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Comment by askafriend | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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.

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'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.

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

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.

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