leek instead of 1 pound of leeks, and the amazing chat session I had with one shopper that asked me where to find something I'm buying for the first time, at a store I've never been to.

I have never had this problem with Good Eggs, never had this problem with Prime Now, only had it once or twice with Postmates and Caviar. Something's not being incentivized correctly over at Instacart.

Exact same experience. Instacart shopper cannot find extremely common items and tries to replace them with 2-3x more expensive options.

The whole model of the shopper walking the isles to pick the products is wrong. It's inefficient and a recipe for disappointment, because what you see on their web page is just a guess at what the store has and the shopper can find.

I too have used Instacart probably 10 times, but never will again. It is also all but guaranteed that Whole Foods will drop Instancart like a hot potato for their own in-house service, so the valuation is completely wrong in my opinion.

Amazon Prime Now is already starting this (https://goo.gl/fSF4DR) in select markets. I used this last weekend and the delivery was perfect! You can opt to have an out-of-stock item either left off or replaced with a similar item. They will even send an SMS to request confirmation if they need to use a substitute product, giving you an opportunity to provide more feedback.

That's exactly how Instacart works as well. The shopper is able to call or text the customer to discuss substitutions.

Correct - as well as choose from "best replacement", "replace with specific item", and "don't replace".

Since Instacart remembers these choices across orders, I've found this useful for making sure I get what I need.

I suspect the fact that Amazon is so good at food delivery is exactly why Instacart has been able to raise at such a high valuation. Amazon's purchase of Whole Foods, their Amazon Go store, and generally competent execution of grocery delivery has put the fear of $DIETY into all the incumbent grocery chains. They realize that they're late to the game and don't have the internal talent to develop an effective and convenient home-delivery competitor, so they're forced to partner with Instacart, who is hoping to commoditize them.

I feel like even Amazon doesn’t have enough internal talent to execute on all the projects they want. Grocery stores don’t stand a chance.

Similar experience, I hate to say it. Instacart's support has been pretty poor as well. If your delivery person gets an item wrong or delivers expired goods, good luck trying to get a refund because you'll be presented with a "you can return it yourself". Something go wrong with an alcoholic order? It's even worse because alcohol sales are non-refundable. I've had orders where the delivery person brought the wrong item and Instacart just ghosted me on my support emails and tweets until eventually they said my order was done too long ago to resolve.

Similar experience. The app is fine, but the quality of shoppers usually isn't. Lots of forgotten items, unacceptable replacements, or just getting the wrong thing entirely. Once had a shopper who didn't know cucumbers from zucchini. Another time, we ordered 2 pounds of shrimp and got...2 shrimp. Just two little shrimp! Honestly, who would even think it makes sense that we would've ordered two individual shrimp? I've had so many bad experiences that I don't ever plan to use Instacart again.

I routinely buy one shrimp because I don’t like shrimp but I cook it for my baby as part of getting her diverse foods.

I agree. I use instacart every few months, but I will NEVER use them to buy groceries for a dinner I'm preparing that day. I've had too many instances where they didn't have the meat I needed, so I had to order out. They are not useful for folks who cook a lot and care about their ingredients.

They really really need real to have real time inventory for users like me. The shopper model worked when they were just starting off because it allowed them to launch in tons of cities without even the groceries approving but now they need to move to a model where they get the grocery store's inventory; the current method is just plain inefficient.

Instacart is going to get slaughtered. If it was public, it would be in a GTZ (Go to Zero) basket. Its business has a critical flaw that was only kind of workable when Amazon did not own WF.

Amazon WF same day delivery would be picked from WF stores by the people who work in those stores and are trained in those stores, not Joe Random Gig Worker who does not know how swiss chard is different from the rainbow chard, and AMF would do it for no markup to WF price.

