Now compound this with a general degradation in quality of service: Recently I've had a driver attempt to deliver the wrong groceries to me, in fact the driver almost left before I could tell them that these were not the groceries I had ordered...prior to that I've had several incorrect or missing items that I was billed for. I wonder if this push towards changes in their driver employment terms has led to a overall lowered quality in the service? This is just speculation of course, a number of factors probably contribute to this. But the bottom line is my experience as a customer has continued to deteriorate.
I had reached out to Intacart directly over email to try to understand how the drivers were compensated so I could determine how much to tip the drivers. I also inquired about the exact mark up over the base cost of an item: I feel like I'm being charged at minimum three times over the base cost: 1) mark up 2) delivery fee 3) driver tip. Contrast this with Uber, who roll everything into a single fee that I never have to think twice about. At any rate, I never received any response from Instacart and I'm still not sure how to appropriately compensate the drivers. It's really disappointing that Instacart has both declined in quality and made it more difficult for me as a customer to understand them as a regular expense.
I would probably be better off just walking to the grocery store or taking a cab: at least then I know exactly what I'm paying for and can anticipate the rough cost.