I've been an instacart shopper for over a year. I myself and so many others rely on the pay in these most desperate of times while dealing with the economic casualties during covid-19. Myself and fellow shoppers have uncovered now and researched enough to see that instacart is hiring so many more shoppers due to high demand, that shoppers are using bots (third party apps) to screw other shoppers out of getting orders.

In layman's terms, shoppers are paying to get ahead to have all the high paying batches available to them before regular shoppers have a chance to take a batch and make money.

From personal as well as many other shoppers experience, this is what's happening. You open your instacart shopper app. On the main page which is called the "Dashboard" you see if and how many orders, aka "batches", are available. Up until some weeks ago, Instacart was BOOMING with orders due to the Covid-19 pandemic. Now all of sudden we are not seeing any orders available. If there are any, when you see it, it's gone within a blink of an eye before we can even click on it. Or let's say if you're fast enough, you click on the order and click "accept", a window pops up that reads "oh no, looks like this order has been taken". And this is happening all day every day. This is because instacart shoppers are paying third party apps aka bots to steal all the good, high paying batches. Shoppers are either left with a few low paying batches or none at all! It is IMPOSSIBLE for shoppers to make decent money now. Until Instacart fixes this, honest shoppers are out of work.

Instacart has not indicated that they are ACTUALLY doing something about the problem or acknowledged that there is a problem at all. It's stealing and is unjust. While confronting and asking Instacart shopper support about this, you either don't get an answer or end up getting booted out of the chat. Shoppers feel helpless and unsupported.

We are all in need right now and its horrible that people are taking advantage of a time of need and a platform that for so many is their essential and critical way to make money. To put food on their table. To provide for their families. Pay their bills. This is not right!

Instacart needs to address this and eliminate those shoppers and block the bots helping them. The least they could do is acknowledge it and let us know they are in fact working on this.

Below is an article about this matter many of us have already seen posted on April 24th.



https://techcrunch.com/2020/04/24/instacart-third-party-apps-bots-priority-access-batches-orders/



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