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Comment by bane | Hacker News Reader

We decided to order a bunch of things from Costco a few weeks ago through instacart. Actually we decided to do it before then, but the site was broken for a bit.

It was crazy expensive.

Not only the delivery fee, the tip, etc. But every item was marked up significantly over the in-store price, with no indication that was the case. We even pulled out some old receipts to verify this price difference. Apparently part of the business model is to basically double charge both a delivery fee as well as hidden fees for products.

The total bill was a full 30% higher than going to the store. On a $200 bill for a Costco run, that's a $60 upcharge.

No thanks, I'd rather go myself in a hazmat suit and then powerwash all the groceries when I get home.

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Some stores sell on Instacart for the exact price they sell for in-store. Fred Meyer / Kroger, for example.

Instacart has a notice at the top of each store's page that gives each store's pricing policy. For Costco, it says "Costco sets the price of items on the Instacart marketplace. Prices are higher than your local warehouse. Costco members also do not earn 2% executive reward on Instacart.". For Fred Meyer and several others, it says "Everyday store prices" and links to a policy stating that the prices are the same as in the store.

If I read all that, do I get my $60 back? No? Then I don't care. It's The Wrong Way.

Huh? No, you'd read that and then not order it in the first place.

> not order it in the first place

Which was OP's conclusion so I'm not sure why understanding the nuances of the pricing is helpful

Nope. The OP was over-generalizing it as inherent to online grocery shopping, the reply pointed out they just need to pick a different seller.

They wanted items from Costco at a fair price. They didn't want items from a "different seller", whatever that would mean. But, sure, pretend that Instacart is doing a good job in the free market or whatever. Everyone else knows that it isn't the right way to do it

Shipt does the same thing for some stores they deliver from. They claim something like a 15% markup average, but in reality from our own experimentation on items we most frequently purchased, it often hit 35-100% markups and higher. (Actual examples: a $5 watermelon for $12; a dozen store brand eggs $0.99 in the store but $2.99 from Shipt). Add tips and it's rarely worth it for us anymore.

Yeah I used Costco for a bit, than realized is about 20% more for us. Since Costco requires everyone to have masks I feel confident going there. It would be better if they were more transparent about it...

FWIW you should "powerwash" all the groceries at home anyways.

Also last I checked, Walmart has free delivery and same price as in store. But I've heard their employees just grab anything for you...so quality of produce is YMMV.

In my experience, Walmart produce is YMMV under the best of circumstances. Meat options are pretty variable too. It's the closest grocery store to me but I can't really depend on them for a full grocery shopping.

We had the same experience as well. When lockdown started, we did a couple of Instacart orders and recommended it to people, until I found out about the stacked charges. If it was just a delivery fee + tip, I'm fine with that, even a transparent fixed percentage. The deception and realizing how much the per-item surcharge + delivery fee + tip was coming out to made me stop using them. Recently I've been using curb-side pickup from stores and its surprisingly convenient and no cost associated. The store workers even refused the cash tip I offered when they came to the car!

They’re not allowed to take tips and are paid garbage wages. Don’t get too excited.

That's exactly what my experience was as well. Costco via Instacart was unreasonably expensive (30%+). We rarely use Instacart now. Most often, it's Amazon Fresh and we plan to go to Costco in person.

Sorry for hijacking this but what happened to DeepField? I have been looking for a decent way to do named entity extraction from news articles but havent had much luck in finding decent open source libs for this but saw an old post of yours that linked to GitHub but the repo appears to be gone.

I am not OP, so sorry if this is unrelated.

https://gitlab.com/ternaris/marv-robotics

https://ternaris.com/marv-robotics/

https://github.com/regularcoder/deepfield

https://developer.salesforce.com/forums/?id=9060G0000005eHrQ...

https://github.com/deepfield

no worries, but I was talking about entity extraction from text using NLP and perhaps other techniques.

cool links though! thanks for sharing

Thank you! I was trying to piece it together from your details. It’s a hobby of mine to find a mystery in the mundane and try to solve it just to help someone and learn something new.

What’s the github project you were trying to find, or some other relevant links? I’m interested in this topic broadly and always looking for interesting niches.

Instacart also manages to "lose" the meat products out of our orders somewhere between store and front door. And all they do is refund the price of the items.

So then you have to go out to the grocery store yourself anyway.

Yep. Something every order. I just keep backstock at home.

This was exactly my experience. Last week I suddenly needed a toiler plunger in the middle of the work day. I can't leave to go Target to get that, so I ordered it online. There is a $30 minimum you can spend to get it delivered (doesn't include service fee, tip, charges etc). I said fine and got duct tape and aluminum foil as well. It was the most expensive shopping I did since forever. A toilet plunger, bunch of duct tape, aluminum foil all added up to $50 including fee, tip etc. Thanks but no thanks. I'm not cheaping out on anything but I'm not gonna pay $50 for something I can pay $15-$20 on Amazon or in the shop.

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