They punish you for their mistakes - Anonymous employee Instacart Employee Review

1.0
16 Apr 2025
Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

NOTHING-they dont care about you at all.

Cons

They do not care about employees at all. Today, I had an issue with the payment. The guy on live chat could not make it work, so I called. I was on the phone for 26 minutes before they hung up on me and removed the batch due to inactivity. Their own customer service employees could not figure out the issue in 25 minutes. I was actively working the batch by calling customer service to figure it out but it was cancelled anyway. I did not get paid even though I had shopped the entire order and it impacted my cancellation rate. Customer service claimed it was automated and they could not edit the cancellation rate. So now I'm out an hour of my time (shopping and trying to get the card to work before I called them) that is unpaid and my cancellation rate increased even though I was working on the batch. When I asked how to prevent this in the future, they told me to ask the customer to cancel or reschedule the order, which the customer cannot do without a penalty if it has been shopped. Customers and shoppers literally have to pay for their incompetence. Thats ridiculous. At least pretend to care about us.

Explore other reviews about Instacart

5.0
26 Jun 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Flexible Hours and Quick Customer Solutions

Cons

Very unpredictable hours and pay

2.0
21 Jun 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Fun going out and talking to people. You will interact with people everyday. You control how much you get paid. Lots of flexibility in the time between accepting an order and traveling to the store and beginning to shop. It isn't pedal to the metal to get to the store like DoorDash is. You can also cancel batches after accepting as long as you keep your rate under 15%. This is different from DoorDash where your rankings will suffer if g.t. 2% cancellation rate.

Cons

There's a learning curve and it takes a while to learn each chain of stores' items. Once you become proficient at one store, the algorithm will lowball your offers relative to other less-experienced Instacart shoppers. Overall, Instacart shoppers likely get paid similar or less than the store's regular employees.

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