Have any IC shoppers gotten a Xmas bonus from regular customers?

I have one shopper who’s awesome and he’s shopped about 2/3 orders I’ve placed in the last year. I’m thinking about sending him $200 as a bonus. (I have his direct number and can do it outside the app.) Is it wildly inappropriate to tip a shopper you’ve had for years a Xmas bonus?

(And before any questions arise, there is nothing sexual. I’m straight, I think he is as well, IDGAF. He’s a good shopper.)

In my area IC just became a complete waste of time. Gas is too expensive and the orders got worse with much lower tips on average. So instead of delivering groceries I decided to take on the role of delivering mail and packages. The difference in how people treat you as a mail carrier is night and day. People actually respect and appreciate you instead of being demanding and treating you like a servant beneath them. Only downside is I’m working 60+ hour weeks at this time of year but I was already doing that with IC (but with heavy downtime in between batches)

I feel like there should be a class action or some sort of legal action when they say "things that can improve your score" will actually lower your score.

3885 found items, 22 replacements, 106 requested refunds, 0 wrong items, 0 missing items, 0 unrequested refunds and somehow I am in "needs work" because my found items is labeled "opportunity to improve"

instacart is basically being sleazy and actually basing your score based on how many high item orders you find 100% of items on. They dont want you to take smaller easier single orders, so they'll take away your priority arbitrarily, tell you it "needs work" to try and force you into taking high item low tip high distance batches instead of cherry picking.

in Ca too this has to be a violation of prop 22 or an illegal workaround.

Hey all, I just did my first day on IC, and after going through this sub, I feel like my earnings aren’t normal or maybe it’s just because I just started or maybe it’s my area?? Today I did 7 orders in over 4 hours and only made $50, and the tips were so bad. At first I didn’t get any orders at my house so I drove to a red/orange circle area since the app said there were likely orders there soon, then waited 15 min, then no orders. So then I started driving to a nearby sprouts and eventually got my first order which was $4 + no tip 🤩.

Obviously I’m not asking to make a crazy amount from IC since it’s not my main source of income, but I didn’t expect the earnings to be THIS low, especially since I just started and I have priority apparently. I think a contributing factor to the low earnings could be that I still haven’t received my physical card, so I only have access to the stores that accept digital card. Also I have no idea when my physical card will even come in the mail. Anyone got any tips?

literally what is the fucking deal with this? majority of "meet at location" customers i get never answer their doors, texts, or calls. do you guys just check off that option for shits and giggles? do you get a kick out of seeing me stare at your ring camera while awkwardly waiting for support to get on the phone?

those are genuine questions because it happens way more often than it should. im in constant contact with customers and i'm definitely not shy about knocking and calling when they tell me to meet at door. everyday doing this gig makes me further believe that the general public cannot be saved from the stupidity crisis

Good thing I’m up early to see what’s happening 40 miles away

The ongoing discussion of tips is a fascinating one and I see it a lot in this sub. One of the things that I started thinking about is, what is going through an individual’s mind when they submit this order. Think about it, if you were to go to a restaurant and spend $240 on your meal, would you tip the waitress $0? This gallon of milk costs about $3.99 cents at Costco. So this customer is ordering $240 of milk, with much more actual labor taking place compared to a waiter or a waitress bringing you food and refilling your beverage….and yes I know, in some restaurants the tip is divided among other staff besides the wait staff.

I live in Dallas, and we all know where these milk orders are going to, so I’m just trying to seriously understand how when they submit this order they put no tip. I personally use Instacart myself to place orders, and I either give a 15%-20% tip on my order. I’m not saying to tip a certain percentage…but to put no tip is beyond disrespectful. If you were ever to give a waiter a $0 tip after eating out…the entire staff would fight you in the parking lot 😂

It’s not like we can view item descriptions anymore so any wait will always count against you, and if it’s a busy deli you’re just screwed.

Just had a sprouts order where they were out of the pre-sliced London broil. So I went it get it sliced. They sliced the wrong brand (boar’s head)
I had already waited 10 min for my stuff to get sliced.

I’ve had this happen A LOT lately and my shop time has ballooned by like 30 seconds and it’s really frustrating because I’m trying to get it up and I keep having bullshit like this happen

And good orders are hard to come by deli or not so if shop time has any say in priority when it comes to this like it says then fuck

I let the customer know I was just going to mark the boar’s head as the store brand, she said she preferred the store brand and I wanted to get her what she wanted if possible

10 months....2000 shops!!

