delivery driver

personal shopper

store shopper

shift leader

data entry clerk

Instacart Shoppers

Despite being a current shopper I'll give an unbiased & real review so anyone thinking of joining in my area will know what they are getting themselves into.

I took this position in 2015 because I was out of work at the time and had a mountain of bills to pay. Almost 1 year in I went from enjoying the flexibility to loathing all the extra headaches that have come with changes to pay structure, way orders are set up, and little/no help when you have urgent order issues or even complaints about pay discrepancy, customers or company changes.

Being a single parent the only thing that grabbed my attention was the flex scheduling. You set your own availability but your hours are given based off a need or merit system I have yet to figure out. So even if you are available 40hours a week dont expect to get it every week because it may not happen regularly if at all. I put myself available 50-60 hours a week and get 20-35 pretty regularly now because my scores are not bad. If you have bad/low scores then you may not get as much work. 
Scores are determined by:
1- order issues(customers complaints about their order, your service and accuracy whether true or false-will touch more on that later) goal is 0 for every 50 batches but I've been up to 4 issues and have received warnings about it.

2-speed ( how fast you work an order goal is 2minutes per item but this isnt always easy to do every order)

3- reliability( how often you cancel a shift with less than 48hours notice, dont acknowledge an assigned order, or emergency end a shift you are on) goal is 0 but if you have to cancel or have an emergency that prevents you from starting or ending a shift with less than 48 hours it will reset back to 0 after two work weeks so dont stress over it too much.

Those 3 areas combined can either make your pay more lucrative or not. If you have one bad area it affects your hours you're given as well as number of batches given while on shift since work is given to those with scores better than you first based off what I was told by their customer service rep and an email outlining pay structure. 

You are given a $10/hour guarantee when you start which lasts for 50 batches(basically assigned shopping orders-orders you get with multiple people still counts as one batch and orders where you are making just a delivery dont count as a batch)

If customers are tipping good you can make great money. One day I worked 9 hours but made $190 because a customer tipped me $70. So on that unicorn day I did make $20+/hour but my average with a 20-35 work week is $12 before gas & parking but $7-9 hour after those are factored in. 

Unless you live close to one of the markets you select to work in you would not want to go in for a short shift because you'd be spending basically all that you make on gas and/or parking unless you get a great customer who tips generously. 

Most customers are cool but some arent so be careful, alert and cautious at all times. I've only had one bad customer who made me feel unsafe so far. Not all customers will tip though so expect the worst even as you hope for the best. Remember I mentioned order accuracies? Well some customers will lie in an effort to pay less for their order, because they are having a bad day, or whatever reason they decide to and you will be blamed for it even if it isnt your fault. With 4 order issues not one was a mistake I made but I was still penalized despite putting in my comment about the situation, taking the time to do that has proven to be a waste of time. I have made errors as Im not perfect but it doesnt happen very often and when it does I acknowledge that it was my mistake. 
Ive had customers lie about not getting an item they got, getting the wrong size when they got the size they ordered, not getting their order delivered to their door when it was delivered directly to them, getting the wrong quantity when they got the amount they asked for, and getting over charged for a substitution they approved even when I made them aware of any price difference. So just expect that no matter how meticulous you are there will be one or some who will find fault just because.

This leads to the support given to the shoppers by the company. I feel that there is little to none because when it is obvious a customer is lying based one the receipt or even amount paid for an order there should be no reason why Insacart sticks it to the shopper instead of backing them up. I get the customer is always right mentality but even if you pacify them it would make more sense to not make the shopper suffer too. Also when there is an issue with an order that is urgent you dont get help as urgently. I dont know if they need to hire more people or they really do have that many shoppers calling in simultaneously but it is frustrating to be held up 20-30mins waiting to get help. I try my best not to call but there are times I cant avoid it, such as a customer is missing when you are delivering their order or the address is wrong.