Vertical integration in the last mile grocery business would crush anyone who is not vertically integrated. The only way for non vertically-intergrated Instacart to complete is to pivot into SaaS business selling its platform to the independent store operators for something like $1 per order but there's just no way $1 per order software platform would command that valuation.

as an engineer at instacart, it's very disheartening for me to see the top-rated comment on HN is "I can’t wait for instacart to go out of business."

even if we did not provide value to you (which i apologize for -- it is a priority of ours to improve the replacement experience in particular as it is very frustrating to customers), i am not sure why that implies that we do not provide a valuable service for others and why you would wish ill on us.

perhaps it is because you think of us as an overall unscrupulous company ("shady fees", "mark up everything you buy"), which i would contest -- we strive for transparency when possible (see [1] for screenshots around how we describe the pricing of our service). but the larger point remains -- why do you think that there can only be one victor here, and that is has to be amazon? (or "amazing" as you put it).

right now, amazon is very explicitly coming for the grocery industry -- an $800+ billion industry that is almost 100% offline -- and we are attempting to be one of the (hopefully many) independent companies that enables it online. grocery companies have built amazing fulfillment pipelines and relationships with both farms & customers that we are building a front-end and logistics system for.

anyways, i do not speak for instacart as a company, just for myself as an employee who usually enjoys HN.

[1] https://imgur.com/a/j47ls

Never used Instacart, but your link to show transparency, doesn't actually state what the mark up is.. 2%, 10%, 25%, order minimum or there's fee..

Transparency to me, would mean I place order and know how much it will cost, instacart mark up, service fees and if a tip is included.

we used to provide specific percentages, but phased that out over time as it was obvious that wasn't providing real value -- where on amazon.com do you see their markup?

additionally, for virtually all stores on instacart.com now, we are simply passing on the pricing that the retailer has given us (which may or not be marked up from their internal prices -- but we do not control)

edit: to be crystal clear, that means that you are getting exactly what you are asking for -- the prices are simply what the retailer sets (which may be marked up from in-store -- that's their prerogative), and then we show our fees on top of that on checkout. we aren't "hiding" anything, and it's your decision whether the fees are worth your time.

My concern is the price of getting the product at the store verse instacart delivering it.

If you can get a discount directly from the store, great! You are providing value to them.

I agree. There are really only three things I can imagine caring about:

1) Receiving the exact items I ordered. 2) The time it takes to show up at my door. 3) The total price beyond what it would cost me in the store.

I know what I pay at the store, I know the value of my time, and I know the cost of driving my car. All I need from Instacart is the total cost for the service presented as simply as possible.

>additionally, for virtually all stores on instacart.com now, we are simply passing on the pricing that the retailer has given us (which may or not be marked up from their internal prices -- but we do not control)

IC is responsible for signing the contracts they have with retailers, IC is also the most visible partner for the end-user. As you can see from this thread, attempts to kick the blame down(up?) the supply chain will only fall on deaf ears.

I don't think it's comparable to Amazon's mark-up. The alternative to Amazon is walmart.com, ebay.com, etc., all of which can be directly compared. Instacart provides a delivery service. It's comparable to Uber Eats or Eat24. I agree with the others that it seems shady to provide a delivery service but obfuscate how much you're charging for delivery.

I know Uber Eats bans restaurants from marking up orders placed through them. You can look at your phone and decide exactly how much extra the delivery costs and then decide if it's worth it to not have to go pick up the food yourself. I've never used instacart but if you're telling me that the price of the service is a secret from me I have a problem would that and would not use it. I don't want to pay $50 to have someone pick up my groceries. But I'd gladly pay $10 on certain days. But I have to know beforehand. I'm not going to sit around and hope Instacart doesn't screw me over today.

I don't have stake in this one way or the other, but will you argue in favor of Instacart's '$10 service fee' (as mentioned by parent commenter)?

i am not entirely sure what they mean by that. the service fee goes 100% towards the shopper fleet and is an essential part of a reasonable compensation structure for all of our shoppers -- if we switched entirely to tips, the folks that (e.g.) actually picked out your groceries, checked out & staged your groceries at the store, would not be compensated. this is because tips have to go 100% to one person, which would only be the delivery person -- and in our case, any one order is handled by many people to be efficient.

