Instacart is Making Some Big Changes to their Policy

When the coronavirus pandemic began, many people were afraid to visit the grocery store for fear of being exposed to many germs and possibly COVID-19. People that were extra scared were senior citizens and those who had underlying health issues, because they are the most at risk for coronavirus. Grocery delivery services, which were used a lot before the pandemic, but not overwhelmingly, were now being used non stop. You just order your groceries online or on their app and a shopper goes to the store for you and delivers them right to your door. I know some people that were trying to use them and couldn't even get a delivery time. It was insane.

One of the most popular services, Instacart, is doing more to protect their shoppers. Food and Wine reports that Instacart will be making changes to their policy to help protect their shoppers from tip baiting. What some customers were doing, were entering a very large tip when they ordered their groceries to entice the Instacart shoppers to push their order to the front of the line basically. However, when shoppers were delivering groceries, that large tip seemed to disappear. People who used Instacart could change their tip up to three days after their order was delivered, now Instacart is making customers only able to change the tip 24 hours afterwards. Food and Wine also reports that Instacart will be tracking customers that remove tips and they must give Instacart a reason as to why they removed it. They also will be tracking people who are removing tips at the end of their order and will be removing them from the service if they do it regularly.

I am proud of Instacart! Their shoppers are risking exposure by shopping for others and it's not an easy job to go to a grocery store during a pandemic and they deserve to be tipped accordingly for their work. To all you tip baiters out there, beware!

For more info, check out this article from Food and Wine.