My Instacart shopper is making some wild changes.

MIDItheKID@lemmy.fmhy.ml to Mildly Infuriating@lemmy.world – 175 points –
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hopefully whatever you were making with that sour cream will survive the beef rawhide replacement šŸ¤£

It was the paper towels that got replaced with rawhide. The sour cream is still pending.

Currently it's just cream. Your order will be updated when it has turned sour.

Your food is being kept in a climate controlled environment. Aka the trunk. Just helping that cream go sour!

The one and only time I got grocery delivery, they subbed frozen mango chunks for frozen butternut squash, as if the most important thing was getting something orange and frozen and not like, picking a different vegetable I could use for dinner instead. I ended up making smoothies with the mangos though.

This desperate fool is making her own shopping trip by subbing your stuff outā€¦

Yep. Hopefully OP sees this. This is a common fraud perpetrated via instacart. The shopper basically subs all your stuff for whatever they want and then marks your stuff delivered. You won't get your order but Instacart should refund you.

Today I ordered six mini bottles (I guess 10 oz each?) of club soda. They were out, so the shopper brought me four large bottles of club soda (maybe 38 oz each?).

Apparently I need to drink a lot of mojitos.

I usually try to go with Shipt shoppers if I can. IMHO, they give more of a shit compared to IC.

There is a very high chance the people shopping are doing it for every brand they can. At best shipt simply has better costumer support and they don't want to mess with it.

They tend to be more aggressive about booting bad shoppers off of their platform.

I notice the suggestions are more expensive. Do they make more?

I would assume the amount they make is a percentage of the cart total. That would be the only way to make longer trips worth it. So that would incentivize suggesting more expensive options. But I imagine thereā€™s also a tip mechanic so doing obvious stuff like that could hurt your tip.

It could be 2 things, 1) what you wanted was already the cheapest 2) maybe they think replacing it with a ā€œbetterā€ quality version is a better move than cheaper.

Better is in quotes since more expensive doesnā€™t equal better quality.

I really donā€™t know, talking out my ass rn

Does IC give you a way to make your own replacement suggestions? I only use Shipt, and it's built into shipt to preload "if they don't have that, get this". Most of the time the shopper is able to complete the whole order without changing anything when the preloaded suggestions are used.

Yes you have the ability to both pick specific replacements and leave a tweet sized note about what you really want.

But I cancelled my subscription to Instacart specifically because there were far too many times a shopper just ignores your notes and replacement choices.

Like....dude I didn't make notes for funsies. That was my meal plan for the whole week. How the hell am I supposed to make dinner now? I don't believe you that there is NO bread in the damn store. TALK to me before you just blaze through, refund or make bizarre replacements and then check out. This is my FOOD. šŸ˜­

So crazy insta cart is a thing for use cases other than substantial disability... which it must be I guess? It's too well known for such a small niche. Every time I see it mentioned I am shocked.

Itā€™s good for people without transportation, too. A family of four taking the bus where they need to go? Fine. A family of four hauling a family of fourā€™s worth of groceries home on the bus? Less fine. Especially if the bus stop isnā€™t actually close to their home. Then itā€™s a family of four (if you can even get them all together at the same time because you need the extra hands) hauling a family of fourā€™s worth of groceries (including bulky stuff like toilet paper) down city blocks or through industrial areas or rural areas or wherever, for however long it takes. Throw in a broken bag now and then, andā€¦ yeah. Grocery delivery is a much better option.

This is a good point too. The nice thing about Walmart delivery is that you can change your address.

So if you typically have it delivered to your home address, but you fly somewhere on vacation and donā€™t get a rental car, you can have Walmart deliver your groceries to your vacation spot. Thatā€™s a lot cheaper than using a taxi to get groceries, or buying every meal you eat on vacation - especially if you have a family!

It's a boon even for the mildly or moderately disabled, but truly a godsend for the significantly disabled. Sucks that it costs more and sometimes you get some stupid replacements, but so it goes.

Youā€™d be blown away at the amount of people that use delivery services for groceries and other restaurant deliveries. I know of a few that do it multiple times a week, and anecdotally, these are also the same people that complaining about not being able to afford things.

??? I mean not all of these pickup services cost extra. Instacart costs more, but Walmart pickup is free. I get it all the time so I don't have to wade through the zoo that is Walmart.

I feel like Walmart+ is in a different category, I would compare it more to Amazon prime than instacart, Uber eats, DoorDash, etc.

Safeway deliver is basically $5 a month