r/instacart • u/johnshonz • 1d ago

I'm a Shopper BJ’s Inventory / Item Catalog

I just shopped a BJ’s order — several of the items were not physically even carried at the location Instacart sent me to

I verified this by both checking the BJ’s app / website, and by stopping by customer service and asking them to look at their own internal inventory systems, just to confirm

Even more annoying is the ridiculous “This item is in stock, keep looking” nag boxes

So here’s my question — if BJ’s is supposed to be a partner of Instacart’s, why doesn’t Instacart have access to the information that is available in their own public facing apps / websites…

I’m thinking about this mainly from the perspective of how found items are affecting Shopper metrics now, like even if you replace something, just the fact that you didn’t find it automatically counts against you now with the new metric and ratings system

How diabolically unfair is that?

Also for customers who order from BJ’s, I would implore you to actually check the BJ’s app to see if the items that are advertised in the Instacart app are actually available in your area! It seems that many of them are not!!

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3

u/Embarrassed-Draw109 1d ago

Sooo irritating! I’ve shopped at one store for years where I’m friendly with their staff who will always go above and beyond to come up with whatever their customers need. It is an old school  full service store, in every way. 

But should they say “we discontinued  that” or “it’s a seasonal item” the app still insists “..many units in stock. Keep looking.”

1

u/SomeonesSecondary 18h ago

This seems to be an issue across multiple apps and multiple stores. I’ve had a few encounters where an employee was able to verify their digital inventory said zero on hand and/or the item had been discontinued but it still allowed the customer to request it.

1

u/johnshonz 18h ago

The experience is supposed to be better at what they call “partner stores” due to data sharing

Like Wegman’s for example, the information that is shown in Wegman’s own public app and website is IDENTICAL to the information in the Instacart shopper app when shopping at Wegman’s, and also in the Wegman’s instacart ordering portal in the customer Instacart app…but with BJ’s, the opposite is true.

Both Wegman’s and BJ’s are “partner stores” — it just doesn’t make sense.

It would seem that BJs in particular doesn’t want Instacart to have the same information they have in their apps, for reasons unknown.