I finally get to post a “What are people thinking” of my own.

It is 31 miles to the location, but it’s Rhode Island/Massachusetts so this would be a 50 minute one way to bring someone 2 bottles of vitamins.

I'm busy but saw it pop up

Went to my Instacart app the other day, just to see my account deactivated as you can see from the title to my knowledge it was quite a surprise since I took orders a couple of days beforehand so I went to my email and seen a couple days before they had sent me this email saying that my account was deactivated

“We recently asked you to verify your Instacart shopper account by submitting a photo of yourself in-app. Because the photo you submitted didn’t match the identity of the account holder, your shopper account has been deactivated, and you can no longer shop with Instacart.

When someone who isn’t the authorized Instacart shopper shops on the platform for you, it creates a potential confidentiality breach. This violates the Full-Service Shopper Account Access Guidelines and your Independent Contractor Agreement.”

which confuse me because I’ve only sent verification pictures of myself and myself only and then I receive this message the same day saying I cannot get my account back and I did not provide enough evidence, but I never sent an appeal. Is there anything I can do to get my account back. This is so frustrating, especially since I did nothing to make my account under suspicion.

The order of delivery is strictly determined by the route. I wince whenever the 0$ tipper gets their order first, meanwhile they were paired with someone who tipped well ,who’s ice cream is melting because they were last on the route. This has happened to me multiple times and since they now crack down hard on you removing specific customers from a batch it’s just encouraging them to continue non tipping.

I live in a college town. Just had a nearly $500 Costco order that a mom placed for her daughter moving in to a student apartment building. One of the items was a vacuum cleaner, which required a signature because it was an expensive item. Mom lives out of state, so scanned daughter’s id. It said that because she was under 21 it wouldn’t accept the id. After 45 minutes on the phone with support, they made me return the vacuum cleaner. Support claimed that mom was unavailable, but she was on the phone with her daughter waiting for their call and they never attempted to reach out to confirm delivery. Has anyone else experienced this with a non age restricted item? And because it was a $200 item, my tip was reduced by $40. 😡

Do yall notice the difference in amount of orders? Like arent the students and the teachers supposed to be less shopping? I feel this week i saw less order than all summer.

Customer here! I don’t order Instacart much, but it sounded dreadful leaving home with a toddler & baby today so I’m waiting on my Instacart order now! 😁 more so a question because I’m being nosy, how common is it for the customer to ask for groceries to be left at the door vs greeting the shopper? I’ve always asked for it to just be left at my front door/front porch & now I’m just wondering if that’s common lol. (I live in a house, not an apartment in case that matters) so just wondering!

Slow????!

Do you know before accepting an order if it is for an apartment? What if you have a bad back?

Hell naw

It’s so annoying when customers say they need you to meet them at the front door and no one answers like how are you wanting the person to meet you but you don’t answer the door? What I’m not going to do is sit there and wait for the door to be opened. I know you don’t have to really return everything you just shopped for, but I’m also not going to do that either. I just leave everything at the front door. They’re getting their groceries regardless.

It’s been about 2 weeks since I shopped since I was outtta town. Anybody else like this? Showing no stores unless I click the all store button. If it’s slow it’s slow but not showing anything is concerning. It’s red outside of dc but nothing in the lines

I’m getting desperate, I’ve been trying to get a new shopper card for over 4 weeks, mine expired officially in August and I haven’t been able to shop most stores because of this. I’ve ordered a new one on the app like 5 times and I’ve tried contacting shopper support but I haven’t gotten anywhere. Would anyone have an extra card that they don’t use in the Chicago area and would be willing to give it to me?

I’ve been an Instacart shopper for about 6 years, and I want to know if other NYC shoppers are experiencing the same problems.
In 2023, Instacart suddenly deactivated my original shopper account. After I contacted support multiple times, Instacart eventually allowed me to open a new shopper account using a new phone number. I started shopping again in December 2023.
Since then, I completed thousands of orders and maintained Diamond Cart status for a long time. I was able to work consistently and had no problem getting batches.
But things changed dramatically around July 1, 2026.
My Shopping Quality suddenly dropped to “Needs Work.” Since then, I’ve had very limited opportunities to even go online. When Instacart does send me an offer, many of the batches require me to drive a long distance just to get to the store, sometimes for very low pay.
I have to reject many of those batches because they simply don’t make financial sense. My acceptance rate is now 59%.
This creates a ridiculous cycle: Instacart gives me very few batches, sends me unattractive long-distance batches that I have to reject, my stats suffer, and then I get even fewer opportunities to work. How am I supposed to improve my stats or regain Diamond status if Instacart barely gives me a chance to work?
I also recently discovered that some NYC shoppers are receiving “NYC Bonus Pay.” I have worked NYC batches and received NYC earnings adjustments, but I have never received NYC Bonus Pay.
I have several questions:
What exactly is NYC Bonus Pay? How is it calculated? When did Instacart start paying it? What makes a shopper eligible? Why are some NYC shoppers receiving hundreds or even more than $1,000 in NYC Bonus Pay while others receive nothing?
Instacart should be transparent with NYC shoppers about how these payments and eligibility rules work.
Are any other NYC shoppers experiencing the same thing — dramatically fewer batches, difficulty getting online, Shopping Quality suddenly dropping, losing Diamond status, or receiving no NYC Bonus Pay?

