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Instacart announces new Covid-19 policies and plans to hire 250k more shoppers
- toomuchtodo 6y agoAnyone know if they've fixed the bug where someone could set the tip to $50 and then remove it entirely at or after delivery ("tip baiting")? https://nypost.com/2020/04/10/people-are-baiting-grocery-delivery-workers-with-big-tips-then-reneging/ https://nypost.com/2020/04/10/people-are-baiting-grocery-del...
- cactus2093 6y agoBug or feature? If the shopper does a terrible job and brings the complete wrong things, you should be able to reduce the tip. Presumably the argument against this is that it should not be allowed because then the shoppers don't make a reasonable living wage. Then why not solve the actual problem? Raise the delivery fee to where the wage is reasonable, don't make them rely as heavily on tips.
- toomuchtodo 6y agoYou should only be able to reduce the tip through a dispute with Instacart justifying the compensation reduction (and banned for repeat abuse of the process), compensation that was offered as part of the job bid.
- kyleee 6y agoat that point it should probably no longer be called a tip... sounds like a different form of compensation
- symplee 6y agoRight, like a guaranteed incentive bonus. With an indisputable deliverable, like GPS at the person's house. But, as with everything, it could probably end up being gamed.
- cactus2093 6y agoWhat about any number of other things that can go wrong? They say something rude to you or are in some other way unprofessional? You know, the kinds of customer service niceties that are the entire point of tipping.
- toomuchtodo 6y agoI’d suggest then not basing your business model on dumping your costs on the worker and the customer, so these hacks and discussions are negated.
- koolba 6y agoDumping costs on the customer is fine if it’s transparent. Hiding behind tipping rather than wages based on the cost of providing a service is unsustainable. I mean what do they expect? A shame based tipping economy for delivery?
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- Klinky 6y agoYes, a lot of companies rely on you feeling personally bad for the person you're dealing with when having an issue with the company as a whole. The company tries to "humanize" themselves in this way by tossing a peon/cog onto the front lines to bear the brunt of customer hostilities, with little resources to actually solve problems, then when the satisfaction survey comes down they'll hold the cog personally responsible for the dissatisfaction of the customer instead of actually reviewing and changing customer-hostile policies. "Make a human connection and smile", doesn't solve dark pattern markup fees(Instacart), or terrible search interface that steers you towards the what the business wants you to buy at the price they want you to buy it at(Amazon), or that you got $200 in overdraft fees on $15 worth of purchases(any major bank).
- clairity 6y ago
- nilkn 6y agoThen it’s not a tip at all. The solution is to not show hypothetical tips to workers before the tip is finalized.
- takeda 6y agoMaybe I'm taking crazy pills, but what about getting rid of a tip altogether and have a reasonable wage? All tips do is subsidizing the employer allowing them to pay less and makes customers feel guilty to provide tip, even when there was nothing special about the service or even when it was bad.
- FalconSensei 6y agoHow are you supposed to tip BEFORE getting your things? I mean, a tip should be according to the service provided. If it takes way longer than expected, or the items are wrong, why would you tip $50? Maybe the problem is allowing the tip to be put before receiving your things...
- toomuchtodo 6y agoIt’s a dark pattern to pull people on to the platform who wouldn’t do the work for the tipless comp alone. “Surge pricing” that can be revoked by the buyer at will. At least Uber doesn’t let riders renig on the surge fee.
- barbecue_sauce 6y ago*renege
- toomuchtodo 6y agoiPhone autocorrect always seems to fail in just the wrong ways.
- choward 6y agoYou're supposed to tip? I tried Safeway delivery and there was no option to tip. Tipping needs to just go away. It's completely arbitrary.
- monadic2 6y agoTipping will be necessary while Instacart underpays their employees.
- ineedasername 6y agoIn order for tipping to go away, the employer needs to provide a higher level of compensation equal to the average $tips typically earned. But companies like tipping because it offloads some of the salary burden as an additional line-item expense to the buyer.
- takeda 6y agothe companies won't increase wage unless people stop tipping, why increase wage if employees are happy?
- jfchn 6y agoGood luck convincing companies to give up fat profits. If only we had some sort of governing body to make edicts that everyone follows. Laws, if you will. They could require companies to pay a living wage.
