Not only am I making less money and pulling out of our savings to pay bills, I've had to work 7 days a week since the new pay structure rolled out. Not being able to spend time with my kids is really hard for me. I went from being there for everything to missing my daughter's first basketball practice so I could take more batches.

The most appalling thing of all: Instacart is actually using the tips customers pay us in order to subsidize the wages they're supposed to pay.

Instead of paying us a base wage and then passing tips on to us, they're actually using customers' pre-paid tips to cover the company's share of paying workers. In other words, for a job paying $10, if you tip $2, Instacart will pay us $8; if you tip $8, Instacart will only pay us $2. If a customer leaves a high tip, instead of meaning more money for us, it means Instacart gets to pay less for the job.

If customers knew Instacart was using their tips to lower the amount the company has to spend on labor, they would be furious. That's the customers' hard-earned money — they're trying to use it to tip workers in addition to Instacart's pay. They're not tipping so Instacart can pay workers less, they're tipping so workers can make more money. But Instacart is using those tips to pay wages, and it's not OK.

I loved my job, but I'm so frustrated at this point I'm looking for something else to do. I would have loved to keep working for Instacart. Some of the things we do are cumbersome, and we have to be on our feet all day lifting heavy items, but I still envisioned doing this into the foreseeable future. Now, I just can't make it work for me or for my family. I can't continue to work as hard as I'm working, and make the sacrifices I'm making, and come home with the money I'm earning.

It's time for Instacart to step up and make a real change for workers that really gives us transparency and consistency in our pay.

It's time for them to put workers and customers first — not the company's bottom line. Click here to tell Instacart to quit stealing our tips, undercutting our pay, and leaving us in the dark about their pay algorithms.

Thank you for your support,

Ashley, Tacoma Instacart shopper"