Instacart paying 80 cents an hour because worker received a large tip

There&#x27;s a related blog post up on Medium by this same group (Working Washington) where they placed the same order, once with tip and once without, so people could directly compare.<p>From my perspective Instacart is stealing from its customers and workers by doing this. I&#x27;m a huge fan of instacart (my fiance and I use it regularly), but this is definitely going to push me away from the platform. At a minimum I&#x27;m going to be tipping in cash.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;medium.com&#x2F;@workingwa&#x2F;instacart-heres-our-22-cents-no-more-tip-theft-low-pay-and-black-box-pay-algorithms-8ff1d7c6b66" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;medium.com&#x2F;@workingwa&#x2F;instacart-heres-our-22-cents-n...</a>

&gt; That&#x27;s right: the customer&#x27;s tip doesn&#x27;t get added to the worker&#x27;s check — it just gets deducted from what Instacart pays. In other words, up-front tips go to Instacart, not to the worker.<p>My understanding is that the Fair Labor Standards Act does not allow for employers to whithold tips.[0]<p>Gratuity&#x2F;tip is a legally recognized concept. You can&#x27;t just throw the word in your app and do what you want with the money it generates. There are legal expectations around how the money goes from the customer to the worker.<p>[0] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.ramoslaw.com&#x2F;is-your-employer-committing-wage-theft-by-withholding-your-tips&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.ramoslaw.com&#x2F;is-your-employer-committing-wage-th...</a><p>[edit] Added &quot;not&quot;

More evidence as to why tipping culture needs to die. Tipping fundamentally takes away the responsibility of paying someone for their work from the employer to the customer. In what other business context do I pay an employee of a company I deal with directly outside of the service industry where tipping is common? Wages are a cost of doing business. Pay the worker enough. If you want to still provide them an incentive to work hard, offer them incentive plans! Bring up your prices to reflect the true cost of your product or service. It&#x27;s time to abolish tips.

It&#x27;s funny (to me, anyway) that this sort of things affects only America (and I guess Canada?) This odd culture you have there of tipping and how it&#x27;s so tightly integrated into your society.<p>As a non-American I had to read the article a few times to understand what the problem was - I thought this was just how tipping worked in the US.<p>I always read of service workers who only manage to &quot;stay afloat&quot; by the tips they earn, this seems to be almost the same thing, but reading it again I can see it isn&#x27;t.<p>Here in NZ there is sometimes a &quot;tip jar&quot; at the counter of a cafe where you might throw in a coin or two (say $1 or $2) as a way of thanking the staff overall. High end restaurants will also offer a place for you to add a tip if you feel you got exceptional service, but there&#x27;s also no hard feeling or death stares if you don&#x27;t put anything there.<p>I hope tipping dies in the US and people get paid fairly regardless. But then you have bigger problems to solve first of all :)

Isn’t this similar to what DoorDash (a YC company) is doing? <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;notipdoordash.com" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;notipdoordash.com</a><p>These sorts of stories confirm my feelings about tipping that I’ve had all along: tipping is just a way to subsidize employers by pitting employees against customers and guilt-tripping the latter.<p>Follow-up update: Aren&#x27;t all the gig economy start-ups (Uber&#x2F;Uber Eats, Lyft, Caviar, Eat24&#x2F;Yelp, Fiverr etc.) potentially doing the same thing? They are probably exploiting the same loop-hole in whatever set of laws. It might be just a UI update, but I remember seeing a message of the form &quot;our drivers get 100% of their tips&quot; in Uber Eats just yesterday, which is sort of like saying &quot;we are following the law about tips&quot;.

I was a huge user of Instacart 2 years ago when my nearest grocery store turned into one of the busiest Whole Foods in my city that I didn&#x27;t enjoy dealing with.<p>The way they keep working to create opaqueness around their tipping to the point that last year Drivers were handing out pamphlets explaining how to remove the &quot;Service Fee&quot; (which nobody but Instacart gets) to tip the drivers was a huge red flag. Removing the service fee was on a 2nd page you had to go to and by default I believe was 10% of your order. If you&#x27;ve never used Instacart the groceries in my experience have been quite a bit more expensive than they&#x27;d be in stores so they&#x27;re making revenue on that end already.<p>I started using them a bit again this year and now there&#x27;s only a &quot;Driver Tip&quot; section with I believe a hard locked in service fee. Does the shopper get the tip as well? Is the driver the shopper as well now? In my situation the shopper is doing FAR more work than the driver. I want to tip the people well because I know Instacart doesn&#x27;t pay well, but I don&#x27;t want to give a $26 tip for $130 in groceries (which is usually 3-4 bags) going to the person who only spent 10 minutes in a car to drop my groceries off at my front door (and Instacart drivers never read the Delivery notes, I&#x27;ve had to walk out and walk them over to me each time last year that I ordered).<p>Is the tip split between the shopper and the driver? It only says &quot;Driver Tip&quot;.<p>Everything just seems to be disgustingly opaque with this company and I really do not feel right even using it anymore so I&#x27;ve used it incredibly sparingly (maybe 3 times last year) as of late.<p>edit: I just checked, there&#x27;s an info icon and it says 100% of the tip goes to the driver. So should I not tip based on the entire process of shopping and delivery? I don&#x27;t even want to use this app anymore because I shouldn&#x27;t have to stop and waste time considering these things.<p>This company just screams deceptive to me. Guess I&#x27;ll be done with it.