Next and the last thing I'll tell you about is the structure it has been chaotic and each change that should make the position easier only seems to add stress to those working in the field. Most recent and prevalent in my area is the pay structure. It was said to have been changed to give us more pay but in fact it is less. When you get shifts you either do a full service which means shopping and delivering or delivery only which means someone else shops the order but you make the delivery. So for full service there is no change to speak of but for delivery where you used to get 50% of the tips split with the instore shopper you now get a higher commission in lieu of tips.
This works great for the instore shopper who is making an hour wage with tips but not using their car or gas. This is bad for the delivery person because you can burn thru a tank of gas which completely eliminates that small $3 pay bump. Now yes there are some customers who dont tip great so that $3 increase would help but I went back over my payments before the change and after and there were only 3 cases it was more. When you got 50% tips it was actually $5-10 more for an order so they increase the commission to pay you less. For this reason I sign up for full service shifts where you get all the tips but yet I still get delivery only orders which always annoys me because they are far from the base while foods you pick your order up from and take time away from doing an order where you could potentially make more than $16 for two deliveries. In speaking with other instacart workers who dont work instore I have yet to meet anyone who is happy about this change yet complaining is having no affect yet. 

If you want to count on instacart as your main bread & butter with consistent wages then get an instore position or office position. If you rather be out regardless of weather, traffic or other hazards then delivering is the way to go but just expect headaches from unrealistic delivery times on occasion, rude customers, a lot of gas spent, more expensive car maintenance/upkeep, no/little support when you need it and inconsistent hours.

So there it is and I hope this will help someone make an intelligent and informed decision. Good luck!

First Day of Experience on New Earning Structure (Absolutely Nightmare)

I have to say this is absolutely nightmare for us on this new earning structure. This is not a incentive program but a absolutely driving-shopper-away program.

Before I explain why this doesn’t make sense to me, let me give you some figures which also a calculation that matter to me or to most of shoppers the most. After a year working with Instacart, i have slowly built up experience and familiarity in the whole system and with all superstores in my area. My average in my area is around 70 sec per item and this has been contributing to my earning a lot before they changed the whole structure. and i could earn at least 25 per hour according to my last 4 weeks report.

I had just finished my first shift of 3 hours since the new structure imposed, my earning was 25 for two batches (one 10 and the other one 15). Let me convert to my preferred calculation is 8.3 per hour without deduction of gas, car deprecation. And you are telling me this is FAIR??

About the new earning structure, I really have no idea why they advertised this is better than the previous one. There are lots of factors affecting the incentive like store location, layout, difficulty of item, time of day store size, checkout type, etc. i have no understanding about why these matter that much to the whole earning structure.

First of all, the store size, checkout type has really less impact on our shopping experience because once we get familiar with the store layout we basically know where to get the items our customer requested. it might be considerable to new shoppers but how many shoppers here are new, we are sophisticated shoppers with experience.

Secondly, the store location, distance between the store and customer place matter. However, there is one important factor is not considered: the distance between my current location to the designated store. we have to spend time to travel to the store and spend time on traffic which is not compensated. when it comes to the earning. we spend the same time to complete an order but with way less earning in comparison with previous structure. 

Thirdly, peak time earning is making zero sense. The number of shoppers they accept during the peak time frame is decided by the system by how many customer orders available during the specific time. it means, to individual shopper, peak time doesn’t mean we can shop for more batches because if we can consistently receive batches during peak time, the number of batches we can do in maximum is still not increased. However, it looks like peak earning is lured but our basic earning is way less than before. When it comes to final earning, we still work for the same number of batches by the end of shift but make less money than we had made before.

Fourthly, 0.4 dollor per kg distance pay is absolutely unfair pay. Thinking about downtown area, how many batches would be actually needed for travel distance more than 10km. BUT we still need time to travel to store, find parking lot, load and unload goods, stuck in traffic, walk up to customer unit in high-floors building, etc. All I what to say is the time spending for a batch is not merely calculated by the distance between targeted store and customer’s place, there are lots of contributors that we, as a shopper, need to spend time to fulfill, and time is money.

To sum up, from 25 per hour to 8 per hour, this is absolutely nightmare and the least appealing quick-cash work i would choose to do. If we cannot make fair money from this job, then why are we contributing our effort and time to work for them.

I have been with Instacart since the first time the the program was rolled out on 2017 but now I am considering leaving. UNFAIR JOB..

