It was part of a double order that had a $42 tip from the second order. The one thing we do not see is the breakdown of fees and tips per customer until after the order posts. Therefore it is common for them to bundle a tiny low or no tip order to a larger one at the same store.
Not yet, but I have had orders where 75% of the items on an order were not available on a percentage based tip and ended up with about $12 in tip instead of the initially promised $50. ICs systems do that automatically.
I have done doubles, I’ve never done a triple yet
I already had insulated bags from doing Uber eats. I did however go ahead and order the set of bags that instacart offers. 4 bags for $25 was better than Amazon.
We are issued a instacart branded debit card it will only work when there is an order pending on our account.
mileage is part of the calculation for the base payment that IC pays us.
Technically tag team shopping is not permitted. It does happen at times and can speed up shopping but you run into problems at some stores like costco who are a little more strict about who comes in before and after normal business hours.
Also we cannot get an additional order until the last order is dropped off. I guess you could juggle phones with two people and two accounts.
I think that it will level out more popular/common than it was before this but i have zero faith it will be as well rewarded. Right now people are sending us out because they are scared. A year from now, we will probably be just another commodity service like uber with people kicking us around like disposable people again.
I wish we could rate customers like we can on uber
I did my first InstaCart order today, for Sam’s Club. The Daughter uses InstaCart to shop the local grocery store. She loves it.
I appreciated all the info from this thread! The Daughter gave me helpful advice, too
It was a helluva big order, because I hadn’t shopped at Sam’s since shelter-in-place. My grand total was almost $800. Then I had a panic attack, because I forgot the Hormel pre-cooked bacon! My family would have killed me! The Daughter explained how to text my shopper, and he was so nice, he added the bacon to my order.
I could have selected a delivery time, starting at 4 PM or later. Ugh. I chose “flexible time” because of what drachillix explained about the shoppers choosing orders.
Suggested tip was $35. That amount insulted ME. I went for a straight 15%. Because the order was so large, 15% is quite a chunk of change.
I must have checked all the boxes, because I barely placed the order when I was assigned a shopper, and he went to work right away filling up the cart. His substitutions were just fine.
I had a heavy order: cases of water, soft drinks, dog food. After he finished he said, “I hope I can fit all this in my Prius!”
He did. He earned that tip! And I gave him a great review.
~VOW
I put an order in for my local supermarket (via the supermarket webpage). The order is fulfilled by Instacart.
I had a 20% tip listed on a large order and it took six days to have the order fulfilled.
Is the backorder just that massive?
Do Instacart drivers pick and choose so others are paying bigger tips? Or drivers hate big orders?
Do you just get whatever Instacart sends you next?
Do you/others work weekends? Because the delivery slots available showed nothing on the weekend (they show unavailable slots on the weekdays and absolutely nothing on the weekend).
I do not need same day delivery but six days was hard since I had not planned on such a long lead time (I was getting very, very careful with the TP usage). I have used them before and it was same day (even when next day was fine).
I live in Chicago and I am centrally located so there is no issue with me being hard to reach or no markets nearby (I have five major grocery markets within a mile).
Pet food, drinkables, personal care products, laundry stuff, and oh yeah, food.
It should last six weeks or so. It’s for six people, two dawgs, six cats.
Some was needed right now (like the BACON!) and other stuff was to replenish the hoard. I have hoarding tendencies, and the “Situation” has exacerbated it.
And I hate shopping. I’d rather do an outrageous trip every six to eight weeks and get it over with.
~VOW
Was it worth the $120 not to have to do the shopping on your own? Would you have paid that even in non-pandemic times? Because personally I’d be reluctant to do so.
Aside from the pandemic stuff, I’m in a unique situation. I don’t drive any more. Mr VOW is recovering from a heart attack and is still taking it easy. We are presently living with The Daughter and her family, and getting a driver is oftentimes a logistics nightmare.
Would I use it in non-pandemic times? Perhaps. But for now, I’m damned grateful.
~VOW
OP: How come I can’t ask the shopper to at least look for toilet paper or paper towels or bleach? The Instacart store site in my area (Raley’s) doesn’t even list those items for shopping.
it would not shock me if there is some load balancing happening on the back end of IC but at least in my market, there are sometimes a few hours with few if any batches to work.
we are looking for “bang for the buck” smallest orders with biggest payout. Generally large orders are a good thing, especially with a generous tip. how long it takes to get to our order screen I cannot explain, but once an order like that posts, it is gone in seconds. a single large order could take a couple hours to pull and deliver but makes you as much money as working 5-6 smaller orders that take all day.
we are shown a list of available orders to choose from.
yup if anything weekends see more volume than weekdays because people working in many essentials businesses are home.
Perhaps you can’t answer this, but when I place an Instacart order, it gives me a list of delivery times. One is called “fast and flexible” I think, where it gives you a range of dates that it might be delivered. That makes sense to me, given what you’ve said about shoppers choosing orders from a queue. But I can also pick a specific delivery time. Like yesterday I placed an order, and chose today between 11am and 1pm as the delivery window. And sure enough, my shopper is now shopping it, at 9:45am. How does that work? How do they know a shopper will be ready and willing to shop the order in such a specific time window?
Fun example of an undesirable order posted right now…it has been sitting on the queue for like 45 min
Sams club
5/6 5 items/6 pieces (one was two of the item in question)
6 miles to delivery destination
$7.34 instacart payment + zero tip
Sams club orders of a few pieces with long delivery runs are common and the local store manager forces instacart shoppers to wait in line outside with the customers when they get busy enough to limit occupancy. I routinely ignore all of their orders because of this. Every other store in town lets us bypass exterior queues especially since we are often pulling 2-3 peoples orders at once.
vs.
Costco
28/29
2.3 miles
$10.29 instacart payment + $17 tip
costco orders like that are very common its pretty much worth it to ignore those $7-10 sams orders for the possibility of $25-30 payout Costco order that takes 15 min longer to process.
They know exactly how many shoppers are available waiting for orders at any given time and they have a pretty good idea how many are available on average to be able to make an educated guess at getting your order within a few hour window.
drachillix, from everything you’ve posted, my Sam’s Club order had confetti, trumpets, and fireworks to accompany it! And I’m so damned glad!
I barely clicked “send order” before I was notified my shopper had been assigned, and he began to work on it immediately. We live about 20 miles as the crow flies from Sam’s, and I knew that would be a major strike against me.
The suggested tip was insulting, and I went for a full 15%. I am sure the tip is why my order was picked up so fast.
Dewey Finn wanted to know if the $100-plus I spent on the tip was worth it. Hell, yes! And thanks to your info, drachillix, I know it was well worth it to my shopper, too.
The quarantine business is the drizzling shits. It is disruptive to everyone, yet we still need to go on living, and that takes food, laundry products, and stuff for our pets. I am deeply grateful I have the money to spend on InstaCart, because it gives our family just a little bit of normalcy in these trying times.
