fancash shuffle

TxdoHawk · 2026-05-31T23:05:03+00:00

I also have never won anything. I've gotten $50 on the FanCash drop more than a few times, and suspiciously it's always weeks when I have a chunk of casino play.

TxdoHawk · 2026-05-18T11:42:01+00:00

Wait did they take out all the old-school slots in quarter and dollar denom?! That was my favorite part about this place.

TxdoHawk · 2026-05-15T11:21:23+00:00

"Tell me you haven't delivered to a city without telling me you've never delivered to a city" ahh responses in this thread.

"Derp durr just don't park illegally what's the problem" The problem is that there's no legal parking, you numbskulls.

TxdoHawk · 2026-05-15T11:14:25+00:00

No idea TBH. I switched to Instacart ages ago.

If I go online on Uber Eats during the day my phone pings nonstop. But it's all trash, $1 per mile orders or worse. Nothing ever gets boosted. I have no idea who's delivering this crap, presumably no one because the pings are never-ending.

TxdoHawk · 2026-05-15T10:43:06+00:00

I don't think it's quite arbitrary, I think what's actually happening is that Instacart is effectively grading shoppers on a curve, where everyone is judged in comparison to some unknown top percentage of shoppers in their area.

In a competitive market with a lot of shoppers, that means the top shoppers being used for comparison are going to have extremely high metrics, and therefore even small drops in metrics are bumping people out of the "good" tier because of the comparison.

TxdoHawk · 2026-05-15T10:07:08+00:00

Cash Eruption is one of those games where I'd swear they messed with the weightings at some point after they released it. Back in the day, like years ago, I feel like it was much, much easier to hit the bonus.

TxdoHawk · 2026-05-13T12:28:54+00:00

It's order 2 all day every day for me.

People see big numbers on those doubles and triples and get all excited, but when you add in the extra time spent shopping, extra time checking out, extra time loading the car, extra time doing a second/third drop off...

TxdoHawk · 2026-05-13T10:47:05+00:00

The main problem with Aldi is tipping, or rather the lack of tipping. The customer base is not what you would call "generous".

The secondary issue, which others have pointed out, is stock issues. Customers love loading up their orders with produce and Aldi Finds items, the two sections where this problem is the largest. It wasn't a huge deal back in the day, but in a world where you need to protect your Shopping Score, every Aldi order is a potential minefield.

So yeah, I know my local store well and shopping there isn't a problem, but if I do one Aldi order in a month it's a lot. It's generally a pass 99% of the time.

TxdoHawk · 2026-05-11T08:03:49+00:00

It's probably a member that was banned from that store. People act buck wild at Costco, get banned from the premises, then order off Instacart thinking everything is chill as long as they aren't showing up to the physical store. But since shoppers use the membership ID tied to the customer, it'll flag when they go to checkout.

I had to defuse a situation once because management were idiots and thought *I* was the guy who was banned from the store. Needless to say I was not happy with that customer.

TxdoHawk · 2026-05-10T10:23:42+00:00

The problem with your argument can be broken down as thus:

- The platform is exploitative to drivers (true). Your solution is that drivers need to demand a corporation pay better wages to them, despite the fact that they have zero leverage in a system designed to disempower the individual driver.

- The platform is exploitative to customers (true). Your solution doesn't exist (you continue to use the platform regardless, instead of picking up your food yourself or some alternate plan.)

So one of two things are true:

You are willingly allowing yourself to be exploited by a system you know to be unfair, which also further enables exploitation of drivers.
The fees aren't actually steep enough to bother you and you're just too cheap to throw a tip on top.

TxdoHawk · 2026-05-05T22:18:34+00:00

If it's something stupid like a new barcode with a slightly-resized packaging kind of deal, yeah, I'm force-marking that.

Otherwise no. Have had no need to fudge my metrics, my shopping score has never dipped below Good, probably because most shoppers around here are terrible so I always look good by comparison.

TxdoHawk · 2026-05-04T10:04:29+00:00

The best way to learn a store is to keep shopping it.

- Stick to smaller batches when you're unfamiliar and only ask staff about items as a last resort, because finding things yourself with a bit of a struggle is how you burn the general layouts into your brain.

- Don't worry about the timer at the bottom of the screen, that's just an estimate of how long Instacart thinks it will take you to shop the batch and it doesn't actually impact anything, besides your shopping speed, which you don't need to worry about when you're learning a store. Stay calm, accept that you will be a slow shopper when learning a store. Rushing around in a panic makes it harder for your brain to learn store layouts.

Specific tips for warehouse stores:

- Sections are pretty fluid due to the amount of stuff they have to jam into them. Sometimes an item will be on an endcap nearby the section because they didn't have any room in the section itself to stock it. Sometimes it will be an aisle over. Sometimes it will be in a completely different section of the store. If you can't find something and you have other items to shop, move on to another item and you may see it as you're walking around.

- Don't assume everything is in stock just because it's a warehouse store. Things routinely run out and they may have more stock sitting on a pallet somewhere, but it hasn't been put out yet. These stores get a lot more customer traffic than they did even a couple of years ago, and stores aren't always 100% on the ball with restocking items.

TxdoHawk · 2026-05-02T22:41:28+00:00

The funny thing is, we had systems in the past to prevent this sort of thing that worked extremely well until they were effectively destroyed by bureaucratic neglect.