I want to start this off by saying that instacart is a fantastic company and it really helped my family and I out in a hard financial time. It has also been the EASIEST job I’ve ever had. 

I’ve been working for instacart for 2 months so far. I make an average of 700-800 dollars a week by working 40-50 hours a week (which I love, btw). 
It’s flexible. It’s not hard. Also, The staff has always been 100% helpful and respectful (and I call them very often. Maybe 4-5 times a week.) .  

Things you should know:

1. I 100% promise that anyone who complains about never getting hours simply didn’t try hard enough.

Hours are posted every Sunday at 9:00am for E.A. and 9:30am for everyone else. Even without early access I’ve been able to get 40-50 hours for a week.

 If you are late, you’ll get either left overs or no hours. (The problem is literally solved by simply being on time and intentional when selecting your hours. For example, I work Monday-Saturday: 8am-4pm. So every Sunday, I know EXACTLY what times/days I want to ensure I get my hours. More importantly, I’m on time.) 

2. People who say it’s “too stressful” because they’re  being timed on orders are just being lazy or they’re brand new. 

The Instacart time “estimation” is very generous. When you just start out, it can feel stressful, but once you start going to the same stores more often it becomes much easier. you just learn where more items are found. 

I tend to make more money on the days I complete more orders. It’s like with every job, the more you do it the easier/faster it’ll be. 

(Tip: try to work in the same areas every time. Working at the same stores immensely helped me improve my paycheck.) 

3. Your “Paycheck” is effected by only 2 things.  Your Area or YOU. 

There are some places that aren’t heavy with orders. Suburban/City areas tend to be the best. if you don’t get a lot of orders It could just be that your area.  

(Tip: there are “hotspot areas” on your IC map in the app, you tend to get more orders in those areas.) 

If you treat instacart like it’s YOUR business it’ll pay off. 

Tips to improve your paycheck.

- Try to work 4+ hours when you do work. From personal experience, I make more per hour when I work longer days. If you’re only working 3 hours or less a day you’re severely limiting the amount or orders you can achieve per hour. 

If you worked: 
3 hours for 5 days a week, you would make more money working 5 hours a day for only 3 days a week. 

- It’s okay to be picky. Don’t feel pressured to accept every orders. I personally don’t accept any order where there is no tip or if it’s too far for too little pay. 

There are plenty of times I rejected a 12-15$ order and immediately got a 20-30$ order right after. 

- Deliveries are your best friend!

I can literally get a 3 location delivery, complete it, and make 40$ FASTER than I can complete a 40$ full service order.

The more deliveries you accept the more money you’ll make. 
(Tip: learn which stores have IC in-store shoppers and try to stay close to those locations. It’ll help get you more delivery only orders.


Additional tips
-Call support for ANYTHING that you’re having issues with.
- double check addresses


The only issues I have with IC:

-App glitches/has issues once in awhile
-No benefits 
-The “item scan” sometimes can’t recognize an item that is 100% correct, which can be a pain.
-The feedback portion under “how am I doing” needs to be more specific. I don’t feel like “poor service” or “wrong item” helps the shopper. 
- You should be able to decide which order you deliver first. It automatically chooses for you. 
- They don’t fully explain how long it takes to start up. It took me about 2 weeks from application to first hours.
- your 20min break is perfect for a lunch break or a gas refill.


So that’s really it, hopefully I covered everything. 

Use my tips, figure out your own. It’s an extremely easy job.

There were times that  I was paid $4/hour and wasted a whole tank of gas in two hours.  If you are delivery only, they pay you $2.25 per delivery. If you are driving twenty minutes to the store to pick up and scan heavy bags of groceries that someone else bagged. Then drive twenty minutes to the customer 's house. Then run heavy bags of groceries from the car to the house. Then get a bad rating because something is missing or damaged when you didn't even bag the items.  If the customer doesn't tip, you just made $2.25 in an hour! Plus your car endured the wear and tear and you wasted a lot of gas.

There are times you drive to the red zone sit for an hour only for InstaCart to send you 20 minutes back to where you just came from then send you to deliver back in the red zone and pay you $2.25.