- ineedasername 6y agoI think the best way to solve it is simply not show shoppers the tip ahead of time so that it isn't a factor in choosing the job. That way people can't game the system. Alternatively, they could give the buyer the option of "locking" the tip so it can't be changed, or of keeping it variable, or a % of it variable so that shoppers can make an informed judgment about the likelihood of getting a certain tip level.
- jfchn 6y agoJesus, no. Just make it impossible to fuck people over like this. It's not complicated. Tweak the app so it's not possible. Done. Easy.
- wegs 6y agoPeople shouldn't get paid in tips. The fees should go up to cover cost-of-living and hazard pay, or at least until there are enough shoppers to cover demand. I should be able to get reliable orders with $0 tip. I shouldn't pay less, and people shouldn't get paid less; it should go into the fee. If it is a tip, I should have control. One shopper got me the wrong bag of food. If tips are there, tips are intended to manage that, not to bribe someone into taking an order.
- cwhiz 6y agoThere are legitimate reasons to lower a tip. Tips should come at the end after the service is rendered. If the shopper is aware of it ahead of time it’s more like a bribe than a tip.
- yefim 6y agoI think they fixed it partially. Last time I got instacart delivered the options were: keep your current tip, 5%, 10%, and 15%. You're no longer allowed to edit your tip to 0 but if you did tip a large sum then you can reduce your tip to 5%.
- kevincox 6y agoI think there is a (small, mostly hidden) option to set any tip amount. They just removed the 0% preset.
- s0rce 6y agoIf the tip is visible before the services rendered that should be separate as its basically bidding on the services not a tip. A separate tip should be editable and hidden until after services are rendered.
- rayhendricks 6y agoIt would make more sense if the grocery buyers were instead bidding on a delivery service by an instacart shopper. This is really what is happening with tipped groceries delivery.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- throwawaytippii 6y agoI know I’ll get downvoted for saying this. But I believe I shouldn’t have to tip and make up for a shitty employer. But at the same time I’ve had many bad deliveries due to this. So now I tip well then switch back to 0, this way I get normal treatment that is unrelated to how I tip. I understand that people might disagree with me but I’m tired of this constant shaming when I genuinely believe that if we all stopped tipping minimum wage would increase.
- shashanoid 6y ago> Last month, some Instagram shoppers went on strike.
- blakesterz 6y ago"In March, the company announced it will hire 300,000 new full-service shoppers on top of its existing 200,000 shoppers. It has since met that goal, and with today’s hiring news, Instacart’s shopper network will be 750,000 shoppers. The company also announced earlier this month that it is more than doubling its care team, from 1,200 agents to 3,000 agents." I am really surprised they have that many people doing this work! That's not meant to be a comment on the work or the people or anything, just those numbers are HUGE. I had no idea they had so many people.
- A4ET8a8uTh0 6y agoI was too. But then I ran across a thread on nextdoor a week or so ago. Long story short, the poster wanted a legit company as opposed to some random person purchasing stuff. I thought of explaining to the person that a random person is really what you get anyway, but I thought better of it. People do trust a company. They seem to think they do some sort of basic security check.
- wolco 6y agoOr the ability to refund if something goes wrong.
- tmpz22 6y agoMy gut tells me these statistics are heavily gamified. Is it daily active users for the app the shoppers use? Is this all shoppers who signed-up AND made deliveries this month? Is this inactive shoppers from 5 months ago? What about shoppers who sign up and never actually accept a bid?
- sitkack 6y agoInstacart needs to fix basically everything, it is in the name but they fail pretty hard at even being a cart and the web app is slow due to client side javascript. Looks like they are competing with AirBnB in how broken their web apps are. Hell some items exist, but are shadowed and in accessible presumably due to id and class collisions.
- Beefin 6y agohonest question: is server side processing generally preferred? if so, why has there been much more evolution on the JS front than on the Node/Django/RoR front?
- sitkack 6y agoInstacarts web 11/7ths SPA is slow through their own ineptness. Instacart has failed in that no one should be talking about their site.