I suppose OP's point wasn't that a service fee wasn't justifiable, just that it's a bit odd to make it optional and have it auto-selected, though given someone else's comment it seems like now it's mandatory.

i know there has been a lot of changes with that recently -- i agree also that is odd. there are a ton of legal nuances here that i do not want to get into, but suffice to say we want to be clear and transparent to customers while at the same time providing a compelling wage to all the folks who touch your order during any part of the lifecycle.

It is really hard to believe that instacart wants to be clear and transparent as possible (although I'm sure you do, personally).

If "service fee" was renamed "instacart fee", people would no longer assume it is the driver's tip. But instacart would never do that, would they?

This is a blatant lie combined with omissions.

I’m a “full-service shopper” in a zone without any in-store teams, meaning that I do the shopping and the delivering. Since I’ve started, I have only seen the order commissions steadily deteriorate to the point that they are now about half of what they used to be a year ago.

I can assure you and anyone else reading that the so-called service fee is not going to any of us in the field. And many customers have stopped tipping assuming that the service fee is a tip.

Which is why Instacart is going to get crushed. Fee exists because instacart is not an integrated service. Supermarket margins are thin. They will only shrink more.

There's no reason why grocery store employees cannot fill orders - in fact grocery stores that do their own deliveries do exactly that. What those grocery stores lack is a platform to synchronize active inventory in a store and what is displayed which is exactly what Amazon brings to Whole Foods in addition to "intelligent" order routing:

There are three whole foods in Manhattan that are convenient to downtown - however, during the rush our one needs to be an idiot to send an order to the one on 7th Ave rather than the one in Tribeca, which is definitely not the case during the late afternoon.

What really amazes me is that both executives and people who work for companies like Instacart simply stomp their feet and say "But we are different! Why do you hate us?!" rather than address deficiency of the business model. Want to have a shot at competing with AmazonWF? Become a sub of Ahold, Kroger, Albertsons or SuperValu. Otherwise you die.

P.S. I dislike Amazon. I do, however, have to admit that buying WF was a brilliant move.

>> why do you think that there can only be one victor here, and that is has to be amazon?

Historically, online businesses have 1/2 winners that "take all". That's assuming the winners could build a warehouse near each city. seems possible.

So the question who will be the one besides Amazon?

From one point of view. Walmart will likely win in the low-cost grocery pickup business. And on top of that they will do deliveries. The way Walmart will choose that delivery is: is it cheaper than delivery costs for Walmart(for chilled deliveries)? and can it scale ? . Does instacart fit ? it seems not.

So it's hard to see how instacart wins.

groceries are unlike pretty much every other online segment, which is why it has resisted being moved online (until very recently). the model of having a warehouse simply "near" a city is a model amazon has tried for 10+ years without success -- you must have many warehouses within the city to make it work.

i am not entirely clear how you arrived at "Does instacart fit ? it seems not.", so it would be good to understand that. we have spent 5 years with hundreds of engineers building a fulfillment/logistics network just for groceries that any grocer can just leverage off the shelf.

I think he's saying a customer will ask "is Instacart cheaper than Walmart" and the answer is "no", so there isn't a place for Instacart to fit, assuming Amazon owns the high-end side with Whole Foods (although I wouldn't assume Amazon would settle for just that).

Walmart already has grocery warehouses with their stores, so bolting on pickup/delivery to those makes sense. I don't know how much pickup/delivery could potentially negate the need for the store, but I'd assume the pickup/delivery load of a store has huge room for growth before you start questioning why the store needs to be open to the public.

