# Instacart figured out a way to make sure the most undesirable batches are accepted



## Irishjohn831 (Aug 11, 2017)

Activating so many new drivers some of the worst batches I’ve ever seen pop up and are gone in milliseconds.

it’s almost funny the Pavlovian response they have created where people are accepting batches that are 10 miles and pay $7.00.


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## Taxi2Uber (Jul 21, 2017)

If you didn't know, there are some 30,000,000 people newly unemployed.

Some, I would think, are pretty desperate.


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## Blatherskite (Nov 30, 2016)

One of these companies should mint the motto: "Stay home! We bring the COVID to _you!"_


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## UberLaLa (Sep 6, 2015)

_Treat 'em like dirt and they'll stick to you like much. ~ T-Rad_


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## SWside (Oct 20, 2019)

Wife signed up just to see what was available in our area (Cleveland suburbs).
One of our higher end local grocery chains is using IC. The batches averaged around 30-35 items and required 5-7 miles to deliver. For that you’d get $7-20.... with vast majority paying around $12.

Two batches were common. By the time you get to the store and get home you’re earning $1 a mile for driving and the shopping time is for free. ;-)


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## kingcorey321 (May 20, 2018)

Yes these order prices have fell a lot in the last month.
I started the same day c19 was first announced on tv. I was only accepting 20 to 25 an up.
Today you see orders for 9 bucks to 14 bucks. Some times you will see a very good one so if your going to work for them sit and wait a few minutes cherry pick.
Here im currently driving gh order after order there averaging 15 bucks each im making 25 an hour with gh.


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## IthurstwhenIP (Jan 12, 2018)

Tough part is the new gig worker is not the slacker who wanted a lifestyle during the boom employment years. These new ants come from jobs where the used to work...do stuff...punch clocks. They have an ethic that blows me away


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## Lil'Lyftie (Feb 23, 2020)

IthurstwhenIP said:


> Tough part is the new gig worker is not the slacker who wanted a lifestyle during the boom employment years. These new ants come from jobs where the used to work...do stuff...punch clocks. They have an ethic that blows me away


And yet they'll be mired in poverty, while the only people getting rich off this modern-day serfhood are Instacart executives and shareholders, and the blasé rich people who send the peons out to shop for them for pennies (which frees up their time to do things like gardening, golfing, and optimizing their trust funds with Instacart stock).


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## ariel5466 (May 16, 2019)

I've never done IC because I hate grocery shopping so much (hate it even more these last couple months) that there's no way I would do it for someone else for less than $50. IC would never pay me that, so no IC for me.


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## 051293848 (Aug 25, 2019)

gig economy = exploitation
exploitation = American capitalism


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## SWside (Oct 20, 2019)

Need some wisdom here.
So right now, all from the same store, there are 10 orders in 6 batches for $115 total. About 300 items total.

1. Would the algorithm let me take all of these or would it block me after I grabbed a batch or two? The store is far, I wouldn’t want to do it for less than 1/2 of all batches. 

2. Is this worth it? I’d be putting perhaps 400 qty in my cart. I can’t imagine keeping all of these orders separate, even though I think my wife is organized. How many batches is too many? Plus 10 deliveries right - so ice cream is a big problem.


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## IthurstwhenIP (Jan 12, 2018)

They need insta.mote a gig service where we come and get the remote for folks when it’s left outside arms distance from the couch. If I could get off the couch I would start this service and ipo it and then never have to leave the couch.


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## SWside (Oct 20, 2019)

IthurstwhenIP said:


> They need insta.mote a gig service where we come and get the remote for folks when it's left outside arms distance from the couch. If I could get off the couch I would start this service and ipo it and then never have to leave the couch.


Going by your username I thought you were a muscle car aficionado, probably Olds 442's.

But those guys love their garage, I'm guessing you just don't care to spell check.

&#128514;

You do you!


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## IthurstwhenIP (Jan 12, 2018)

SWside said:


> Going by your username I thought you were a muscle car aficionado, probably Olds 442's.
> 
> But those guys love their garage, I'm guessing you just don't care to spell check.
> 
> ...


you have some kinda thing for muscle car guys? @SWside


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## UberBud (Aug 8, 2016)

SWside said:


> Need some wisdom here.
> So right now, all from the same store, there are 10 orders in 6 batches for $115 total. About 300 items total.
> 
> 1. Would the algorithm let me take all of these or would it block me after I grabbed a batch or two? The store is far, I wouldn't want to do it for less than 1/2 of all batches.
> ...


You can only choose one batch at a time. A batch may be more than one customer's order.


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## Last Ant Standing (Jan 14, 2020)

Taxi2Uber said:


> If you didn't know, there are some 30,000,000 people newly unemployed.
> 
> Some, I would think, are pretty desperate.


If they're unemployed, they should stay home and collect unemployment. They shouldn't be working and competing with people who can't collect and trying to make money.



SWside said:


> Wife signed up just to see what was available in our area (Cleveland suburbs).
> One of our higher end local grocery chains is using IC. The batches averaged around 30-35 items and required 5-7 miles to deliver. For that you'd get $7-20.... with vast majority paying around $12.
> 
> Two batches were common. By the time you get to the store and get home you're earning $1 a mile for driving and the shopping time is for free. ;-)


Some people don't have common sense. You can work much much less and get pay much more by delivering food than shopping for IC.


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## ANT 7 (Oct 14, 2018)

My local supermarket delivers any order over $45, for a flat $8, absolutely anywhere in the city. If they don't have an item I want in stock, the picker phones me and confirms substitutions.

IC and others are still charging too much at present because they can. They are relatively new companies and in a time of pandemic, the term "price discovery" cannot really happen as demand is keeping things stable, for now.


