InstacartReviews 2,486

The Instacart app can not handle the current volume. It is very laggy... delayed... while I'm shopping if a store is out of an item the app tells you to replace it... not refund it... we get chastised for refunding and congratulated for replacing items. They deduct from the tip for refunding... we can see the tip before we accept an order... then after the deductions if you have to refund items. The pic I uploaded was the toilet paper/paper towels section at one of my local stores. I can't make it magically appear.
When we are shopping, it takes a while for the customers to receive our texts... leaving us standing in the stores. Waiting and waiting. I had shopped for an hour at a Sam's Club and then ( because you need a code to cash out) had all of the stuff on the belt... for 10 minutes, on a busy Saturday, line backing up behind me and my customer never responded... I couldn't pay... I left the store with nothing. And I got paid nothing for driving there/ shopping/ waiting. I initially thought it was my customer but I know it's the app... I will never go to Sam's Club or a Costco again. I have had numerous problems. Like have delivered my groceries... and the app still says I'm shopping. The app can not keep up with the current demand. And while I find most of my customers very grateful. I do not understand people's desire for a certain brand at these times. Leaving us running through the stores to either put back items or replace with something else making it take much longer.
Certain items are in very high demand and you are lucky if you find them. My advice would be to pick a substitute for these items it helps your shopper.
Toilet paper
Paper towels
Cleaning products: good luck
Lysol or Clorox wipes: totally unavailable
Peanut butter
Rice
Those instant pizza crusts from Pillsbury
Canned pasta and soup
Frozen pizza
Thermometers: totally unavailable

There is no help for us either... I tried the instant chat thing with an issue I had and it said I was 165 in line. For instant chat.

Not sure how closely the "shoppers" pay attention. I had blueberries on my list and was delivered blackberries instead. No customer service by phone, could not use chat feature said I was "1637 person" in line for chat. Sent email and got no response, no refund. Tried them a second time, the shopper ignored my text messages while shopping my order. I did not receive an item on my list and did not get any refund for that item. Also, I wanted one item but shopper purchased two of that item, again no refund, no communication from the shopper. Horrible customer service, again, can't call or chat and no response to my emails.

Placed 1st order. Some items were not available so I either had to cancel or replace. No problem. When I received my items with receipt it was a total of $184.51. Now instacart is charging me before all their ridiculous fees $197.09. What is the extra $12.58 for. I contacted them & they told me instacart app charges different than the store. So basically upcharging you for items which should be illegal. They charge $3.99 for delivery BUT also a service charge in my case was $9.53 plus you of course need to include a tip. So I basically paid $36 to get food delivered from around the corner. I would've never used them if they are allowed to price items the way they want. I have the receipt from the store, it's a shane that this upcharging on an app is being allowed.

I ordered $575 worth of groceries leaving a substantial tip. My order has not even started packing, so I have no clue who is responsible for it. This is how my order status read after I posted it on April 13.
"Your Price Chopper order is scheduled for delivery April 15-19"
Next day it read the same. Then at the end of the day on April 15, it read:
"You Price Chopper order is scheduled for delivery on April 16-19" End of day, April 16
"Your Price Chopper order is scheduled for delivery on April 17-19" end of day April 17
"Your Price Chopper order is scheduled for delivery on April 18-19"
Today is April 18.3:40pm. I wonder...

Not only does Instacart charge fees for their service, they also pocket any discrepancies between what you get charged for items on their website and what their shopper pays at checkout. We have ordered 4 times with Instacart. On 2 of the orders we got the actual store receipt paid by the shopper. In both cases Instacart charged us more than what Instacart paid at checkout. $9 In one case on a $60 order and then $15 on a $190 order. I contacted Instacart and they said that is their policy.

Worse company service imaginable. Phone service inoperable. Web site service does not exist, and misinformation texted constantly. I was told three different times either my order was being shopped at Costco, in checkout, in route, or already delivered. None of these apparently happened because I never received my order. All I know is my credit card was charged for groceries and a service I never recieved. Perhaps this pandemic is causing miscommunication problems, but it's not stopping Instacart from trying to get your money with no service and misinformation.

First of all request the delivery person he or she must provide you with the receipt from the food store these guys are not only feeing you to death (my last order there was a delivery charge of3.99 tip of $7.00 a service fee of $5.18 and a alcohol fee for $4.00 and tax totaling $23.80) next I compared the itemized store receipt to theirs and found that they take the stores prices and mark each item further my store receipt totaled $136.18 and their receipt totaled 171.82 for a difference of $35.64. If you back out their service fees of $23.80 above thats another $11.84 they are marking up your biil. So on a $130.00 grocery bill they bill me $35.64 in feesI think thats excessive!
Also the grocery bill lists al taxes for $4.78 and Instacart charged me $5.33. Where is this money going? Instacart?
I discovered they were charging my card $9.99 month for free delivery if my purchases were over $35.00. When I called them they said they would stop the charges and credit the last months charge back to to my card within three business days that never happened. During that month I had two or three deliveries and paid their fees therefore Instacart got paid twice!
Proceed with caution! I know they are providing a service in these troubling times but I feel their fees add up if you really pay attention and are excessive!

If there are no slots available, Instacart should reveal that *upfront*, so customers don't waste huge amounts of time trying to find products to put into a shopping cart that won't be fulfilled.

I had a Harris Teeter Instacart delivery successfully scheduled for Thursday, 4/16. (I had received a delivery date that was about a week after the order date.) When it didn't arrive, I checked my order. The date had been changed to to 4/29, by Instacart -- with no agreement from me, and the order now showed that "an error had occurred." I then tried to set up a curbside order from Wegman's and wasted several hours trying to find and replicate/replace the items I previously had ordered. There was no indication I'd run into the Instacart bottleneck again by choosing curbside. No "dellivery" date was available, of course.

No dates are available, in general, for stores that use Instacart as their shoppers. In the future, I will find out which stores use their own staff to fulfill orders and only use those. I will report the above experiences to everyone I speak with.

Useless. I'll just have to go out to address my immediate Instacart-caused grocery crisis. I'm in my late 70's. You're making this health crisis worse by stranding people at risk, without groceries.

My husband has coronavirus and I set up for Instacart Express account for him so I could have food delivered - paid for the annual membership. No problem. I placed my extended order and then the message comes up that I have to wait 2 days and I should order earlier -even though I ordered when the store opened and just paid for an annual membership. So I remove all my items in the shopping cart - as I'm not going to pay for express delivery and then have to wait 2 days because the computer system doesn't recognize the membership. What stinks about instacart is the website. It sucks!

I have written to their "help" email address three times with nothing more than their auto reply getting back to me. I am absolutely furious that they have not refunded my money! My Costco order was placed on April 16 at 10:24 AM and then was marked as "delivered" at 10:37 AM on April 16. That is basically impossible. The Costco nearest my house takes roughly 17 minutes to drive. There is absolutely no way that this driver received my order, accepted it, shopped for the five items in it, paid, and then made it to my house all within 13 minutes. This shopper stole my money and Instacart needs to refund me immediately.

If you want to lose your money, buy in intacart. If you want to spend your time buy on intacard. I bought an order. I received the email that was delivered and the order was never left at my house. Who knows where they left it at my door. Then you get tired of calling and no one answers you. I wrote an email still after a week nobody has called me. I mean they steal you and you can't claim. Do not buy in this application. They are thieves