Posted By: Veronica

Okay, I’m trying to be really understanding here, but Instacart has seriously gone down the drain over the last few years. I was highly upset and honestly disgusted about what happened with my order today. I placed my order around 10:00 a.m. this morning, and yes, I do live out in the sticks, so I understand that sometimes deliveries can take a little longer. But there is absolutely no reason why somebody should have to wait over 8 hours for groceries. My order did not arrive until around 6:22 p.m., and by that point I was already frustrated because the entire day had basically passed waiting on food that should have been delivered hours earlier.

But what made the situation even worse was what happened when the driver finally dropped the order off. Some of my food had clearly been tampered with. It honestly looked like someone had been eating out of the food while driving over here. Then on top of that, there was hair all in the packaging. I could not believe what I was seeing. It made me feel uncomfortable and honestly sick to my stomach because nobody should have to question whether their groceries were touched or eaten by the person delivering them.

The thing that really gets me is there has to be some type of professionalism and decorum when you’re handling people’s food. I don’t understand why Instacart is allowing service to get this bad. It feels like they are just letting anybody become a shopper or delivery driver without making sure people actually care about cleanliness, customer service, or doing the job correctly. This is people’s food and groceries we’re talking about. People spend a lot of money on these orders, especially those of us who live farther away from major cities.

And don’t even get me started on the fees. Instacart charges ridiculous long-distance fees and extra charges, yet the quality of service keeps getting worse and worse. If customers are paying all these added fees, the least they could do is make sure orders are delivered properly and safely.

The customer service experience afterward was terrible too. It felt like nobody really cared about what happened or understood how frustrating and unacceptable the situation was. At this point, I honestly don’t even know whether to blame Instacart fully or Publix because Publix shopped the order, but Instacart sends the drivers out to do the deliveries. Either way, something needs to change because this type of service is unacceptable.

Instacart used to feel reliable, but now it honestly feels like the whole platform is falling apart.