I used them early in the pandemic for months, but switched to Freshdirect since the latter has up to date and accurate online stock. What's in your online cart is what gets delivered. With Instacart, because they deal with a bunch of supermarkets (which you choose from - the competitive advantage) you get a 'shopper.' In my experience the shopper couldn't find 30-50 pct of the items. Non organic tomatoes replace my organic tomatoes. A bunch of items just not found and price refunded. Some obscure Italian olive oil I put in the cart is replaced with a completely other brand and bottle size. All this, and the app sends me notifications asking me to approve the replacement. Ok, but the shopper is shopping for others, too, and so the notifications for me to approve happen every 3, 5, 8, 10 minutes for 45 minutes.

Not sure how it is in other locations, but in mine, the business model of loosey goosey stock quantities doesn't work for me as shopper, and it's probably too complicated for them as a business to keep close tabs on what's available.

I do. I don't have a car, and I live in a college town where the nearest decent grocery store is about 3 miles.

I have a decent experience. The biggest con is that you "have" to give 15-20% tips (technically you don't have to but I try to be nice), I use express so afaik the other fee is only about $3. Also, shoppers don't always know where to find obscure items so they just get refunded, even when the item is in stock. But otherwise, shoppers are very nice, 99% of the time they get the correct items and only the replacements I specify. When you check out you specify a 2 hour timeframe where shoppers can deliver, in my experience they usually deliver on the very early side of the timeframe unless you specify "next 2 hours" immediately.

In my area it doesn't make much sense as (a) most of the grocery stores are open and are rarely crowded anymore (b) free curbside pickup is offered through the store app.

From the local nextdoor and facebook groups it seems like a solution for busy parents or elderly who would rather not go to a store.

I don't, because the fees are upwards of $10-12 pre-tip around here. I'd rather just drive to the grocery store, it's like a 20 minute round-trip but then at least I know I have the groceries now and not in 2-3 hours.