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## Nats121 (Jul 19, 2017)

A major obstacle to getting decent Instacart orders are the scammers who are using bots to steal the decent orders.


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## Lady Driver LBC (May 15, 2017)

ariel5466 said:


> I've never done IC because I hate grocery shopping so much (hate it even more these last couple months) that there's no way I would do it for someone else for less than $50. IC would never pay me that, so no IC for me.


100% THIS! Did three batches and quit. The pay is HORRIBLE for what all you've got to do. Add the tip bait-and-switch and the bot situation to the mix and it's a complete mess. So not worth it. &#128581;&#127998;‍♀


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## New2This (Dec 27, 2015)

Irishjohn831 said:


> Activating so many new drivers some of the worst batches I've ever seen pop up and are gone in milliseconds.
> 
> it's almost funny the Pavlovian response they have created where people are accepting batches that are 10 miles and pay $7.00.


They're the same ants that take a $2.62 ping that's 20+ minutes away


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## NauticalWheeler (Jun 15, 2019)

Weekends are still very good in my market for UE, weekdays though....

I started mixing back in some pax about 2 weeks ago


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## UberBud (Aug 8, 2016)

IC's programming is junk. I've seen batches offered on the same screen from cities that are more than 60 miles apart. They are filling the screen with distant crap to cover up the fact that bots are scraping all the in city orders before you ever see them.


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## Flier5425 (Jun 2, 2016)

New2This said:


> They're the same ants that take a $2.62 ping that's 20+ minutes away


When you try to explain it to them they either don't understand or can't comprehend how taking a 7 order is bad. "but it is gone so quick I have to take it otherwise someone else will get it." is what I have heard from people. My response to them is YOU are the reason it is gone so quick because YOU took the offer. Now go shop the 15 items and drive the 10 miles round trip for your 7 dollars. (15 items will take about 25 minutes from the time you get into the parking lot until the time you leave the parking lot. 10 miles driving will take about 23 minutes So that is 48 minutes and 10 miles for $ 7.00).


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## Launchpad McQuack (Jan 8, 2019)

I signed up with Instacart last week and did my first delivery today. I'm not impressed. When I accepted the offer, it said that the payout would be $12. The order just showed up in my earnings, and they're only paying me $10.16. WTF??? This company is worse than Uber.


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## Launchpad McQuack (Jan 8, 2019)

Prenote: This is just me ranting because the Instacart app is terrible. Nothing of any real substance in this.

I went against my better judgment and did another Instacart delivery today. This app is garbage. Shortly into the order, I had a question about an item so try to message the customer. None of my messages will go through, and it keeps telling me that it lost connection (even though my signal strength was very strong). So I reboot my phone. After I reboot, I can't pull the order back up. When I try to go to my active deliveries, the list is blank. Customer started getting messages, though, although every so often I get a message about a lost connection or an internal server error. So I try turning on WiFi and connecting to the store's WiFi (even though my cellular signal was strong). Maybe it helped some? I'm not sure. At some point I finally got it to show me the order list again. But every minute or two, its giving me a pop up with a "helpful hint." "Helpful Hint: The customer appreciates it when you reach out to them. Contact the customer to let them know how things are going." No thanks. I've been discussing with the customer since I walked in the door. And then a minute later I get the same pop up message again. Very disruptive to trying to get things done. Complete inconsistency as to whether things are supposed to be by weight or by quantity. Item list asked for 4x red onions and 1.5x white onions. How do you get half an onion? Asked the customer (five times), and she said, "No, that's supposed to be 1.5 lbs." Ah, okay. Makes more sense. So is it also supposed to be 4 lbs of red onions? No, just 4 red onions. How am I supposed to tell what is weight and what is quantity if they use the same syntax for both? Also, every message to the customer required me to send it 5-10 times before the customer received it. That was for the entire ordeal. Item list called for canned whole tomatoes.......which they were out of, but they had diced. So ask the customer (five times), and she says, "No, it's supposed to be tomato sauce, not whole tomatoes." So I scan the bar code for the tomato sauce, and sure enough, it shows up in the app as whole tomatoes. The app isn't even telling me the correct items to get. Ugh. So anyway, I finally get though everything and go to check out. As I'm checking out, it pops up a message that says to group items by temperature so that cold stuff can be kept in thermal bags. Okay, fine. I hit OK. It immediately pops up the exact same message again. I hit OK. It immediately pops up the exact same message again. Just repeat that forever now. Every time I hit OK it immediately pops up the exact same message so that I can't do anything in the app. The payment went through, though, so I shut down my phone and put everything in the car. I boot my phone back up. My active order screen is blank. I can't pull up the information for the order any more.........including the address that I am supposed to deliver to. I know roughly where the deliver address is, so I message the customer and ask for a delivery address and start heading that way. Every couple minutes, I pull over and resend the message to the customer, because I have to send every message at least five times before the customer gets it. So I get a delivery address from the customer. Order is still not showing up in my active orders list. It's still blank. Get to the customer location and deliver the order. What do I do now? My active orders list is blank. How do I close this order out? I get home and make dinner. After a while, the order shows up on my active orders list. I open it up. It is waiting for me to swipe my card for payment at the store before I can go any further. I already did that. I'm not at the store any more. It's already paid for and delivered. After a while, the screen changes and shows that I paid for the order, and it lets me close out the delivery. What a ridiculous mess this app is.


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## ANT 7 (Oct 14, 2018)

My eyes hurt.

*You should start a new paragraph when:*

When you begin a new idea or point. New ideas should always start in new *paragraphs*. ...
To contrast information or ideas. ...
When your readers need a pause. ...
When you are ending your introduction or starting your conclusion.

*On Paragraphs // Purdue Writing Lab*


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