I haven't used their grocery delivery service but their pickup service is well-executed and convenient, in my experience, so I'm assuming they can figure out how to be competent in delivery as well.

right now, whole foods is something like 1 or 2% of the grocery market in the US. we plan to be the partner to the rest of the nation -- my initial question was how on earth you can just assume amazon (by default) owns the rest of the high end market, and, why you think "bolting on delivery" is easy/trivial.

>> why you think "bolting on delivery" is easy/trivial

For someone in the position of Walmart, and with the many startups that doing delivery, it seems realistic.

As for why do i think Amazon will win the high end? really, the biggest reason is that it's Amazon. But yes, that's not a good enough reason, but still, they win an awful lot.

But maybe there's a chance for instacart to win the higher end, especially by offering the largest variety any merchant can offer.

Isn't it illegal to offer a "store credit" instead of a refund in cases where IC forgot my items and I paid debit? Seems like a really shady way to bring customers back.

Don't get me wrong, I enjoy the whole concept of online ordering but the IC UI forces users into choices that benefit IC by default.

I believe when the refund is not the customer's fault (though some choose to do it then), that the refund is typically "by the medium paid" (with some waiting, or such, for things like uncleared checks, etc.), but I'm not sure if that's a product of merchant regulation, consumer law or 'policy'.

Overall I really like Instacart and quite frankly, I've come to depend on it. Shopping with kids is difficult... it's much easier to plan ahead and shop when I have a little free time. So congrats on the funding!

I understand some of the frustrations about replacements. Originally the shoppers were pretty good about calling. Recently the app was updated for 1-1 chat and interactive replacement choices. However, it seems the shoppers are to busy to use the feature... I've had a few notifications for replacements, only to click on it and find the shopper has already checked out.

Personally, I accept that limitation of the platform and make sure I choice "no replacement" if there's any chance I'll be disappointed.

thank you for the kind feedback -- we love to hear from customers who we help like this! and, we are constantly trying to improve the experience (especially the replacement experience!)

Saying “we charge markups, but we won’t tell you what they are” is still not sufficiently transparent, in my opinion. Yes, Amazon and grocery stores do the same thing (at face value, anyway) by not disclosing their COGS. But the key difference is that my next-best alternative to Instacart is to just go to the grocery store myself. My next-best alternative to getting something delivered from Amazon isn’t to get it more cheaply from a brick-and-mortar Amazon store, or to buy it directly from their suppliers - it’s to get it from a different retailer entirely, and I can trivially compare all-in prices between other retailers and Amazon. So I can easily assess whether it makes sense from a cost/benefit perspective to buy something on Amazon, but I can’t make the same assessment for Instacart.

I do think the service creates value. But I still hope that, at the very least, it soon faces enough competition that it’s at least forced to be fully transparent about the cost of its service. I want to see one number - the difference between what an order of groceries costs me on Instacart all-in, and what it would cost me to go to the grocery store and purchase the same items myself. As long as I can’t trivially find or calculate that number, I won’t use Instacart again.

i am very confused why you have a higher bar for this than other services. would you actually create a spreadsheet that values your time (against other alternatives), gas/lyft/train fare to and back from the store, the extra costs associated with actually being in a retailer (and seeing the specials in store etc) and compare that against our offering?

and again, we aren't the ones doing the markup -- those are coming from the retailer directly, who may (or may not) mark up prices, which is their prerogative. we put all of our costs in the checkout screen transparently.

>> and again, we aren't the ones doing the markup

So you claim, but since you refuse to list what the IC markup is then it's impossible for us to tell. You're essentially using the retailer markup as an excuse to hide instances of when you do it yourself.

Thus the lack of transparency.

In any given transaction, I have NO idea what the actual % that was added by IC. I do not have this problem with Amazon Prime.

again, in 99.99% of the cases, we aren't doing the markup.

and, in the one case where we do not have a signed relationship with the retailer, we do explicitly note the percentage.

we aren't hiding anything. and, you have that precise problem with amazon prime -- what markup are they charging?

