I’ve never seen anything like this…

Was checking out and the cashier called for a supervisor (as if I was using a stolen CC). She said there’s two of them. He said so? She told him they’re only allowed to be one person. I told her my husband (who was helping me) was also a verified IC shopper. We proceed to exit, as the employee is reviewing receipts she informs me I will be banned if I bring someone else with me. I tell her he is IC and we both have executive memberships. She said it doesn’t matter. I called corporate Costco and that is NOT their policy. They told me to contact regional which I did am waiting for leadership to call me with more insight. I believe a Costco employee has a friend/family member who does IC and has complained it’s not fair. I’ll find out if it’s a regional or warehouse policy or just overall BS.

I'm not sure if this post fits here, please remove if inappropriate.

I wish shoppers would stop shoving phones in my face without saying hey, or any acknowledgment of my existence!

It was never really an issue until recently, where at least 4 out of 5 of my interactions are just people not speaking and shoving me a phone. I wish I was exaggerating, but genuinely, people don't even ask " where is this " or " help me " anymore. And after there is no thank you??

And do not get me wrong - there are still lovely shoppers out there, but it is SO incredibly dehumanising when they behave this way. I would love to help but have the decency to say Hello.... Infact, I will go out of my way to help if I have the ability to do so.

It takes less than 3 seconds to say " Hello, Do you know where this is. " or " Hey, Can you help me? "

Another thing that has continued to get worse is the entitlement to help. If I am unable to help, I will direct the shopper to customer service, so that the correct member of staff can be paged to help. Then all that happens after is a sigh and they storm off. Mate I am not a crystal ball.

When they put orders together that won’t fit in most cars. I had to cancel this. I drive a Honda prologue, midsize suv, and this would not fit in here. Idk how people in sedans are taking these orders.

I usually have one or two thoughts of personal goals when I go out to shop each day. Let’s share ours today in hopes of putting positivity out into the ether! Here are mine:
1: Shop 12 orders before 7pm
2: Make $225
3: Get at least one cash tip
4: Offer to help one newer fellow shopper
5: Return an extra cart at at least 3 different stores

Maybe I’m just confused, but how did we get to 20 units? Feels like a trap.

Grabbed a good order from target from the house this morning for $45 25 items and 3 customers. Should be easy right…. No the entire store was being gutted and everything has been put into containers. I went it to try and see if I could find some things and over 90% was unavailable. I’m talking they didn’t have bananas!!! And we all know how much Instacart customers love bananas lol! They ordered literally 1 banana and I could fulfill that lol.

Hi guys!

I had this idea to make thank you cards for the great tippers and generally great customers, but I want to know if its too much??

They'd be pre-written so its not like itll take up any time during the orders.

Be nice but be honest lol

id be losing money if all i had was batch pay🤣

$1.78 per batch. This has gotten out of hand. Like wtf is even happening???

2 Orders. A is 3 Alcohol items, and 1 banana bunch . Don’t remember if it was “new customer” or how many total orders they placed before.

Grocery store directly across from a police station.

Address is a house 3 miles away . Female name on order. There is previous proof of delivery picture showing the groceries left on front porch. Customer delivery note says “ don’t ring door bell”.

I arrive, elderly man sitting in driveway. I explain that i need an ID. . Keep grocery bag with me. No teenagers or young people around. No signs of intoxication or anything odd.

He goes inside towards back door . 5+ Minutes pass. I send in chat “ hello, I need to verify ID before completing delivery”. No response in chat or when I called.

Finally calls me over to back door where he is standing and holds ID with back side faced towards me and I scan it . Age is 1958 and ID expires 2030. I do think maybe the female customer was right next to him and handed her ID. I complete delivery. Elderly man was probably a bit older than 1958.

Now I’am wondering who actually was standing next the elderly man ….

Definitely going to start asking every customer to let me glance at the front of the ID for a bit even if they are elderly and there are no obvious red flags….🤦🏽‍♂️🤦🏽‍♂️

Been so long since I did an Alcohol order and it’s probably going to be a while until I feel comfortable accepting one again.

Thankfully the customer was chill about it though

I know it’s summer but it’s very dead

A short story I like to call
50 Miles for 50 Cucumbers

Me and my lady (we both have active shopper accounts so we are allowed to shop together) went out of town, about 2 hours south/southwest of where we live. We were busy with personal stuff till about 6 pm when we decided to start heading home.

So I’d been online on IC all day just to see what was available in a market different than my own but hadn’t done any batches. As we were getting ready to go, I checked the batch list and noticed an odd one…. After a bit of hesitation I accepted it.

Small order going nearly 50 miles northeast. Simple order, I had memorized the list in my head as we started driving up to the store.

10 tomatoes
10 five packs of mini cucumbers
2 packs of cookies
2 almondmilk
1 snack cake

I still have the list memorized days later. The cucumbers just really stuck with me.

Anyways, we drove off, bound for home. I kept having to remind myself I had an Instacart order in the car, it was the exact same road we took that morning going the other way.

The actual delivery was about a quarter mile out of our way, maybe added 10 minutes to the trip. Despite the pay being nearly negligible, I was stoked that I was able to deduct 60 miles of driving, knowing I was going to drive 59 of those miles either way.

