alt Hacker NewsI've been an instacart customer since it launched in NYC, and I've generally been quite happy, but the quality has been gradually on the decline.
- in the past few years, orders are frequently not received.
- in the past few years, fruit/produce is often covered in mold, rotten, or otherwise unacceptable.
- in the past few years, delivery time estimates are frequently missed.
- in the past few months, customer support got significantly worse and came to resemble the bad attitude and general grudging unhlelpfulness of AirBNB's support team.
I think the main issue has been a big shortage of supply of workers who are willing to do the job and who can do it well. Often times the person delivering the order (and the order itself) smells strongly of cigarette smoke, and increasingly I've had drivers refuse to bring the order to the door, etc.
Add to that the impact of the labor shortage on grocery stores that makes stocking less reliable and results in no availability of bags, greater chances of rotten produce, etc.
Instacart does stand behind it service and I have received full refunds for the non-delivered orders and the rotten produce, but such things must take a great toll on the profitability of the business.
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My nephew is currently doing UE/DD/Instacart to make ends meet and if their experience is reflective, most of their customers deserve shitty service. I helped them write some scripts to analyze data from Gridwise (delivery+mileage tracking app) and the tips average around 3-5% of the gross. Even in California with Prop 22, that's not going to add up to a livable wage.
Don't be surprised when the permanent underclass you depend on doesn't give a shit about your moldy strawberries.
The whole gig economy is just underpaid servants as a service. Don't be surprised that they do a less than exemplary job.
It's the lifecycle of many gig-economy apps. They start out good and slowly degrade as they plateau and try to find ways to cut expenses to continue growing.
Labor shortages, in general, just don’t exist. There can be one time shocks like during Covid, but if there is a lack of workers for a specific job or industry, it means that the business is either unwilling to pay for the employees needed for the job, or that the business itself should not function as the cost of the labor needed is unsustainable.
If you want a good servant for a cheap price, you will only find it in a non-industrialized country. In an industrialized nation, all labour is gobbled up by industrially organized employment, because your average labourer produces hundreds of times more value in such employment compared to non-industrial employment. And in this includes restaurants for your food.
There's a reason why supermarkets went from having different counters for asking for your stuff to having you pick out your stuff yourself.
You've continued to use a service for a "few years" while it provides you with rotten fruit?
> I think the main issue has been a big shortage of supply of workers who are willing to do the job
Instacart is profitable, yea? So they don't want to provide a better quality service or they would offer greater incentives to workers.
Its not a labor shortage, its a shortage of people for whom doing the job can pay the bills they need paid.
The answer is not to find new pools of desperate people but to improve working conditions (pay, benefits) and on a macro level reducing cost of living so the people performing the work don't have to work so much they stop being able to.
The way you COULD do that is to reduce administrative cost. From their most recent filing, marketing costs them 1/4 of their revenue, R&D (software development) 1/5th, and operations and administration 1/8th each. Their cost of revenue aka what they pay to their "shoppers" aka lower-class labor and the businesses they integrate with is 1/4th of gross, barely a pittance compared to the slush funds for management and investor payouts.
Take a look yourself: https://d18rn0p25nwr6d.cloudfront.net/CIK-0001579091/a4bcc10...
Bottom line: they are making money hand over fist, with the vast vast majority not going to workers but the corporate employees and investors. Your issue with delivery drivers is an issue with the bottom-of-the-barrel treatment decided by management - they could solve this problem (EASILY), but they choose not to in order to pay for more corporate employees and to have more profit to shareholders. The numbers are clear as day.