If any markup exists, and if Instacart splits some of that markup with the retailer, it seems like obscuring the facts to state that Instacart does not charge a _separate_ markup.

> again, in 99.99% of the cases, we aren't doing the markup.

I find that hard to believe. That's the retailer markup? So you're just relying on the 0.01% (I know, arbitrary) where you do, and the opt-out $10 Service Charge to make money?

Are you responding to the same screenshot that tfehring is commenting on? https://imgur.com/a/j47ls It says:

> "A mark-up is added to item prices at this retailer to cover the cost of the Instacart service. Prices are based on data collected in store and are subject to delays and errors."

There is no good, ethical reason why a delivery service should show me an item price that's different from what's in the store. It's completely ethical if the company wants to say, "The service fee for this store is X% (as a percent of item prices)", or "This store has an additional $X service fee". That is honest and reasonable. I expect a delivery service to quote me the same item price as the retailer quotes in its store.

The reason I have this preference is because of a delivery service's value proposition: shopping in my store, on my behalf. I have access to the same products and can buy them directly. So I want to directly consider the service's value proposition, by considering the service fee I'll need to pay versus buying things myself. (EDIT: Simplify)

as i have noted elsewhere in the thread, that is a message -- from the retailer -- that the prices are different from in-store (and again, online pricing is their prerogative).

instacart is not marking anything up.

edit: it seems clear that we can do better in terms of communicating this, so i've passed that feedback on to the team.

Excellent - so it's not a lack of transparency, but bad copywriting/marketing.

The paragraph reads like IC is responsible for the increase, not the retailer itself.

some constructive feedback: i had no idea that the markups were from/by the retailer, as opposed to instacart.

consider changing the messaging there? until now, i was under the impression that the markups were just another way for y'all to make some money off of me.

That's in no way relevant. I want to know how much more it costs to use Instacart vs going to the store, and I don't care what their costs are just what mine are for using the service.

Why is it that grocery stores charge an Instacart shopper more than a regular customer? What extra work does the store have to do for the Instacart shopper that they wouldn't for a regular shopper?

Intuitively it seems like the store should be more incentivized to offer lower prices to Instacart since they provide a steady stream of business, reliable payment, etc.

Shh, its the cost of the kickback they are trying to talk past. Its just another fee.

Eh, their shoppers sound dumb from the anecdotes here, are likely tending to be picking up larger orders a lot, and generally plugging up the store at a higher rate than other shoppers.

Thanks for the clarification. I always assumed that this markup was from instacart and not the retailer. I guess I always found this very frustrating because instacart always says “we’re super transparent” but they never actually tell you what the mark up is. I guess instacart doesn’t even know what the markup is, which would explain why it isn’t communicated.

No, I wouldn’t perform that calculation exactly and explicitly - but I absolutely think about my purchasing decisions in that way. I can give you ballpark estimates of how valuable my time is, how much time it takes and how much it costs to physically go to the grocery store, etc., and give you a ballpark breakeven point. I’d probably pay $20 for a grocery delivery, but I probably wouldn’t pay $50. But I have no idea where the all-in cost of the service actually falls, so I can’t compare. And I do hold other products and services to that same standard - for example, I regularly compare prices between retailers, except for trivial purchases for which comparison shopping isn’t likely to be worth my time.

As for the source of the markups, that really doesn’t matter to me. I care about the total difference in cost between using Instacart and going to the grocery store myself, irrespective of who that additional money goes to.

thank you for context, and sorry if i sounded snippy in my response.

i was mainly noting the source for markups as we cannot tell you that delta -- it's up to the stores to tell us what they want to charge online. we do want to be as transparent as possible! ("possible" being the operative word here)

No problem at all - thanks for sharing your perspective. It’s helpful to know that grocery stores themselves are responsible for those markups, not because it affects the value that the service creates for me now, but because it impacts how the service could evolve in the future. If Instacart is currently subject to higher-than-retail prices, there’s even more room for it to potentially benefit from setting up its own warehouses, relationships with wholesalers, etc.

