
I'm disappointed by Instacart - calebio
http://dentafrice.com/life/2013/04/01/im-disappointed-by-instacart/
======
apoorvamehta
Hey Caleb,

CEO at Instacart here. I want to apologize for the way you, and a small number
of other early adopters of Instacart Express, were treated.

It's true that we changed the policy for Instacart Express so that orders
under $35 were charged a delivery fee. We also did a poor job of notifying our
customers of this. We did send an email, but due to a bug a handful of
customers, yourself included, never got the email. That sucks, and we're
really sorry.

Please rest assured we will refund you any delivery fees AND any subscription
fees that you have had to pay as a result of this.

We are in the process of reaching out to everyone who could have been affected
with the next steps.

Again, I'm really sorry we screwed this up and we're going to make it right.

Thanks, Apoorva

~~~
elemeno
You generally can't just change the policy - you entered into a contract with
the people who paid $99 for a year of free delivery. You can change the policy
for new buyers, but the agreement with the older ones still exists.

~~~
dmor
I'm pretty sure that, like most sites, they have something in their TOS that
says they reserve the right to change the terms of offering their service at
their sole discretion. When you sign up for the service you are agreeing to
the TOS even if you pay a fee, and this is quite standard.

It sounds like they tried to do the right thing and notify customers of the
change, and people could have chosen to unsubscribe if they didn't like the
new terms, but there was some kind of bug and they are fixing it.

~~~
milkshakes
That sounds like hiding behind fine print, which is certainly legal, but I'm
not sure how that makes it the "right thing". Why isn't the "right thing"
honoring the original arrangement with existing customers, at least until it
expires?

~~~
dmor
When you bring up contracts, the small print matters. It's still not clear
what the original terms were, and since I wasn't an Instacart Express users I
didn't see the company's messaging, but I'd assume they're not out to screw
people to the tune of $8. Unlike most people on this thread, I assume the best
of startups until they do something truly evil.

~~~
milkshakes
I never said they were trying to screw people, I just find it strange that
it's apparently okay to offer a product for several months, take people's
money for it, and then change the terms underneath them.

Sure I understand that Instacart isn't a charity, and they must have realized
that this was clearly not a profitable business model. I guess what I don't
understand is why they can't own the mistake and eat the loss. They didn't
advertise "free deliveries for $99 as long as our math and assumptions hold",
they advertised "free deliveries for $99 for a year".

And people paid them money for it.

Why is it unreasonable for Instacart Express customers to expect what they
paid for? Why is it acceptable for Instacart to effectively bait and switch
their early adopters, regardless of their motivations?

------
llambda
Instacart continues to disappoint me: I had a detailed conversation with one
of their drivers: the driver relayed to me a number of disappointing and
distressing aspects of their employment, including an opaque policy regarding
tip dispersal, differences in compensation between new and old employees, e.g.
commission for new employees, and other shady discrepancies.

Now compound this with a general degradation in quality of service: Recently
I've had a driver attempt to deliver the wrong groceries to me, in fact the
driver almost left before I could tell them that these were not the groceries
I had ordered...prior to that I've had several incorrect or missing items that
I was billed for. I wonder if this push towards changes in their driver
employment terms has led to a overall lowered quality in the service? This is
just speculation of course, a number of factors probably contribute to this.
But the bottom line is my experience as a customer has continued to
deteriorate.

I had reached out to Intacart directly over email to try to understand how the
drivers were compensated so I could determine how much to tip the drivers. I
also inquired about the exact mark up over the base cost of an item: I feel
like I'm being charged at minimum three times over the base cost: 1) mark up
2) delivery fee 3) driver tip. Contrast this with Uber, who roll everything
into a single fee that I never have to think twice about. At any rate, I never
received any response from Instacart and I'm still not sure how to
appropriately compensate the drivers. It's really disappointing that Instacart
has both declined in quality and made it more difficult for me as a customer
to understand them as a regular expense.

I would probably be better off just walking to the grocery store or taking a
cab: at least then I know exactly what I'm paying for and can anticipate the
rough cost.

~~~
tptacek
This is an interesting comment, but just a quick note that if you talk to Uber
drivers, you'll sometimes get specific complaints about the comp and service
model they use too; the big difference is that Uber hides the issue from you;
that might be a good thing, but there's a way to look at it where it's a bad
thing too.

(I started talking to most of my drivers after Jason Fried posted to Twitter
that he'd been getting uniformly positive feedback from his drivers; that has
not been my experience, although I've never gotten overtly negative feedback.)