The last time I shopped they gave me three very large orders for delivery only.  It took me close to an hour to scan the two over flowing cart fulls of groceries that barely fit in my car .  The people had cars in their driveways and I had to run back and forth from the street delivering their twenty bags of groceries.  The bags were jam packed and bagged horribly.  So se I didn't bag them I had no idea what was in them or how to pack them quickly in my car without squashing something.

The last person on the delivery list complained that I was late and her organic avocados were damaged so she didn't tip. I scanned 17 bags of heavy groceries for this customer including a very giant very heavy box of cat litter, packed 17 bags plus 50 bags from two other orders including two cases of water in my car,  after delivering the two giant orders I drove  another 15 minutes to get to the third customers house, had to park in front of her house and deliver to the side door so I literally ran the 18 heavy horribly packed bags from the car to the house for $2.25 with no tip then drove 15 minutes home.

 InstaCart does not pay you for tolls.  They have no concern for your location or the location of the customer in relation to where the store is located.  They once sent me  from inside a Tops thirty minutes to a Wegmans then to deliver 40 minutes to someone located near a different Wegmans and I passed the Tops that  I was in on the way to make the delivery. 

Usually when InstaCart sends you driving all over town, the people don't tip because they blame you for the long wait for their groceries that they could have got themselves but were too lazy.  meanwhile the shopper is running around like a chicken with no head so the shopper doesn't get penalized only to get paid $2.25 and have to deal with a lazy nasty lady who could have done her own shopping. 

 I was expecting customers with baby's or elderly or handicapped people. The customers are often young lazy nasty people without young kids or students who don't tip and are ungrateful. There are some very nice generous understanding people. They are isotherm ones with young children.  I have been lucky enough to get a few of them as customers. Thank God for the customers who give a ten dollar or more tip because they make up for InstaCart and the non tippers.

. InstaCart takes advantage of people who need to make a little extra money. Shoppers who make $25 an hour are either lying or getting huge tips. It is rare that I make $10 an hour.

I saw something on here that says you can make over 900 per week as an Instacart Shopper. Yeah right! The only feasible way I could see anyone making that amount is if they are in a major city working morning, noon, and night 7 days a week. This company does everything in its power to take money AWAY from Shoppers. They expect you sit around for hours (UNPAID) waiting for an order and then they punish you if you refuse to accept an order that isn't worth your time. The worst part is that they make it impossible to get an answer when you have a problem. You send an email and instantly get an automatically generated reply where they try to brush you off with their FAQ section while telling you that someone will get back to you soon (which they usually don't until days later). Then when someone finally gets back to you, it appears that all they did was copy and paste a generic response from their FAQ that doesn't even answer your original question. My #1 focus is quality customer service above all else, but Instacart has made it so that only speed is rewarded when in reality most customers do not care how long it takes, they're just happy they didn't have to do the shopping themselves.

If anyone in management is reading this, here's how you can improve:
1) there should ALWAYS be an hourly guarantee. Even if it's only a couple bucks an hour like bartenders and waitstaff make, it would at least make getting no orders a little more bearable.
2) stop having a "timer" running while shoppers are shopping. it adds unnecessary stress.
3) give the option BEFORE a shift starts to give up/adjust hours if there aren't any foreseeable orders scheduled.
4) allow shoppers to reject batches that do not make sense for us to complete.
5) give shoppers more information prior to accepting batches. We should be told where the customer lives as well as how many total UNITS not just items. There's nothing worse than getting an order that says "10 items," then as soon as you accept the order it says "10 items, 47 units." Screw you.
6) if a shopper has to pick up and deliver 5 heavy cases of bottled water, the commission should be on EACH case, not a measly 40 cents for all 5 cases.
7) pay shoppers when you make them drive long distances between stores, not just when it's a long distance from the store to the customer.
8) do a better job promoting Instacart so the customer base increases. hardly anyone I know is familiar with Instacart. Even employees at the stores we shop aren't familiar. It's frustrating. Set up cardboard cutouts at the front of stores giving info about the program. Post flyers near the registers. Nothing major, how about "HATE GROCERY SHOPPING? LET INSTACART DO IT FOR YOU! ASK AN ASSOCIATE HOW!"
9) allow shoppers to see which customers gave bad ratings and explain WHY when a bad rating is given.
10) tell customers to keep their phones handy in case a shopper has a question. too much time is wasted waiting for the customer to reply about replacements and as a shopper, you want your customer to be happy so it's better to get what they want instead of guessing.
11) give shoppers the $100 weekly bonus for high ratings even if they don't complete 20 deliveries. It's not our fault if we aren't given enough orders but still get great feedback on the orders we do receive.
12) have a real human contact shoppers at least once in the beginning. It's so cold and impersonal only being able to communicate through email.

