ATLANTA — Over the last few weeks more people have been ordering their groceries to be delivered through services like Instacart.
In fact Instacart is hiring 300,000 new shoppers to keep up with the demand. But some shoppers employed by the company said things need to change.
“It's not worth it to go out and risk my safety and the safety of my family for, you know, seven dollars," said Shika, a shopper who has worked for Instacart since 2017.
Shika said since this pandemic hit, the number of shoppers has gone up and her work load has dropped down. Her tips for deliveries have gone down too, sometimes because items are out of stock
"The store is out of pasta or taco seasoning or something, and so, the more items I have to replace or refund, so at the end of it, I'm looking at fourteen dollars for two hours of work," she explained.
And sometimes, Shika said, customers are tip baiting - putting a large tip down to lure in a shopper to accept the job, then changing or erasing that tip after their groceries are delivered.
Shika added that the contact-free delivery can cause other issues, too.
"I have never had this many complaints in the three years I have done Instacart, and I don't know if it's for free groceries or refunds or whatever," she said.
She told 11Alive she hopes these issues will be resolved once the pandemic passes. As for all the new shoppers? Shika expects most will go back to their old jobs.
She said she’ll keep hoping for changes and shopping - as long as senior citizens and families need her help.
"Yeah, I'm gonna stick around because there comes a point where it's worth it," she said.
11Alive reached out to Instacart, who said they are making changes to their tipping structure, like removing the option for none and adding in a new default amount, so you can pick your tip amount moving forward. As far as tip baiting goes, they say it's very rare. They said in March, it happened less than 1 percent of the time.
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