My experience with Instacart has been pretty great so I was shocked at the GP vitriol as well. In my case, Instacart has been a huge help - my brother, who is unable to drive for medical reasons, uses your service considerably to get his weekly groceries. Once I figured out the substitutes scheme, it worked like a charm.

I appreciate you as an engineer, and to weigh in against an Amazon troll, but like please keep hn neutral

i am not entirely sure what you mean by this -- sorry. i was not trying to be divisive and offer a personal perspective as an engineer. can you clarify please?

There are a subset of users on HN that can be hyperbolic. I've worked at a few well known companies and every time they come up here you get some vocal minority outraged about the product/pricing/culture/tech/anecdotal experience etc. I think it's truly toxic (yet entertaining) and definitely deflating as an employee. There is a lack of empathy for other people, companies and a deep inability to disconnect the two. I've noticed a hyper-rationalism here that reduces every company and product into the sum of it's parts and deems it outrageous- which to me comes across as unhealthy (reminds me of going to lunch with an engineering team that optimizes the route, their orders, seating, etc).

Congrats on the raise and good luck with everything.

You’re right, this was a bit harsh. I’m sure lots of good people work at instacart, and this was not intended to seem like I’m excited for anyone to lose their job.

I guess a more accurate statement would be “now that I’ve discovered amazon prime now is available in my area, I’m excited for the competition between these services to offer me a better quality product at a better price”.

Sorry if I offended. Cheers.

just saw this -- no worries, and thank you for your response. i think that is very reasonable and we are excited to go head-to-head with amazon on all fronts (delivery experience, quality of jobs offered, retail offerings/selection/etc).

In order for instacart to survive, it needs to partner with regional grocery chains by providing them with the 'ecommerce' side while the grocery chains provide delivery. I live in a metro area where a local chain now provides excellent delivery service (and the employed delivery people won't accept tips) and hope they succeed long term. I don't use Amazon for groceries although it might be available, and I never shop at Whole Foods because their stores are way too large. Whole Foods would dominate if they roll out 'whole foods Express' stores which would be much smaller (think 7-11) so that people can get in and out without feeling like they are walking through the Natural History Museum. Families buy the most groceries and are the most time constrained, but I'll never use instacart until they drop the whole gig-economy frontline workers as contractors bullshit.

For me, the worst grocery delivery service is still miles better than going to a store and shopping for groceries.

I'm OK with missing items, I'll just get a refund and deal with it. It's still far far better than dealing with a physical grocery store.

I'm sure there are millions of others like me.

> I'm OK with missing items, I'll just get a refund and deal with it. It's still far far better than dealing with a physical grocery store.

Curious. Why do you say that? I use Instacart as a timesaver, or as a way to accomplish what I can't due to other obligations.

Really don't know why you're being downvoted, but I agree.

I prefer protecting my time whenever I can (read: I'm lazy) and I've personally found instacart to be an invaluable service. Whether it's a late night wine delivery from BevMo, bulk shopping from Costco (I don't have a membership and almost never remember to bring bags with me to their store), or just the weekly stuff from Safeway/Wholefoods, it's really been a godsend from the POV of saving time that I can repurpose for anything else.

I don't know about the millions comment, but if you're willing to pay a premium for the convenience then it's certainly worth it. I certainly feel that way.

Don't you have stores that will do the deliveries themselves? That's got to be a better system than using a third party like Instacart.

But there are so many services out there, and instacart isn't a particularly good one. There are services like fresh direct/amazon fresh which are based on delivery as a primary concept, and there's the services spun up by the individual grocery stores (which don't have the same crazy fees as instacart, and generally have more accurate listings).

Especially given that wholefoods is now going to deliver direct which was one of the primary uses of instacart (delivery from premium stores), demonstrates that their utility is fading.