Like any other job, there are pro's and con's to being a shopper for Instacart (independent contractor). 

I began shopping with Instacart largely because of the flexibility. You can choose to pick up orders whenever you want and have the ability to choose the orders you accept. This is a great way for students, "stay-at-home" parents or retirees to make some extra money but I wouldn't make it a career.  As an independent contractor, Instacart does not deduct income taxes from your pay which does necessitate additional effort on your part. You will need to keep track of your pay and mileage/gas for your tax return and be prepared to pay what's due come tax season. We used to be paid once weekly but now shoppers can withdraw their pay for an order as soon as it clears through the system (roughly a few minutes after the order is complete), free of charge.

The pay also has the downside of being highly unpredictable. The main reason that I stopped shopping was Covid and the reason I chose not to return was the unfair pay that Instacart offered on most orders. Wages are comprised of the money IC (Instacart) offers along with whatever tip the customer includes when they checkout. Back when I first started, the tips were amazing!! The highest tip I earned was just shy of $100 and it was common to get $20 tips for small, "easy" orders. Similar to some other service jobs, pay mostly was comprised of tips. On the other hand, IC's bottom line ALWAYS comes first. They will offer the lowest amount of money they think a shopper would accept for each order. If the order isn't picked up by a shopper at said rate, they will increase it minimally and incrementally.

On the positive side, I find great satisfaction from helping others and this job provided many opportunities for fulfillment in that regard. Many of the customers that I shopped for were either senior citizens or new mom's amd dad's who truly needed help. I could sense just how grateful many of the customers were and that made many of the unpleasantries sting less. 

Yet whenever you deal with the public, there will always be those "bad apples" who would falsely report items or whole orders missing or damaged so they get a partial or full refund, simultaneously affecting your Shopper Metrics. If you receive too many reports of missing/damaged items or negative reviews, they will terminate your contract with no recourse. I do understand that there are bad shoppers too, who would steal the groceries they were meant to deliver or purposefully damage items of customers that didn't tip well or were rude during the shopping of their order.

IC is typically in the news for all the wrong reasons. They've been involved in a number of scandals, most notable when there was a "bug" in their system that was skimming from the tips left by customers. Nothing changed until it started gaining traction from media outlets. 





Instacart pretends to care about its shoppers but doesn't. The other day I hit 5 reliability incidents (and I'll explain why), and therefore on my shift today, even though I have about an average 90% acceptance rate and 4.9 stars from my customers, I was ONLY receiving orders that were 10+ miles away, when I normally always get ones in the 5 or less range. Accepting any of those would result in deliveries being ungodly late, with driving through traffic and getting there over half an hour later, actually doing the shopping, then delivering anywhere from 5-12 miles! Yes! Some distances from store to customer were another 10 miles. The payout for Instacart CAN be good. They've reworked their pay system recently to ensure you always make at least 10 dollars per delivery, which is fair because most will go way over/the smaller ones will allow you go do more than one delivery an hour. I averaged 24-26 dollars an hour with Instacart. Some days, a 2-3 hour shift could yield almost 80 bucks. But no payout in the world is worth ruining your times, wasting so much gas and car durability, and delivering in areas where you constantly get tickets. 

But here's the real kicker y'all. The reason I have 5 reliability incidents instead of 3 like I should. I was at 2, those two just being that I got scheduled for work last minute and had to cancel my Instacart hours last minute and then oversleeping (totally normal things. It's fine). But the second two were because I was scheduled for two shifts, a Saturday and a Sunday. On Friday, I was mugged. like literally physically assaulted and then my phone was stolen. I have the police report and everything which I have sent to Instacart. That night, I emailed them immediately, never mind the flow of tears and the trauma I was going through! Because  I did NOT want those reliability incidents on my account because I wouldn't be able to acknowledge orders and I didn't have a way to cancel. 