I think it's more that everyone else in my area is doing worse since my found rare is still about 89%

My last alcohol delivery was this Monday and it was the same.. scan barcode only.

But I just completed two alcohol orders and it requested to scan front and back.

I took about 5 mins to scan, and second order was keep failing so I needed to call the support then they manually finished my order.

I felt so bad customer.

Is this my phone issue? ( my phone is iPhone 13 promax - I know it’s old…) or this new scanner is stupid?

I really don’t wanna do alcohol delivery anymore.
It’s very annoying before holiday season.

What is the tip when you scan front and back with new scanner?!

I forgot I had a few people use my referral code recently, and as of today I lost one of my day jobs (I work in home care, and it’s sadly just a thing that happens sometimes)
So, needless to say this extra cash is going to help get us by, especially since we were about to embark on a road trip to visit my family.

I accepted a $26 batch at Target for 2 miles tonight. 2 customers, 25 items. Problem is, I didn’t get to the store until 9:40 and it closed at 10. I was naively optimistic that I could do it without running into any issues…I was wrong.

First off, Target inventory SUCKS late at night. I had to replace or refund about 25% of the list. Second, the items weren’t all in the grocery section - there were numerous skincare and makeup items that weren’t in super obvious places.

By the time 10 pm hit I had 5 items left to go. At that point the employees and security were all over me. All the remaining items were near the checkout lanes, so I grabbed them despite pleas from the staff. I did have to replace two energy drinks because I couldn’t check any of the coolers outside of the ones by self checkout.

I get that they have to get everyone out when closing time hits but man they were ultra aggressive. I’ve heard of some stores being lenient about shoppers who have just a few items left to go…this was definitely not one of them.

The cherry on top was the first customer being in a high rise apartment, and the second customer’s map pin being wrong so I had to drive 2 extra miles.

Lesson learned, do not accept batches before closing that you’re not 100% sure you can finish in time.

I uploaded my insurance card for the health stipend under Prop 22 and Instacart is rejecting my insurance. This is the same insurance (United Healthcare) that I’ve used in the past and it never was an issue. I have reached out to multiple agents via chat to review my documents and obviously no one was able to help me with that or get me any support. How do I get in touch with someone who can help me?

Starting today, my app is not showing me tip changes when it's a percentage based tip and there were replacements/refunds. The only time it showed a tip change is when the customer did it. I already had major trust issues with IC and this certainly doesn't help!

Office Depot. 9 items 15 units total 24 miles to a restaurant. Heaviest thing was an all in one printer. I almost didn’t click on it.

I’ve noticed that my local Costco has a small group of regular IC shoppers — the same 5–7 folks every day. They’re always around, and they usually start scanning items while waiting in the checkout line. I’m pretty sure they snag most of the high‑pay batches before anyone else even gets a chance.

Downloaded and signed up to be a shopper today and the app said there was already an account under my email address, but the phone number was a 228 area code number I’d never seen before. I was able to change the number under Profile and I finished the sign-up process and notice that all of the extra earnings incentives are located in Texas while I’m in Virginia. I suspect that the incentives may be linked to the location when the account was set up by someone using my information from Texas. I contacted support and the guy was useless, talking in scripted circles. He says the zone can’t be changed and it’s linked to my gps. Anyone know if this can be resolved? If so, how?

Im totally fine with this bit not when regular customers can use it too like what's the point?? Just to fuck us? Whats yalls thoughts

Is anyone else having a problem connecting to support? No ones answering the phone or the chat. I need to do an alcohol return and I can’t complete the order.

Apparently a 92% found rate doesn’t cut it anymore. Additionally one of the damaged items just fell off and another one will soon and hopefully I’ll have time to jockey my way back up, but at one point today the Instacart gods decided I’m no longer worthy… what a rip

Edit: seems as though there’s been a purge

Hi! Obviously we both make money if you use it. I believe it’s $350 for you if you complete all of the orders. I’m not even sure it’s allowed so my apologies if not. I’ve seen some other posts asking so I thought I’d be proactive 🤣

https://shoppers.instacart.com/?referral=DCAREY7811E&utm_medium=copy&utm_source=instacart_referral&utm_campaign=supply_referral