Instacart fake tippers

The BBQ Pit
1

Article here:

Summary:
Instacart pays shoppers to pick up groceries from local stores and deliver them to your home. It includes an option to pay a tip to the shopper, and allows the customer a considerable time after delivery in which to adjust that tip. Under the present circumstances, some customers are dangling big tips to get shoppers to tend to their order - and then zeroing out the tip after delivery.

I hope Instacart lets their shoppers make a note of customer behaviors like this so that other shoppers can make it a point to never, ever serve those customers again. Put a $50 tip in someone’s hand, and then yank it away after the job is done? Fuck you, you can get your own damn groceries from now on.

2

Selfish pieces of crap : mad: They are not only screwing over the delivery person but other people who would leave a tip in good faith. These are the parasites of humanity, they only seek selfish gain.

May their downfall come, may their nakedness be displayed for all the earth to see, may their name be a byword for the parasite they are. May justice prevail and those who they have robbed made whole seven times over.

3

Golly, kanicbrd, there’s no need to mince words…

4

Oh, he mad. But not wrong.

5

That really sucks. The customers are allowed several days to reduce their tip to 0. I don’t think this should be allowed, if Instacart allows it they should make up the difference. I guess it’s legal by the terms of the contract but otherwise the customer is making a promise to pay. If this were a deal between private parties, “If you mow my lawn I’ll pay you $50.00”, and they didn’t pay you’d take them to small claims court and they’d lose. If they said “I’ll give you a $50.00 tip if you mow my lawn” doesn’t change anything by calling it a tip, the promise is made.

But let us not spend as much time criticizing Instacart as much as the low life scum who renege on these promises. This is worse than people who don’t tip after the fact. I suggest these customers be named and publicly shamed so everyone will be cautious in conducting any kind of business with them.

6

Don’t forget “that every babe that weeps at their approach; every woman who cries out, ‘Dear God! What is that thing?’ will echo in their perfect ears!”

7

Completely agree.

I think that there should probably be some sort of mechanism for reducing the tip under unusual circumstances, but it should require the customer to present a genuine reason. All the current system does is encourage bait and switch tipping, and Instacart doesn’t lose a cent, because it’s only the tip that can be reduced.

I would be interested to know, though, how prevalent this behavior is. The CNN story gives a few examples, but right now there must be thousands or tens of thousands of Instacart deliveries each day across the United States. Is this sort of thing happening on anything like a regular basis, or are there just a tiny number of assholes being amplified by a national news outlet? None of this changes the fact that they’re assholes, of course, but if the typical Instacart driver never encounters this behavior in his or her day-to-day driving, then the story is really not much good for anything except what it’s doing here: generating outrage.

I agree with this. The problem, of course, is that if the customer is named and shamed, the Instacart driver or drivers who got screwed by their shitty behavior would probably also be fired for outing them. I’m betting that part of the drivers’ agreement with Instacart is not to retaliate against bad customers, and not to reveal customer information to the public.

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Instacart needs better rules in place to protect the shoppers. I’m not familiar with Instacart but does it allow the shoppers to review (and hopefully drive into extinction from the platform) shitty users?

But yeah, people like that just absolutely fucking suck. I’m not a fan of public shaming typically, but instacart shoppers are putting their lives on the line for these…“people”.

9

I order from Amazon Fresh, and have since way before the lockdown. I always tip. I ONCE reduced a tip, not to zero, but by 50%, because instead of bringing the bags to my door, the driver left them just inside the door to my building. I had to walk up a flight of stairs to get them, which wasn’t such a big deal, but if it hadn’t been for the fact that my dog barked when the driver came in the door, so I looked out the window, and saw the bags coming in, so I went and looked, they would have sat up there a long time, and if someone else took them, it wouldn’t have been as far off as taking them right from my door. Also, the people who pick up trash on the property might have taken them, OR might have brought them to my door, but reported me to the landlord for “littering” (they have no way of knowing whether they are groceries or trash.

Anyway, I left half a tip on the off-chance that the driver may have been in a hurry due to Amazon over-burdening him, or car trouble, or something. It probably would have taken 60 seconds to bring the bags down (it wasn’t a big order).

I have a standing tip of $5, so I don’t have to worry about adding it each time. My orders are usually pretty small, and require only one trip from the vehicle. If I order something heavy, like my son’s diet Sierra Mist, or RO water for my aquarium, or for some reason the bags are extra-heavy when I bring them in, I up the tip.

