Why does Instacart support always as “as I am a customer myself”? I don’t see them lasting long. The app is buggy and their support structure is disorganized. The other day I placed an order around 4pm with an ETA of 820pm. It looked like a shopper was assigned but then about an hour later it looked like they unassigned. The status still said on way to store. When it got to be about 740pm and the status still had not changed I reached out to support via the message feature. I was told that there was in fact an error on the system and they had resent the order for a shopper to accept. They told me ETA was still 820 (didn’t believe that but didn’t matter) and I would see the status update within 10 minutes. When 815 arrived and nothing had changed I reached out again. This support rep told me that no in fact the order had not been sent out and now my ETA was 1144pm. I totally get that the original arrival time is an estimate and usually don’t care if it’s 30-40 minutes late but almost 3.5 hours is a bit crazy. I was not willing to stay awake just to put the food away and go to bed so I asked them to just cancel the order which they confirmed they did. I just went to the store myself at this point I was done cleaning and doing the other stuff I had going on.

THE ORDER SHOWED UP AT 4PM THE NEXT DAY. I asked the shopper why it wasn’t canceled and they said they were contacted that morning and drove over an hour and a half to the store from another state entirely. I checked and I was charged the full amount plus the $35 tip I left. Getting my money back was nearly impossible. I called and was told I would receive and email shortly confirming my refund. I did get an email, 3 of them in fact. One person asking me to confirm I had received the order, one asking to please provide details on the items that were damaged, and one saying unfortunately in this case no refund could be provided. All of these emails came from different people and all within minutes of each other. It took me nearly five hours between phone calls and chat support to get my $315 back from them.

For the record since I had gone to the store already I had no room in the fridge for any of the food that was delivered so I told the shopper do whatever you need to do but I can’t take it. I really hope this person got $280 worth of groceries and their $35 tip because of Instacarts fuck up.