I can't agree. If you're missing an item that you needed for that night's dinner, then you now are doubly inconvenienced, first by having to pay that convenience fee, and now second that you have to spend your time to go to the store anyways and get what was missing.

I don't agree but to each their own. Now with self checkout, 4 major supermarkets near me and I tend to go later at night.. I really don't see the problem

>I clicked on it to see what it was and it said “this $10 charge is optional and helps us keep running instacart”.

I have never used Instacart but it boggles my mind that such an option would exist. It's the sort of thing I might expect to be asked entering a museum or a non-profit community health clinic but why on earth would anyone feel inclined to pay extra to fund a for profit private company beyond any required charges?

I used them as my sole source of groceries for about 3 years and had no problems with products or deliveries at any point.

I do agree about the fees, which I always unchecked and I always tipped the driver in cash despite Instacart urging me not to. In my case the driver was also the shopper on every delivery, but I understand that's not how it always works and tipping cash is a bad idea when they're different people.

For our anecdotal evidence, what area do you have these experiences?

> Amazing prime now on the other hand has never messed up an order.

Not sure if it’s possible in prime now (could not find it) but I like the option in Instacart to describe an item you need which is not present in their directory, it saved me lots of times when something is not listed on prime now and I can just request it using Instacart, worked perfectly for me every time

I've never used instacart but all the problems you've described I've had with Prime Now (Bay Area). Instacart also appears to have cheaper prices on some whole foods 365 items than Prime Now does...

To be fair, Amazon Prime also does this.

The service fee thing sounds like a class action lawsuit waiting to happen. Lawyers, start your engines...

I've had the exact opposite experience. Instacart worked really well for me, and Amazon Fresh was well, never that fresh. I suspect the quality of the service varies on geographic location

Amazon Fresh is a different service from Prime Now. Prime Now also delivers from local grocery stores (e.g. in LA, I can order groceries from Sprouts and Bristol Farms).

This has been exactly my experience too, and I've been using Instacart since day one. "Apologizing" for them often. A combination of Amazon prime now and Amazon fresh has seemed to work out.

I occasionally use Instacart just to see if its improved. But I hardly trust them to get everything I want, and I'm surprised when an order goes without a hitch. Probably not the surprise they are looking for when trying to "surprise and delight".

I really like how Favor includes the receipt from the restaurant with your order. So it's crystal clear how much extra you are paying.

Similar experience here. Walmart is also terrible at this. Amazon Fresh/Prime Now is reliable 90% of the time. But I've had them cancel deliveries just 1 hour before scheduled time once. Would never trust any of these services for any important items. Not to mention the ridiculous markup on some items.

I've never had an issue with Instacart. I order from them.... occasionally. Great service.

The fee structure is weird, agreed.

>The last time I used instacart, there was a box checked called “service fee”

i used it a few months ago, and there was no checkbox (it was mandatory)

Why are you excited for Instacart to go out of business? Why not just stop using it?

maybe

>Blatant tip stealing.

[...]

>Plus they mark up everything you buy, and obfuscate this

Yeah, I've had the same experience with Instacart vs Amazon Prime Now

> Plus they mark up everything you buy, and obfuscate this so it’s impossible to really know how much extra instacart is skimming off the top.

Do you ask Whole Foods what they pay for bananas? Do you care what the markup is at Walmart? Who cares how much InstaCart is charging.

If you're pinching pennies, InstaCart isn't a service for you.

I’m not against companies making money. Instacart should be compensated for the service they provide. So just tell me “this delivery costs x dollars” or show me the percentage you’re charging me for the order “10% of total” so I can make an informed decision about how much I’m paying to have my groceries delivered. Instead they hide the true cost of the service that I’m paying for. I have no idea if I just paid $10 or $50 extra vs going to the store myself. Really this is the least of my complaints. If the service worked well (ie actually told me what was in stock/out of stock instead Of replacing items with a bunch of stuff I don’t want) I would have a lot less of a problem paying a little extra.

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