I'm always hesitant to relate anything I hear from talking to Uber drivers
because I'm worried that Uber might be smart enough to track online comments
back to drivers.

~~~
tlb
I've heard bankers making 7 figures complain about their compensation model. I
think there's no way to turn the knobs so that nobody complains. But indeed,
service-oriented companies should absorb the flak and not leave the customer
feeling vaguely guilty.

~~~
tptacek
I think that's a reasonable principle to have if you're not allowing your
service team to accept tips.

------
nlh
I have mixed feelings about posts like this. I understand the point -- public
shaming to resolve a service/pricing issue, but I don't like the way its
handled. It's the same sort of things reviewers do on Yelp (and why I find
most Yelp reviews to be essentially worthless) -- "I have a specific, personal
customer service issue with this business, so I'm going to make it as public
as possible in an effort to drum up support"

On the one hand, this will (or at least should) generate a response from
Instacart, and perhaps will have its intended effect - a policy change /
refund / etc.

But on the other hand, I don't like the feel of how these things play out.
Customer has issue. Customer makes contact with company and receives response.
Customer not satisfied with response so instead of escalating within company,
customer decides to "go public" and shame company.

And now this thread has turned into a piling-on of everyone's personal
Instacart issues. Is this productive? Is this helping Instacart improve or is
it just a cathartic airing of grievances?

I just feel like these sorts of things hurt the company more than help them,
and it feels vindictive.

I could be totally off-base here, but such is the way of gut responses...

~~~
evdawg
The author didn't even ask for what he wants: his year of free delivery under
$35.

I'm sure Instacart would have no problem at the very least waiving two $8
fees.

My advice to people calling into customer service departments? Just ask. The
person on the other line can't read your mind. If you ask for what you want,
you'd be surprised at how often you'll get it.

~~~
silencio
I know of one person that publicly complained after contacting Instacart
privately about the change in service:

> the representative was defensive and used "we're a startup" as an excuse for
> the shift.

<https://twitter.com/jessiechar/status/315603016180973568>

~~~
evdawg
I didn't know about this. Still, I was expecting a little longer of a
communication with support-- 'escalation' or at least 'the ask' should have
been done before the public shaming, in my mind. All I see now is a cordial
and polite explanation from Instacart.

Lets get real: outside of two $8 charges that he's not even asked to be
reversed, this is exactly the same service that he describes as "great" in the
same post.

------
Matt_Mickiewicz
Sounds like they are re-living the lessons learned by Kozmo (anybody remember
them?). Free, local delivery is a tough business, and people will absue it
without minimums.

Kozmo learned that customers would order a pack of gum... expecting free
delivery (which they did honor... until they went out of business).

Always really good to know what went before you:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kozmo.com>

~~~
silencio
Even if you have Instacart Express, they enforce a $10 minimum per store you
want to order from on top of the delivery fee. Plus this wasn't a service
offered to any except the earliest adopters. If they can't profit or deal with
the volume from the early adopters buying at least the minimum for a store and
picking the (formerly free, now only free for $35+) slower delivery option,
they need to phase out the service altogether.

~~~
ruswick
Honestly, the pricing structure of this company is so convoluted and their
fees seem so usuriously high, I just can't see how this is preferable to
simply walking to the nearest store in 99% of circumstances.

~~~
muppetman
I'm Australian and when visiting LA about 10 years ago I decided I wanted to
see some things. Every time I asked for directions, local people would say
"Well you get on this motorway and then turn here" etc. I'd say "No, I want to
walk" and people would look at me like I was a leper.

Maybe it's LA specific, but I was amazed at just what a "You don't WALK
anywhere" culture there was, at least with all the people I spoke to.

Or maybe I'm the crazy one for wanting to walk everywhere!

~~~
shadowrunner
Well then call the funny farm and have me committed, because I dont drive. My
main mode of transportation is walking.

I'm actually known around town as the _"guy who walks everywhere"_. It's like
I'm the town freak.

More seriously though, in this culture, cars and driving are like a religion.
I also think that driving instead of walking disconnects people from nature
and from knowing their own neighborhood, both socially and ecologically.

Traveling at high speeds in an insulated metal cage can have that effect.

~~~
eric_the_read
I think this idea that 'driving disconnects people from nature and from
knowing their own neighborhood' is silly, and possibly harmful if it leads
people down suboptimal urban planning designs. It sounds lovely and humanistic
and all that, but I would love to see some evidence that it's actually,
y'know, true.

