Another disappointing Instacart order.
Dear Instacart…
Sick in bed recently, craving some fresh chicken soup, I placed an Instacart order on my phone for fresh carrots, celery, onions, a bunch of other “I’m sick” treats (Strauss ice cream — YUM), and of course, the CHICKEN (the main ingredient in the soup).
Of course, Instacart is pretty on target when it comes to service so I was asked me about my preferences in case one of the grocery items was out of stock (yes, please replace everything for the soup but I’m very specific about the ice cream!). I also got a push notification letting me know that my goodies were being temperature controlled until they arrived. Yay, thanks for the heads up!
When my groceries came, I was happy to have a loved one start on the chicken soup. He cut up the onions, dropped in the carrots and celery, and went to grab the chicken when he noticed a problem. Whoops, there was no chicken!
We looked at the bags, clearly marked bag 1/3 and bag 2/3, when we realized that bag 3/3 was missing.
Not a problem, I thought. I grabbed my phone, opened up the Instacart app, and hopped on a chat message with Strawberry Shortcake in “Customer Happiness.” I love strawberry shortcake (the dessert) so I knew this would go well.
Strawberry shortcake told me that the organic chicken that I ordered was out of stock but wasn’t replaced with the regular rotisserie chicken which I had indicated in my preferences. When I asked why, she said that some customers didn’t like non-organic. Whoah, so weird, why did you ask me about my preferences at all then?
When I asked about why I wasn’t informed about the swap in a push notification (like the one I had received earlier) or a follow up phone call (like their new policy claimed), Strawberry Shortcake told me that I had in fact received a message…in the web app. But wait, I told her, I ordered on my phone, in bed, miles away from my laptop — how would I ever have known that the shopper sent a message when that function doesn’t even exist in the app?
No answer. I asked why I didn’t receive a push notification and Strawberry Shortcake went on to explain to me the differences between chat, push notifications, text, and SMS. Apparently, their preferred method to “notify” me for these types of issues was SMS (which I had turned off) versus push notifications (only for other alerts, like the ones I had gotten when I first ordered). And whatever happened to that follow up phone call? I was confused — I was disappointed before but now I was frustrated by the strangely pedantic direction this customer support conversation had taken.
By now, half of my groceries had already been cut up and semi-cooked. My grocery order, my “I’m sick and can’t wait to feel better” meal, and my relationship with Instacart were all mostly ruined. Strawberry Shortcake’s final offer was to give me a free delivery credit so I could place another order for a rotisserie chicken and receive it in the next 2–3 hours.
I never received a credit and decided to make the trek to the grocery store to buy the chicken for my soup — so much for home delivery. I closed the chat with Strawberry Shortcake, rated the app (1-star, bad service, ‘nuff said), wrote to AmEx to get the credit I was told I would (half the grocery order ended up getting wasted in the whole chicken debacle), and am getting ready to uninstall Instacart.
In the end, it’s clear to me that Instacart is not the amazing upstart grocery service I thought it was but rather a fledgling gig-economy startup with a lot of rough edges. While Instacart figures out how to deliver better, more consistent service along with their groceries, I’m optimistic that there’s still Uber (they delivered me ice cream once), Google Express, and Amazon waiting in the wings, eager to scoop up and delight users when others can’t.