So the email reply tells me that I "had no hours scheduled" and I "wouldn't receive reliability incidents". Yeah. Okay. Get a new phone and see two brand spanking new incidents. And yes. You just have to work more days to get rid of them. Which is a great policy. Because life does happen and you shouldn't be punished for it. But here I am, faced with these two incidents I was told I wouldn't get. Then when I tried emailing them about it "well sorry but we won't remove them because that reason isn't a reason we'd remove them. We understand life happens which is why you have 5!" HAHAHAHAHAHAHA. So being MUGGED is a "life happens" scenario to Instacart. I was appalled and disgusted. And now they're ignoring every email I send about this trying to get them to take them off. Life happens is sleeping through your alarm. Or forgetting to set one. Needing to make an emergency run to your kid's school. waking up sick at the last minute. NOT. NOT. BEING. ABLE. TO.  CANCEL. HOURS. BECAUSE. YOU. WERE. ASSAULTED. AND. MUGGED. :)  like cmon!!! How is this fair? How is this treating me like anything less than dirt and poo on the bottom on their designer shoes they can afford from all the money they make? Do NOT work for this company if you want to deal with a team who genuinely does not give two craps about you or your safety.

I've been waiting patiently for hours to come and as soon as they come I end up having them cancelled due to a background check I thought that was the first thing that would be done way before a instacart debit card would be sent. It seems a little backwards for me to have 2 cancellations back to back and now I'm running into a problem with having the proper bags to begin shopping. I signed up for instacart back in December and now that hours finally came available only for them to be cancelled is not a good look on my end. I would think before the process even begins a BACKGROUND CHECK would be the 1st thing done so that shoppers like myself and future shoppers don't have their hours cancelled due to a background check that takes 2-7 business days. I had my hopes up about finally getting a shift in only to be highly disappointed to have them cancelled all because of the process that is set up at instacart to begin shopping on the platform. You are wasting alot of peoples time by having them get a card mailed to their address only to have to be on a waitlist for several weeks or more just to do a background check and have your hours cancelled or given to someone that has been a shopper with you since day one. I'm highly upset and I will no longer be using this app. Why put people that think they are going to make extra money on the side to support themselves through a background check after the app is downloaded, after they went out and bought the PROPER INSULATED BAG REQUIRED and a debit card sent to them to purchase the items just to be on a long waitlist to get hours. It makes no sense and the procedures need to be reevaluated because I'm sure I'm not the only one this has happened too. The way I would do it would be BACKGROUND CHECK 1ST THEN IF IT'S A GO SEND THE DEBIT CARD MAKE SURE THEY ARE READY BY HAVING THE PROPER BAGS TO SHOP AND THEN PICK HOURS. All the people that are on the waitlist now have not had a background check I'm assuming, so the same thing will happen to them and so on. Sounds a little dumb of how things are done and honestly not fair. I had high hopes of joining instacart but now I just think it's a way to get all these people all over the US to sign up just to have to wait on a waitlist or a 2-7 days for a background check to be completed that should of been done way before a card was sent out way before people get prepared are ready to shop. I will be writing a review of my experience of instacart and I can't even say one good thing because I never got the chance to shop to even say how great of experience it was for me. Instacart needs to go back to the drawing board and brainstorm more ways to make the process smooth for shoppers coming in. It should be like any other job you fill out a application then pass the BACKGROUND CHECK then you arw officially ready to begin shopping with Instacart. Not the other way around by having thousands sign up so everybody thinks they are approved only to be emailed that hours are cancelled because of a background check. Make it make sense for the people that would like to join instacart.

This company treats their Shoppers like they are an expendable commodity! Their only goal is PROFIT! Their only loyalty is to MONEY! To those ends they will walk over and screw over anyone! They treat Shoppers and prospective Shoppers with such disdain that they don’t even have the courtesy to contact you after they schedule an interview with you and don’t bother to show up! 
They care so little about their Shoppers that they have outsourced their only line of support to a group that is not properly trained, doesn’t know what is going on at InstaCart, they all give out different answers to the same question. And worse, they usually just copy/paste what’s written right in the Shopper App that we have already read!! And there’s no getting past these “anything with a pulse” call center monkeys who are probably getting paid $1.00/hour somewhere!