When something is wrong, like a frozen food being totally thawed because it was not in a thermal bag, this is not the driver’s fault. I handle that by going to Amazon chat and complaining. They usually refund me for the thawed product, and promise to say something to the employees. I doubt they do the latter, but if the food really is ruined, I want that refund.

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It would be in all party’s interests for the tip to be done after the transaction and not allowed before. That way the customer can’t bait-and-switch like in the OP’s linked CNN article, and customers also don’t feel comfortable giving out a tip before the transaction/delivery is complete, lest they get poor service but can’t modify after the fact.

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But allowing the tip beforehand allows customers to encourage the provision of a scarce resource by offering more money for it.

Frankly, what I think would be more honest would be to call it a “bid” instead of a tip. There would be a minimum fee for a delivery, which would be split between Instacart and driver like under current rules. Customers could then “bid up” the base fee, and this pre-delivery bid would be distinct from a post-delivery tip. You can decide not to bid, but you might get passed over for people who do. You can bid, but not tip, or you can tip, but not bid, or you can do both, or neither. But once you’ve done a pre-delivery bid, you’re stuck with it.

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That’s just another form of price gouging, which always benefits the affluent. The last thing this (or any) society needs is more ways of benefitting the affluent at the expense of the working classes.

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Anyone who changed a tip to zero should be removed from the platform with no fanfare. If they truly have a good reason maybe they are allowed back. My guess is that there are no good reasons for this.

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So your alternative is not to have any mechanism by which Instacart drivers, most of whom are in the working classes that you seem so concerned about, can ensure that they will earn more money for doing a job that, in our current times, is essential and exposes them to increased personal risk?

One consequence of allowing people to bid up the cost is that the Instacart drivers currently on the platform will accept more jobs, and there will also be more demand for drivers. In these difficult times, when 16 million people have signed up for unemployment in the last month, more drivers might join the platform, bringing supply more in tune with demand and pushing prices down again. And the current system already allows for exactly what you’re complaining about; tips can still be entered in advance by people willing to pay extra. The main difference right now is that people can renege on their promise to pay.

On a side note, how many really poor people do you think are using grocery delivery services in the first place? If you’ve got the money to pay for delivery, and if you’re willing to transfer your risk to someone else during difficult times like these, I think it’s reasonable to suggest that you pay a premium for the privilege.

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Except when they screwed up your order.

I didn’t know you could zero out the tip. We just gave a bad review.

We selected ‘no substitution’ option when placing the order.

But we asked for iceberg lettuce. They said they substituted romaine. They delivered butter lettuce.

We asked for mini cans of 7-up. They substituted diet 7 up.

We ordered 2 ltr bottles of pepsi. They substituted 1 ltr bottles.

We ordered club crackers. They substituted reduced sodium club crackers. (they SUCK)

All on the same order.

16

Sheesh. Was the shopper a down-on-his-luck pharmacist?

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I think maybe the answer is that shoppers shouldn’t be allowed to see the tips when deciding what orders to accept. Maybe not until after the delivery is complete, even.

There is nothing wrong with reducing or eliminating a tip for bad service. Otherwise, the shoppers aren’t incentivized to do a good job. Shopping for someone like me can be tricky and I expect the exact item if it’s available, not the first similar item.

I have more of a problem with the tip being used as a way for people that can afford it to bid up the total price of the service. I don’t really think that the promise of a $50 tip should be required in order to get a time slot. If the tips are bidding up the price so high that you can’t get the at all service unless you promise that tip…, that’s why people are adding the tips and canceling.

Not showing the shopper the tip until afterwards would solve this.

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Perhaps they should offer an extra bonus that comes from accepting their job at a priority, which would not easily be reversed, and a tip as 2 seperate items.

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You are literally arguing against the idea of tipping altogether. All tipping can be seen as price gouging, benefiting the affluent. Rich people can tip more, people known as big tippers will get better service, etc.

Not they there is no merit to the argument. Tipping is unusual outside of the US, and I am not opposed to the idea that a person should be paid a fair and consistent wage based on the job they perform, not dependent on the whim of the customer. The counter-argument is that tipping encourages better performance. I personally side with the anti-tipping contingent, even though I usually tip well (that’s just in my nature). So you will get no opposition from me.

But I just wanted you to be aware that your objection would not only apply to the “bid” idea that you quote but the whole concept of tipping as well.

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Of course this could all be sorted by doing what I do when I get my shopping delivered.

I pay a set fee up front and then…I get my shoppping delivered. No other money changes hands.