I walk my neighborhood (2-3 times a week), and I can't say I am any more
connected when walking than when driving. I see no more people when I walk
than when I drive, and the ones I do see don't recognize me nor I them. It's
not as if walking makes me suddenly introduce myself to people, or that doing
so will induce me to somehow pick up (nonexistent) litter or the like, or
somehow notice things I wouldn't otherwise.

~~~
shadowrunner
_It's not as if walking makes me suddenly introduce myself to people, or that
doing so will induce me to somehow pick up... litter or the like, or somehow
notice things I wouldn't otherwise._

Sorry to hear that.

~~~
eric_the_read
This is what I don't get, that people think that walking somehow magically
makes people somehow more social than they are. Maybe I'm wrong! But I'd like
to see data that proves people are more social when walking than driving. I
think the lack of social interaction is the controlling factor, not a
particular mode of transportation people choose.

~~~
shadowrunner
Fear wears many masks.

------
bpatrianakos
I'm disappointed in this post. A person has every right to be upset about a
situation like the one the author describes but to frame it like the company
is doing something wrong and quitting in protest is a bit childish to me.

Okay, they changed the policy. Companies do that all the time and as much as
we don't like it, most often they need to so they can either continue to be
profitable or just to continue providing their service. This seems like such a
case. (Imagine Instacart's yearly customers ordering a banana from the grocery
store and not paying any shipping fee - this was probably done to prevent
abuse).It's disappointing but not out of line.

They sent out a notice. One person and their two friends didn't get the memo.
That's truly unfortunate but then to wonder out loud if an email ever got sent
out at all is another point against the author. The insinuation is that the
company is lying.

This genre of blog post has gotten out of hand. It was once reserved for truly
egregious acts. Now every time someone falls into an obvious edge-case they
blow the whole thing out of proportion.

The bottom line here is that the company had to change their policy, they sent
out notice of that and the author is framing them as the bad guys because he
didn't get the memo. It's okay and understandable to be disappointed by being
charged for something you thought you wouldn't be charged for but nothing
underhanded happened here so it's not alright to frame Instacart as the
villain.

~~~
bsimpson
Changing the terms of a contract after it's been signed is shady, and it's
totally fair-game to publicly call out a company that does it, especially
since the OP contacted Instacart first to make sure it wasn't a mistake.

I'm friends with one of the founders of Instacast and I'd love to see them
win, but the way they handled this is really not OK.

------
ruswick
This is why I'm weary of relinquishing my credit card information to
companies. I have no oversight and the companies can alter the terms
arbitrarily. Despite the fact that this may be illegal, the amount of effort
and money spent litigating wouldn't be lucrative at all. So, effectively,
people are stuck tolerating these sorts of dubious, consumer-hostile
alterations to terms.

People are infatuated with decrying the evils of advertising-centric business-
models, and are weary of giving their email address, search history, etc. to
companies, but willingly relinquish their bank accounts and credit cards...

Long story short, never trust companies, especially when they have the
capacity to surreptitiously take your money.

~~~
drusenko
It's not nearly as bad as you make it sound. As the consumer you have a very
powerful tool at your disposal when using a credit card: the chargeback.

If you ever feel like someone has charged you incorrectly, you can call your
CC company and file a claim (or, if you use AMEX, you can file a claim
completely online).

Your credit card company trusts you 100%, and it's a huge PITA for the
merchant to prove otherwise.

~~~
arbuge
Chargebacks are possible within a limited time horizon. Generally 30 - 90 days
depending on card company; also depends on whether you paid the bill or not.

In this case I think there was an alleged breach of contract several months
down the road after the original poster had paid for an annual service.

------
darkchasma
I wouldn't think that they can change a contract mid way through without
express consent. Maybe they're hoping it's small enough that no one will
lawyer up?

~~~
blibble
assuming it's like the UK you just fill in a form on government website, wait
a few weeks, and your cheque arrives in the post

<https://www.moneyclaim.gov.uk>

~~~
bmeckel
Site says the person who wrote the post is from CA. In the US it's a bit more
of a pain to deal with stuff like that. I would assume small claims court
would be the way to go if they don't offer a refund, but I can't really say
for sure.

~~~
dangrossman
A simple call to the card-issuing bank is likely all it takes to get your
money back. Not receiving the service described is a valid chargeback reason.

------
josh2600
Bad press; simple fix is to grandfather the existing subs for 1 year and
implement new policy on new subs.

They should fix this before it blows up...

