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?).
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.
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.
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.
You’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.
You don’t need Walmart+ to use curbside pickup. It’s completely free, I do it all the time. It’s so much nicer being able to pull up and load the groceries in and not have to walk around the store for an hour.
It’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 four’s worth of groceries home on the bus? Less fine. Especially if the bus stop isn’t actually close to their home. Then it’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 four’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, and… yeah. Grocery delivery is a much better option.
Then it’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 four’s worth of groceries
so how large is the team required for this groceries? To pay 2-3 people a fair wage for the time required to do this task sounds $$$$. Most people who live far away from a grocery store without transportation do so because they are poor. Does IC service sparsely populated rural areas where one must walk through an industrial park? Are they willing to make these long treks or do they have a max distance?
is the cart person using the bus? Or they have access to a vehicle?
FWIW I go to a grocery store with substantial customer base as you describe. Families doing groceries together and the bus takes 10 minutes at the stop while everyone squeezes on. Which I am curious, is that a hypothetical or real situation? Me and my friends and family are largely non-drivers in a variety of situations. Most people walk, bike, scoot, ebike, roll and transit/assistedtransit to grocerys and laundry and all other chores for ourselves and household members. People who are disabled, very old etc. So I have been there done that (even earlier today) and been in the midst of people doing it. Generally people get a buggy or even a wagon or take a cab/uber. (I've seen a couple people with a folding nylon waggon that looks pretty great.) There are always cabs at the grocery store because people are doing big shops.
Sadly, seems like the problem you are describing is basically lack of food distro and public transit infrastructure. And possibly underlying at the individual level too long work hours and unrealistic expectations put on people of what can be done in remaining hours (especially on the wife if there is one).
Since you describe this as a job requiring multiple people to do it and travel though arduous conditions I am wondering, how much do they get paid?
I am thinking it takes 1 (maybe more) hour to do the grocery +1 hours of travel each way =4 hours
It requires at least 2 (but maybe more?) people so 2x4 hours = 8 hours.
8 hours x $20 = $160 would be a reasonable rate for this job. Plus the parking, gas, bus fare and other travel costs. Not even considering pension, benefits, vacation/sick time which everyone is entitled to.
Me the people around me who live like this general have limited money and I find it hard to image paying $200 every week on top of the grocery bill which is already crazy these days.
Wait, what? Half an hour to pull the groceries off shelves and get them through checkout. Let's be real, that isn't going to take an hour, even for a week's worth of groceries for a nuclear family.
Two hours round-trip for the travel. Not four hours, two and a half real-time.
The team-size needed for this, assuming a delivery vehicle, is one. More people would be needed if you're on public transport because you don't control the environment the groceries are in, but we're not assuming that. So, 2.5 hours, 1 person, is 2.5 hours of wages. At $20 an hour, $70. Round up to $80 or $85 to account for benefits and sundries -- that's 21% of wages, which should be reasonable for non-wage expenses.
That's still not great, but let's not inflate the numbers.
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 don’t get a rental car, you can have Walmart deliver your groceries to your vacation spot. That’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!
Walmart pickup is free. Walmart delivery is ~$100 a year.
For me, that’s totally worth it. It has saved me hours of shopping in Walmart, and also prevented me from buying things I don’t need.
It’s given me groceries when I worked 5am to 11pm the whole month, and also when I was so depressed I literally couldn’t get out of bed for 2 weeks. (It’s been a wild ride.)
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 there’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 “better” quality version is a better move than cheaper.
Better is in quotes since more expensive doesn’t equal better quality.
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. 😭
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.
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.
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