- wolco 6y agoHuge evolution in the php world in the last few years. Javascript as a language went through big changes. Older killer patterns like jQuery were not needed. Browsers started taking a gig of memory and offers more client side power.
- ineedasername 6y agoAre there 250k people that are willing to work a job like this right now? Sure, there's lots of unemployed, but for at least the next few months they're getting ~60% of their base salary (up to some cap) + an additional $600/week.
- matthewbauer 6y agoDoes gig work disqualify you for unemployment?
- garduque 6y agoAny income earned would count against your unemployment benefit.
- ineedasername 6y agoI think it depends, in most states, by whether you pay into the unemployment insurance fund. Contract workers like gig workers usually don't, at least not in many states. I thought the bailout passed made provisions for gig workers though, but I could be wrong.
- garduque 6y agoI don't know where you live, but that is not the experience of the 32 people I have furloughed (across a handful of states), except for my one guy in MA. He is the only one I know of who is getting the $600 kicker, and the only one who is getting a meaningful percentage of his base salary. Most of my people are in GA where they max out at some $365/wk and no extra $600. So probably at some point - even if some benefit is supposed to be coming, with no particular timeframe - you want to pay your rent or get hungry, and Instacart doesn't look so bad.
- nugget 6y agoAll unemployed workers in the US receive the extra $600/week Federal benefit. Sometimes it takes time for the States to start paying (and they are particularly backlogged at the moment) but once approved, the amount paid is backdated to the filing date. Based on the extra Federal benefit, on average, any employee who was/is making less than $22/hour is better off on unemployment (exact number varies by State.) For this and other reasons, I imagine Instacart will have a hard time attracting workers.
- ineedasername 6y agoI know, slightly off-topic, but I wish instacart didn't mark up the price of each item. It feels like it lacks transparency and is some sort of dark pattern because I don't know how much I'm paying for, say, food and how much I'm paying instacart. I'd much rather see a flat % fee, say 10% or something.
- koolba 6y agoThat’s because it is a dark pattern of hiding the true price through death by a thousand fees. They try to get you from every angle. They mark up the price. They add a service fee. They add a delivery fee. They add a tip (which is its own can of worms...) If it was just “Buy whatever you want at regular price but we’ll throw on $40” a lot of people would balk.
- JMTQp8lwXL 6y agoAirbnb is also a very big user of this pattern. You can't search by total price, including fees, just the base nightly rate: which makes it difficult to compare options, since one host might have a $20 cleaning fee, and another has a $250 one. That can make a big difference in total price for short (2-3 night) stays. I end up with 40 browser tabs. Oh, and if you want to book via mobile app, they charge more for that. Have to use a web browser for the best price.
- enra 6y agoThe challenge with very specific filters with Airbnb is that you will get a lot fewer results. The prices are not exactly standardized since the host's set them. Without dates, you cannot see the true price because prices fluctuate between dates and ranges. If set the dates, and number of guests, you can see the total price and breakdown on the search page. The search page price doesn't include the taxes (I guess it's a common practice in the US), but you can see it on the listing page. The prices should be the same on mobile and web unless you search different days and the prices have fluctuated or there is a caching issue.
- s0rce 6y ago
- nprz 6y agoGrocery stores should really just turn themselves into warehouses and only allow workers in the store. Grocery stores could provide safer working conditions by checking temps of employees before entering the store and providing masks and gloves for all workers. This would help mitigate the risk of covid exposure for both employees and customers.
- itake 6y agoThat is basically what Whole Foods in SF is doing. They are only open to the public from like 9a-1p and from 1p-7p its delivery workers only.
- chirau 6y agoNot everyone can afford delivery fees, especially with these layoffs. And those fees are not small at all hey.
- s0rce 6y agoThen society should supplement their budget through social safety nets. I don't think its acceptable to risk the health of the grocery store employees because some people can't afford delivery (they don't even need delivery, just store pick up)
- notyourday 6y agoNot everyone is interested in what a random "shopper" decide that someone is going to get. It was tried in USSR where the shopper was whoever was a manager of a supermarket. Those got solidly trounced when the first "swiss markets" showed up.
- xenihn 6y agoYou can afford them if you buy 2+ months of groceries at a time.