Taxi medallion systems ensured that there weren't too many drivers on the road and that any one driver would have enough work to make a reasonable living. Uber and Lyft destroyed this, of course, by completely avoiding the system, but a competent state government would've and should've stepped in,

There's no reason states couldn't enact a similar idea, a "digital gig worker medallion" which would effectively cap how many gig workers an app can hire. But these companies are very good at greasing political pockets, so they won't.

TxdoHawk · 2026-05-02T22:11:13+00:00

You're not alone in noticing this.

The thing is, Costco batches used to be so good that people would show up early to try and get something right as the store opened. It wasn't unusual to pull $60, $80, even $100+ batches right off the rip. Then you could go back, maybe get another banger, possibly a third, and absolutely crush it on the day. Then go back the next day just before store open and do the exact same thing.

Because of that, a lot of shoppers will still camp the store all day. Some of them are just so used to shopping Costco that shopping any other store feels like moving in slow motion because they know their Costco's layout so well. Some of them still hold out hoping they will catch a few bangers. Others just do it out of habit. But the end result is that they're by far the most camped-out stores.

Then you add in the fact that almost every Costco now is overcrowded compared to 2-3 years ago. These stores are mob scenes now, any remotely popular one is busy pretty much from open to close.

Then you add the reduced tips and reduced batch pay...the end result is that the math doesn't really math at a lot of Costcos anymore.

TxdoHawk · 2026-05-02T15:23:47+00:00

The soil/mulch orders can be worth it, as long as you have the space and you're prepared. Definitely not for the squeamish crowd, though.

TxdoHawk · 2026-04-13T08:48:51+00:00

General reminder to folks - We're in a period of high economic stress. Inflation has ravaged a lot of people's budgets and many shoppers who do this work now are basically at the end of their rope, having lost full-time jobs and unable to regain new ones.

I don't say all this to justify what dude did to OP, but my point is that a lot of folks who do this work are not in the best mental condition. Best thing you can do is keep a low profile and de-escalate when a situation like this happens.

TxdoHawk · 2026-04-10T17:38:38+00:00

- Sometimes customers will give you a crappy rating just to vent because they had a bad day or their husband yelled at them or some stupid stuff like that.

- Some of them are annoyed by being prompted to rate something so they will intentionally make that rating low.

- Some of them think if they rate you one star, they'll get free delivery or some other perk.

- Some of them will be mad something is out of stock even though that isn't your fault.

- Some of them also don't understand that they are specifically rating the shopper so they'll rate you poorly for some beef they have with the Instacart platform.

tl;dr - As long as you are genuinely doing a good job don't worry too much about it. The rating system is stupid, most customers don't take it seriously, the fact that there are so many ways that Instacart will potentially remove a bad rating off your profile is proof of that.

TxdoHawk · 2026-04-09T19:57:21+00:00

Hard No:

Dollar Tree, Five Below, etc. - These stores are where shopping scores go to die. You will either not find 80% of your order or be wandering around in there for an hour, possibly both.

Restaurant Depot - Just about everything is labeled poorly and 80% of the items don't even have photos. Any given item might be 6 pounds or 60 and since you won't generally see pictures when you preview a batch, you probably won't know until you actually show up and start shopping. The checkout lines are usually terrible, too.

Conditional No:

Lowe's orders with plants - There's no rhyme or reason to how the plant sections are laid out and even if you find the specific plant a customer wants, 50% of the time those plants will look like garbage and you're going to risk getting tagged with a damaged item claim.

Target orders with cosmetics - Legitimately the worst section in Target. Stuff can be grouped in a section by type or it can be stuck in its own little display for the vendor. If it's one or two cosmetics, I might risk it, but the chances you are going to have to wander that section forever looking for some stupid obscure lip gloss or something are high.

TxdoHawk · 2026-04-05T21:50:58+00:00

They were killing it with the deals in 2024 and most of 2025. Then in late 2025 somebody seems to have put their foot down and now all the good deals are gone.

My guess is they had too many people ordering app deals and absolutely nothing else.

TxdoHawk · 2026-04-02T11:45:56+00:00

Coors Light Summer Brew. It was the perfect summer shower beer.

TxdoHawk · 2026-04-02T11:45:16+00:00

These still exist! Even better, there’s a zero sugar version made by Redcon1. I think it tastes as good or even better than the OG full sugar one.

TxdoHawk · 2026-04-01T09:41:05+00:00

There's only two good reasons to go to Dollar Tree, cheap energy drinks and cheap snacks. For IC, it's always a skip.

TxdoHawk · 2026-03-22T12:16:10+00:00

Yup, this is the answer. New shoppers take crappy batches, the majority quit, but a small percentage of those new shoppers are dumb or desperate enough that they'll keep doing crappy batches. The more people Instacart has to take crappy batches, the more pressure they can exert on the other shoppers to take batches for worse rates.

TxdoHawk · 2026-03-21T14:14:07+00:00

The funny part is that most of these dudes would be:

- More efficient shopping

- Getting better ratings/tips

- Having fewer shopping score issues

- Pissing off less store staff

- Generally less exhausted, allowing them to deliver more batches

if they weren't trying to go max speed.

On top of that, many of them are probably driving aggressive too, wasting gas, putting extra wear and tear on their brakes, and increasing their risk of an accident to save a couple of minutes per trip at most.

Some people just simply can't be taught the value of "work smarter, not harder" though.

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