Worst of all, they don’t care about the consequences of their actions on the lives of their Shoppers! 
You can be a fantastic Shopper but because there are other Shoppers “cheating the system” and InstaCart just looks the other way you will find yourself not getting offered orders. Hope you weren’t counting on that money to pay the mortgage or buy shoes for your kid! Because the only way you can compete is to also cheat! 
Then there are the myriad of reasons that their black box algorithm will just not sent you orders and you are left wondering why and nobody is there to tell you. As mentioned before, Shopper support knows nothing!

They pretty much create a “Hunger Games” type work environment where Shoppers are so desperate for orders that they will grab them at ridiculously low payouts! Which is the whole point! Pay the Shoppers less, make more profit!!
We have labor laws that prevent this kind of treatment of employees but our legal system is only just starting to catch up to the gig economy! And it is starting! Which is why InstaCart is trying to move away from having independent contractor Shoppers to In Store Shoppers who are actual hired employees. They shop and the customer picks the order up. Right now the (Full Service) Shoppers are delivering most of the orders the In Store Shoppers ship. I imagine that’s because InstaCart has to fulfill their contracts with the customers who have paid for the year’s worth of free delivery. But InstaCart has announced that “2020 is the Year of the Pick Up!” So the future for InstaCart Shoppers looks bleak! And it will get more dog eat dog before it ends!

Don’t count on income from this company!
If you have any self-respect, walk away!
If your conscience won’t let you work for a company with these values... run away!

Let me just say this: Instacart is a scam and a deeply fraudulent company. Instacart has suffered a number PR disasters involving it's shoppers and its flagrant mistreatment of them. They are drowning in employee lawsuits. It's a scam for all involved. The customers, the employees, the grocery stores, the instore shoppers. You name it. 

 The company is an unmitigated dumpster fire. They go so far as to constantly faslify documents and online records to the customers. They taught us as new employees to hide receipts from the clients, as they don't want the  customer  to find out that they are charging an astronomical 33% upmark on every item on top of initial delivery fees. This is a hidden charge!! The customer is given a phony electronic  reciept on the website. But from what I hear from some of my customers, they are inaccurate and therefore fraudulent!  They are so nefarious and greedy, that THEY ARE NOT EVEN FILING 1099 FORMS on their end!!! They are openly flaunting tax laws and getting away with it. I couldn't even get a car loan without begging my friends and accociates for a loan from them. Talk about embarrassing. All because they are not filing 1099 forms and dittling me. As an independent contractor I can do nothing but tell other people about it. However these transgressions barrely scratch the surface of instacarts villainy.

  The company's prime directive is to try to figure out how to pay the front line workers less. I legitimately think they hold regular press conferences to try to figure out how to pay the delivery drivers less and experiment with ways to get money out of the hands of the workers and into their own pockets. Including stealing from the customers tips. Which they openly admit to doing!! I had to call in over three dozen times in 2 years to correct earnings discrepancies. Mistakes have been made on their end.

   The employees, a.k.a. independent contractors are not beholden or entitled to any work place grievances. And are often ragdolled into going above and beyond for customers without any compensation. The company does not let you  be friends or save customers numbers under threat of Termination...fearing the employees  might do third party deliveries and cut them out. Also id like to add, that most of my co-workers would go out of their way to hide the items that were on sale on the instacart website (such as putting items in front of the target item in question) there was more than 1 time in the course of my shops that my grocery cart full of items was stolen entirely by another Instacart shopper...and felt like we were in cut throat competition with each other and there was just this obvious and strong vibe of hate between other instacart shoppers. This company is a bad karma enterprise and someone needs to blow the wistle on them.

Top Job Titles	Average Salary
Delivery driver 2 salaries reported	$21.00 per hour
Personal shopper 7 salaries reported	$22.50 per hour
Store shopper 2 salaries reported	$53,659 per year
Shift leader 1 salary reported	$17.00 per hour
Data entry clerk 1 salary reported	$22.60 per hour

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