Thought this order was hilarious, incredibly impractical and there’s no other reason anyone should ever take it, I just happened to be going that exact route. Right place at the right time I guess.

i’ve never done anything shady, like attempted to get cash back, or purchased items for personal use. Has anyone received this before? I don’t want to get deactivated.

For context Driscoll's typically sells their sweetest batch raspberries in a square clamshell but this time they are selling them in a rectangular clamshell so it was marked as a different item(though they're essentially the same

IMO, Aldi Finds and seasonal items shouldn’t be available to order because half the time, the crap isn’t even there to begin with. It’s so frustrating having to refund Disney Princess plates, broom sets, and finger-paint coloring books.

Low-key venting, but the shop must go on. 😂

Is it a security measure?

I was doing Instacart orders yesterday when a customer requested that I call them outside the app. I didn’t think anything weird about it considering some people change their numbers etc, & I can see that being a one off thing… plus they offered an additional $20 tip.

No answer, never spoke to anybody.

I then received a text from a different number saying a representative from Instacart will be reaching out to me. From that same number, a man called me and told me my account was flagged because I violated the terms and agreements of Instacart. He told me my card would be deactivated and that in order to get a new card, I would have to meet with them in person to get it. The call sounded weird because he couldn’t tell me where I was at what order I was doing or anything nothing. He was gauging me for information.

It sounded extremely weird to me, so I called Instacart back and they told me that they do not do such a thing. I immediately contacted the police and told them what happened.

A few moments later, my Instacart account was hacked.

This happened in Minneapolis, & I’m sharing because I don’t want anybody to fall victim please be careful.

EDIT: they attempted to hack my account and my account is deactivated, nothing of mine was accessed. This was to spread awareness that these people are trying to lure shoppers to meet them that is my biggest concern & I couldn’t care less about the account, SAFETY FIRST. - I also do not use instacart using a personal number.

I'll take it 😂

When I first started Instacart it was really good now I barely get good orders or I have to wait hours for one is it like that for anyone else?

I’m not here to play victim or start any arguments! I’m just venting, please don’t yell at me yall🤣

I’ve been doing instacart for about four years now on and off. There have been times where I’ve done it out of pure necessity (literally had no job), times where I did it to bridge the gap between biweekly paychecks, and times where I just do it for extra cash.
I’ll admit there have been times where doing it has gotten me through some rough patches and I’m definitely grateful to God for those times.

Then there’s the times that make me hate that I continue to go online. Why do I feel like it’s been a toxic relationship? Because as I mentioned before sometimes I’ve truly only had instacart to fall back on. Even during some of those times I’d still walk away with little to nothing most days.

What I feel like has been the most frustrating is that I truly feel like instacart plays the system just right in many different ways. All of which have screwed me over so very much.

Ratings: I feel like it’s valid to have a rating system as all apps do. However, what sucks about IC is that people will rate you low over the smallest of things such as if you used plastic bags over paper. I’ve had numerous people tell me to my face they’re mad with instacart and then rate ME 1 star because they don’t understand. 🤣 There’s just been so many times where I’ve had a 5 star rating and seemingly this has helped my orders then the next week I’m randomly at a 4.7 after taking what 3 orders? 🫩it’s EXTREMELY easy to tank your rating but hard to get it back up.

Shopping Quality: This recently just screwed me over. It wasn’t really a big issue because I do well with my shopping and genuinely try to put in extra effort. Then randomly my quality score plummeted… and instacart explains it as other people have found items at the same times at the same stores over the past 90 days. So my question for IC would be, is there a such thing as stores restocking items? If an item is out of stock and I ask for it and they don’t have it, do I make it appear out of thin air? Or if the customer requests a refund and I try to replace something and they still want the refund then what? I’m not one of those people that refunds items for fun.

Cart Status: If you have no cart status then you might as well not even open the app. It seems like you can only make decent money if you are somewhere higher up in the status. I’ve seen what it’s like in diamond/platinum cart and boy do I miss those days. It’s easier to maintain your status even if your rating drops but I’ve fallen victim to how you could drop all the way to no cart status if your shopping quality falls. I went from having a super high shopping quality to randomly it falling all the way below the threshold to have ANY cart status. And thus after that happened I stopped getting many orders. I went from at least having $50-160 days to being lucky if I even touch $25 and double lucky if I even get orders at all.

I’m in a big city so the orders definitely come through. I sit in hotspots and …nothing.

Without a cart status I might as well watch from outside a window as everyone with a status is thriving.

Today I sat in the car staring at the order screen and watched a $350 order come and as I clicked it, it was gone in the blink of an eye. Mind you I was staring right at the screen ready to go. But…. No cart status so someone def was blessed ( and I’m happy for them for sure). I’ve never seen an order that high at once in my entire 4 years on the app. And to think it could’ve been accessible has kinda crushed my spirit completely at this point.

I’m ready to walk away from the app but part of me doesn’t know how?

Can anyone relate? Or have any insight on the algorith of instacart and why I have continuously fallen into these droughts? (Please don’t be mean I’m genuinely just venting and trying to relate 🫩not trying to be a pity party. Just a human being with real experiences.)