- michaelt 6y ago
- tmpz22 6y agoAs a consumer I highly recommend Amazon Fresh. No pre-paid tip bull shit if you don't want to and in 50+ deliveries I've had exactly one bad experience that I left a customer support inquiry about - which never repeated itself. Amazon logistics are unmatched and there is a very clean continuity between deliveries that shows quality control or at least per-location notes on accessing buildings and units efficiently. Down side is you have to refresh the checkout page throughout the day in order to get a delivery window. Sometimes you luck out and can get same-day delivery, sometimes you have to wait a couple days.
- malandrew 6y agoHow Amazon doesn't have a queuing ability for delivery slots is beyond me. This requirement to keep checking back is absurd. My father has Parkinsons and it's very difficult for him to go to the page and refresh it. People don't understand the disappointment of doing a very difficult task to be told "try again later". On top of that you have engineers in the Bay Area running scripts like ahertel/Amazon-Fresh-Whole-Foods-delivery-slot-finder and taking all the slots before people like my father even have a chance of getting one.
- wolco 6y agoNot sure a good solution exists. There is more demand than slots. Waiting a month for groceries while stock changes and you are left with 50% of your original list doesn't work either. If he can get a slot or not it is better to know immediately so he can shop around. This service isn't for your father, another service that provides help for people with parkijsons would assist him in these and other situations.
- malandrew 6y agoThis service absolutely is for people like my father and people who are not like my father. A shitty user experience that is totally solvable is the problem. He's also immunocompromised with congestive heart failure and high blood pressure. Due to this terrible user experience, he's forced to leave his home to go to the supermarket in person when he's one of the people that should not be leaving his home. A good solution is the FIFO queuing system that Ticketmaster uses for ticket sales or the one that Yelp uses for first-come-first-serve restaurants like Nojo in Hayes Valley, SF. Let people sign up for slots, put their name on a list, and prompt them to choose slots as they come up. This can also be used to prevent people from getting two slows back to back before someone else gets their shot if you make it so they can only sign up again after their name has been called and they've gotten a slot.
- paulcole 6y agoOh wow, 250,000 new employees? That’s a lot of benefits and overhead this is going to cost them.
- jedimastert 6y ago> That’s a lot of benefits and overhead this is going to cost them. There are no benefits. It's independent labor
- paulcole 6y agoAre you positive about that? I would’ve thought the U.S. government would crack down on a tech company pulling a stunt like that?
- shaunxcode 6y agoThis sounds exciting but without UBI and UHC (housing and health) it just feels like a half measure. Engaging in necessary skilled labor is the ideal (liberal arts and sciences) - the next best is un-skilled necessary labor (grocery delivery lives here) and after that skilled un-necessary labor (eg visual and audible/musical arts skills crafts games) and finally that leaves us with un-skilled in-necessary labor (Vices live here). If we have universal mutual aid as a guiding principal it would let people move towards where they need and want to be as their lower level maslavian needs would be apriori. The reality as well is that many necessary forms of labor can be fulfilled by unskilled labor if we try (Automation lives here).
- chrisco255 6y agoYeah, who pays for that? You burden half the population with 50 hour work weeks to pay for the other half to sit on their ass? You call liberal arts "necessary"? No, farming and trucking is necessary. Blue collar labor is necessary. White collar labor is a luxury.
- malandrew 6y agoI would go further. If no one is willing to pay for it, it isn't labor, it's a hobby/leisure.
- MuffinFlavored 6y agoCan you give me some examples of skilled liberal arts labor that is in demand? I've always heard a liberal arts degree was a bad investment.
- gnrlst 6y agoMy biggest gripe with this headline is the word "hire". Let's rephrase that to: "250k shoppers signed up". They were not hired. They don't have benefits, they don't have medical, and they are most definitely not employees.
- gms 6y agoThe word 'hire' has nothing to do with whether the job is full-time or part-time: it applies to both (e.g. 'I hired a babysitter').
- masonic 6y ago"Hiring" a babysitter means you have engaged her/him for a specific period and compensation commitment. Otherwise, you're just adding them to your Contacts. Instacart hasn't hired these people in any traditional sense, they've just added those people to their Contacts with no compensation commitment.