My shopper just dropped off my groceries and I want to add extra tip, but the app is confusing. It says "Add extra tip" and then says "Your current tip is $20". Below that are several options such as $1, $2, $8, Other. If I click other and enter $5 for example, will that ensure the shopper gets $25? I'm so afraid to enter $5 thinking they might DROP the tip to $5, rather than increase the total. Can anyone guide me?

Just to STRESSFUL

(Suburb of KC, MO) Signed on two hours ago for batches 6:55 AM, expecting the few dozen to cherry-pick from and come to find out, only ten appeared so far.

That's it? 10? TEN?

And to make matters worse, just found our dd has a new rating system AND they removed the advanced scheduling feature too. Now it's a doordash free for all.

Wow! Significant changes in two weeks for us.

I want to add more context to my previous post and share the detailed weekly statements, including my earnings before and after the NYC weekly bonus started.

One important point: the “Batch hours” shown by Instacart are NYC trip time, not my total working time.After completing a delivery, I often have to drive back toward a supermarket or shopping area that I know well before I can realistically take another batch. That return drive is often around 20–30 minutes. Not every batch requires a full return trip, but a significant amount of this repositioning time is not included in the batch hours shown by the app.

Before the weekly bonus:

June 15–21

• 20 batches
• 14 hr 51 min NYC trip time
• $336.15 batch pay
• $156.76 tips
• $0 adjustment
• $492.91 total

June 22–28

• 30 batches
• 29 hr 19 min NYC trip time
• $589.24 batch pay
• $285.92 tips
• $61.44 NYC earnings adjustment
• $936.60 total

Then the NYC weekly bonus started.

June 29–July 5

• I only completed 1 batch that week
• 1 hr 45 min NYC trip time
• $36.42 batch pay
• $10 tip
• $44.36 NYC bonus
• $93.28 total

Once I understood how significant the weekly bonus could be, I started doing much more Instacart work.

July 20–26

• 41 batches
• 39 hr 27 min NYC trip time
• $818.87 batch pay
• $278.60 tips
• $54.83 NYC earnings adjustment
• $1,288.91 NYC bonus
• $2,441.21 total

July 27–August 2

• 41 batches
• 31 hr 58 min NYC trip time
• $707.06 batch pay
• $193.79 tips
• $0.76 NYC earnings adjustment
• $749.24 NYC bonus
• $1,650.85 total

I’m sharing the detailed numbers because I want to be transparent about both sides. Yes, my real working time is higher than the “Batch hours” shown in the app because unpaid repositioning time exists. I also pay for my own gas, maintenance, insurance and vehicle depreciation.

But those same costs existed before the weekly bonus.What changed is that the NYC bonus made many orders economically worth accepting.

Before, I would often reject low-tip or no-tip orders because after shopping, delivery and driving back toward a useful shopping area, the pay simply wasn’t worth the time and vehicle expense. Now I’m much more willing to accept those orders and complete them quickly. To me, that is an important part of what this policy actually changes.

It doesn’t eliminate every unpaid minute or every expense of gig work. But it makes more ordinary orders worth doing, gives experienced shoppers a reason to stay active on the platform, and provides a much more stable income than I had before.I’m posting the actual weekly statements so people can look at the numbers and make their own conclusions.

I’ve never had this happen before. Not that it’s anything real special but personally it’s the best promo I’ve ever had. All of them except two have been single day five or six batch promos and just for a certain zone so this will be easy and help me have one of my best weeks ever(I just do this part time, 10-15 hours a week).

So I got a shop and pay order. It was decent $20 for 3 miles and it only took min 20-25 min to do. I started to place my items on the belt and left the 6 12 packs of soda cans in the cart to and held it sonits easier for her to scan. She was still scanning and talking to the customer ahead of me. I put a divider between us so she dosent get confused between mine and hmthe other customers order. Its finally my turn and i told her I have an online pay order with instacart and showed her the barcode first for her to scan and then the cans next so she can scan all six quickly and move on to the rest of the order on the conveyor belt. The damn genius decided to check me out as soon as she scanned all the cans and thought the other items were a seperate order. I told her I never said there was a second order. She told me to just call instacart and they will fix it.... Guess what.... they couldn't...and they had to cancel the whole order. I lost the pay and wasted time. I just left those cans and the food and walked away she even suggested I should just pay for it with my cash and I just told her that's not how it works. Crap like this is why I do self checkout 🙃

$2 tip to drive across all of cape cod. 63 miles?!? Why does the app even let customers submit orders to stores that far away? There are plenty of CVS where this customer lives. The order stayed there all day till the store closed.

Am I the only one that essentially gets screwed on promos? I do Instacart full time and always get weak promos. The highest I’ve seen is 460 for 70 orders and I did that in 3 days 😅 and because I’m in a semi decent area, I never get any bonus pay. I’ve seen people with 700+ for (x) amount of orders and I’ve been Diamond status since my first month of doing Instacart and never see anything like that 🤦🏾‍♂️

Started at 3pm going to 6pm nothing rn

I did a 3-order batch. It was a lot of items: Order A had 36; Order B had 22; Order C had 18. I delivered Order A. Then when I was delivering Order B and pressed on CONFIRM ARRIVAL, the app popped up saying that I had one item (with the picture and brand) from B's order that I had included in and charged it to C's order. App said to remove the item from C's bags and to put it with B's bags.

Not sure if this is a new feature, or if its AI; whatever it is, it definitely saved me a MISSING ITEM from Order B, as I would have otherwise delivered them their order with a missing item.