~~~
silencio
They don't offer new subs anymore, and have not for a while. My boyfriend has
Instacart Express while I don't and I was looking to sign up several months
ago but was out of luck. Curiously enough, he has never actually been charged
for the service but it's in his account. OP may want to check that too.. and
for what it's worth, I know 3 people with Express that are all annoyed by this
change. I think it's incredibly dumb to do this to your earliest adopters,
since these three people are the ones that got me to try Instacart in the
first place. At least give some kind of notice.

If anything I'm kind of disgruntled by the all-over-the-place pricing,
availability, and quality Instacart seems to be offering nowadays - $7.99 for
under $35 deliveries (was VERY hard to find mention of this number anywhere
other than on the delivery selection page until recently - even when reported
in the press was mentioned as "deliveries from $3.99" which was the usual line
that also included the faster delivery service for, iirc, $15), $3.99 for
over, free delivery ranging from, I don't know, $50 to $70 spent depending on
the weekend, no mention of when deliveries are unavailable for the rest of the
night, mistakes made when picking items... I want to love the service but
after a point it's kind of just like... for $7.99 and the markup on most items
to be delivered tomorrow morning because they're all out of slots a few hours
early, I can just grab a Zipcar or walk and get exactly what I want from the
markets I want (e.g. bi-rite). I hope Instacart improve quickly.

~~~
eridius
I was eventually charged for the express, around the same time as they
implemented the pricing changes. I also never got an email.

Curiously, my instacart express membership lasts from when I first signed up,
not when I got charged, but the picture attached to the article shows March
20, 2013 as the start date there. At the same time the author says he signed
up "last year". So I'm a bit confused.

~~~
calebio
I signed up last year for Express and it renewed (automatically) on the date
that the screenshot shows. It's just showing the current active subscription.
Sorry for the confusion.

------
vegashacker
Just had to go back and check my receipts. I have express and all my orders
were over $35 since January so no bad surprises for me.

I wonder what's going to happen with Instacart. Some days I love it. Sometimes
it just seems so expensive and frustrating. We were driving home from
Sacramento on Sunday and wanted to make a pasta dish for some out of town
guests. It seemed perfect--get our shopping done while we were stuck in the
car. But what ended up happening was every item was "commonly out of stock"
and so we're supposed to pick a replacement. But the suggested replacement
for, e.g., asparagus was broccoli. Other items were similar. And at least on
iphone, we didn't know how to pick a better replacement. So we ended up
scrapping the order and stopping by Safeway on the way home.

Writing this, I wonder if a first-class concept of recipes in Instacart would
improve the situation.

And since I'm babbling, I'll just add that although I haven't tried it yet,
I'm excited by the idea of ordering Instacart to someone else's house (say,
I'm at a dinner party and we need some ingredients.) Of course the minimum for
free delivery does make this potentially less useful.

------
dsl
Instacart does a lot of shady stuff. Anyone who has made the mistake of
allowing push notifications for the iOS app knows what I mean.

~~~
DanI-S
Can you elaborate?

~~~
awwstn
I allowed push notifications and was receiving them daily (maybe more, can't
remember). While a bit annoying, I definitely wouldn't call overuse of push
notifications "shady."

~~~
alexwright
What were the "notifications" of though? If it's just like the AirPush
bullshit people were peddling on Android a while back, how is it any different
that the adware like BonziBuddy that found its way onto unsuspecting desktop
system trays?

If it's a legit notification of something then fair enough, but I don't see
why/how dsl would complain about that.

------
mikegreco
I've mostly stopped using Instacart, but my account is still active and I
didn't receive an email either.

I would love to use Instacart again, but my new apartment ( 1/5 of a mile to
the east of my old digs) in Sunnyvale isn't supported. If it were for a month
or two while they roll out I'd cut them slack, but it's been this way for a
year now. There appear to be some seriously compounding problems going on over
there, I would expect they aren't too happy about Google entering the market
as well.

------
pplante
I still want my refund on items I never received from Instacrap. There are
about $15 worth of groceries that mysteriously never made it to me, but I
still paid for.

~~~
eridius
Then why didn't you request one? When you get your receipt and they ask you to
rate your delivery, there's a link for if you had problems. And if you rate <5
stars, they also give you a few options for any problems you had, including
"missing or incorrect items". They've always been prompt about refunding me if
I tell them that they forgot an item.

~~~
pplante
Because after a bit of back and forth with no end in sight, I gave up. There
shouldn't have been back and forth at all. My delivery was all sorts of messed
up with incorrect items chosen as replacements. For instance I ordered deli
meat from the deli counter, instead I got Oscar Meyer
somethingthatlookslikemeat.

I am not the only person I know who gave up on Instacart after having so many
incorrect items delivered. Safeway delivery is just as painful to deal with,
but at least they pick better replacements.

------
matobago
Instacart has another subscriber (me), bad press it's often good for
startups...

