Two Big Bugs in Instacart You Should Know About

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April 21, 2021

First of all, I want to start off by saying I’m a huge fan of Instacart.  Instacart lets you order groceries and have them delivered almost immediately for a fee of $5-$10 plus tip.  (You can also schedule them ahead).

You can select from a variety of grocery stores and choose the items you want.  You see the prices and if anything varies from what you are seeing there, your shopper will contact you for the okay to buy, or for an okay to substitute another item if needed.

It’s really convenient for me, especially if I get stuck at work.  When I get stuck at work, I’ll usually order takeout instead of stopping at the grocery store.  And the trend will usually continue to the point where the $5-$10 fee is a huge cost savings over all that takeout (not to mention how much healthier cooking at home is!)

It also integrates into other apps in a cool way, but I’ll talk about that and the other benefits of Instacart later.

I wanted to let you know about two bugs that aren’t deal breakers, but you should watch out for.

1. Your free delivery might not be free

For Instacart, your delivery is free on your first order.  Afterwards, you need to pay.

But if you click through a promo link and aren’t logged in, it doesn’t remove the statement saying you have free delivery at all.  The total will not even reflect a delivery fee.

It isn’t until you hit “purchase” that the delivery fee pops back in.  That is, after you’ve confirmed they can charge your card (now $5-$10 more).

When this happened to me, I wasn’t expecting free delivery and was surprised when that showed up.  So I understood WHY I didn’t actually have it–it should just be reflected in my total before the amount is already charged to my card.

I think it is a cookie issue with the website.

 

2. Adding an item to the order after you purchase may cause a duplicate order

This is a bigger issue.

Instacart used to let you add items to your order up until an hour or so before your delivery time.  Now, they’ve changed it so you have about five minutes to edit your order after you submit (just in case you forgot something immediately).

I was sad to see this feature go because I was able to create a weekly delivery order that I added to as we ran out of things.  But I understand it complicates things.

But it also created a really bizarre bug.

It appears that if you hit the button to add an item to your order during the five minute window but take longer than the five minutes to add it, Instacart will create a duplicate order featuring one extra item.  Which was surprising to me when two people showed up at my house, both carrying the same grocery store bags, with identical items save for the person who also picked up that extra item I added to my order.

Instacart was VERY good about taking care of this issue and was candid about it appearing to be a loophole error created when they reduced the time you can add to the order.  But for now, I’d avoid using that feature until this issue is confirmed fixed.

 

For both of these issues, Instacart was really great about listening to my feedback and I really feel like they are working on the issues.  I wanted to let you guys know about it for the time being so you don’t run into the issues I did–being surprised either with a delivery fee you didn’t expect or two deliveries at once.  They are still a new company, so their extremely responsive customer service is a good sign for their improvement moving forward.

 

Disclaimer: My referral link will straight out give you $10 towards your order if you use it, but it will also give me credit towards my order as well.    It looks like you still get the free delivery as well, which is better than the other offers out there.