~~~
cornetto
yeah. they have the difficult decision now of either keeping the policy and
losing customers, or removing the policy and losing money on every order.

I really think you'll be disappointed though. The company can hardly be
trusted or taken seriously.

------
nwenzel
I think the OP and my own experience with Instacart (see below) highlights the
importance of high-quality customer-facing employees for startups. If the CEO
has to step in to solve simple problems, you're probably doing it wrong.

We had a weird issue with Instacart. We purchased $83.27 worth of groceries.
Two items were out of stock so they refunded $10.99. Except... the two items
cost more than $10.99. We've been trying to get the right refund but their
customer service reps keep saying we already got the refund. Yeah, the wrong
amount.

------
bdcravens
We're lean! We're innovating! We're disrupting!

The fact that a company chose a pricing model that doesn't fit anymore doesn't
mean they get to dismiss their customers like this. How are we to know that
they weren't pulling a bait and switch:

1) Offer pricing model too good to be true (Express was announced in August)
2) Get hockey stick growth, get VC (they closed $2.6M round in October) 3)
Change terms 4) Profit!

------
alxbrun
Tough decision to make, Instacart:

\- keep the policy unchanged, and lose your customers, or

\- remove the $35 minimum, and lose money on every order

Welcome to the real world !

~~~
mseebach
Well, no. There's the middle ground they missed: Make damn sure you tell your
customers that you're changing the rules.

~~~
bpatrianakos
They did. Emails get lost. Snail mail gets lost. It happens, it sucks but if
companies have to refund people every time they don't get the memo about
something we're all in for some trouble.

~~~
tomguthrie
Sounds like a message during checkout (click checkout and instead of
confirmation of order get a message explaining the change, and have to click
checkout/confirm or something) would be helpful to alleviate this problem.

~~~
alexwright
That would be totally reasonable, and it's something I see all the time. It's
usually titled "We recently change how blahed blah works..."

------
SonicSoul
best thing i ever did, was to setup automatic emails with AMEX every time my
card is used w/out being physically present during transaction.

now i catch these types of things instantly.

like that time i signed up for year of free amazon ec2 instance, finding out
that amazon charged my card $240 after 2 weeks.. apparently i chose
incorrectly during setup and went down a totally different pricing path.
unfortunately none of this came up during setup. thanks to that email i was
able to reverse it that same day

------
moeedm
Shit happens. They've realized there is a problem and they came clean about
it. Move on.

------
derrida
I'm disappointed by rampant consumerism and a culture of entitlement.

------
rogerclark
their website looks shitty. that's what disappoints me

------
OGinparadise
Unless I got it wrong: He paid $100 for free deliveries a year instead of
paying $7.99 each order. Instacart changed it and started charging him $7.99
on orders under $35. Solution is to give his money back (maybe pro-rated) or
honor the original deal. But Instacart doesn't have a choice, sending someone
to deliver you a $5 ice cream isn't sustainable

~~~
smackfu
It shouldn't be his problem if Instacart offered a deal they would lose money
on. And they are making it his problem.

~~~
OGinparadise
That's why I said to either refund him or honor their original agreement.
Obviously not renew it for the next year.

------
jodrellblank
Put the TL;DR at the top!

 _TL;DR Instacart offered a premium subscription called Instacart Express that
waives delivery fees on all orders for $99 a year. They seem to have silently
changed their policy and now charge $7.99 p/delivery on orders that are under
$35. They also claim to have sent an email regarding this policy that at least
3 people have not received nor have they publicly posted any announcement of
this policy change on their website._

~~~
bdcravens
It's TL;DR not TL;DWTR

~~~
jodrellblank
It's the same intent. Put it at the start, call it an "abstract" and
everyone's fine with using it to see whether they want to read the whole thing
or not.

------
ChrisNorstrom
I think this a perfect opportunity for us to learn about Man-pologizing.

"Man-pologize"

When men pretend to apologize while blaming someone else for their mistake.

Example: "I'm terribly sorry that you didn't get my email with important
changes to the terms that affects your bank account, I'm sorry it's your fault
you didn't get it."

Most men man-pologize and blame someone else, anyone else, for their mistake
in an attempt to not hurt their egos. My father and brother and many other
males do this. I used to do it too until I broke out of the habit after
catching myself man-pologizing several times.

 _The opposite of this is fem-pologizing, the female act of blaming oneself
for everything_

~~~
JungleGymSam
I find your opinion and association with gender to be odd.