Wow. I&#x27;m cancelling my instacart account immediately. They&#x27;ve made so many mistakes in the past, but I liked their app. But this crosses the line by a mile. When I give someone a tip, it&#x27;s not because I chose to pay more for an order just for fun, it&#x27;s because I want the worker to get extra. They don&#x27;t get to charge me a service fee, and ask me to tip, and then not give the worker my service fee. That&#x27;s just crazy.

Instacart started out by secretly marking up groceries. Once that game was played out, it seems they started secretly marking down employee (oh sorry, contractor) wages

Hi. I&#x27;m a Fast Company reporter, and we&#x27;ve been investigating this and many other issues for about a week, including asking Instacart to explain them all. Stay tuned for a full report this week or early next. Thanks, Sean Captain @seancaptain

I used to work for a delivery company with this same pay structure. This is garbage and its taking advantage of young people who are looking for jobs.

Their help section specifically states :<p>&quot;Shoppers appreciate tips as a way of recognizing great service and 100% of your tip goes directly to the shopper delivering your order. For more information about tipping, follow this link.&quot;<p>Source: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.instacart.com&#x2F;help&#x2F;section&#x2F;200761924#213895126" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.instacart.com&#x2F;help&#x2F;section&#x2F;200761924#213895126</a> payment&#x2F;service fee section<p>If confirmed this is straight out lying to your customers

Why doesn&#x27;t the headline read &quot;Instacart (YC S12)&quot;?

I have never understood the tipping concept.<p>Just pay your workers minimum wages at least and make tipping optional.<p>I shouldn&#x27;t have to tip the &quot;employees&quot; just because a company can get away without paying even minimum wage to its &quot;employees&quot;.<p>There is something seriously broken with the whole tipping thing.

DoorDash does the same thing of “stealing” tips. Either you should tip in cash or not at all.

How is this not wage theft? They&#x27;re literally taking the tips from workers and using it to pay them. I&#x27;m tipping the worker, not Instacart.

This is ridiculous! We need to start moving away from tipping. This reminds me of US restaurants. I&#x27;d much rather be charged mandatory service fees. It&#x27;s a poor way to signal poor food&#x2F;service by hurting those in front than the cooks behind.

WTF is going on?!<p>Some engineer somewhere decided or was told: Hey if someone gets a big tip, lets consider that as part of their pay and not pay they what&#x27;s due. And then they just blindly do it?!<p>I can understand that an engineer might just be following requirements, but _someone_ made that decision--probably a PM, or does this go higher than that?<p>It seems that companies (FB, Google, etc.) are almost going out of their way to be evil!<p>We need the equivalent of a &quot;known to do evil&quot; blacklist: companies and employees known to have been working on specific products&#x2F;projects should be black-balled:<p>You wrote a VPN to collect information off people&#x27;s phones? Good luck getting work with another tech company. You wrote&#x2F;designed functionality to get kids to play games that require money and is hidden from their parents? Screw you. You wrote&#x2F;designed a feature that said that people should be screwed out of their wage because they got a big tip? F you.

DoorDash does the same thing, which is why I stopped using them as well.<p>Source: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.reddit.com&#x2F;r&#x2F;doordash&#x2F;comments&#x2F;963kyv&#x2F;if_you_are_a_customer_do_not_tip_via_the_app&#x2F;?st=JRICRPTX&amp;sh=61c36ffa" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.reddit.com&#x2F;r&#x2F;doordash&#x2F;comments&#x2F;963kyv&#x2F;if_you_are...</a>

I read it as they paid him only $0.38 (not $0.80) for his time.

I&#x27;m European, in my country if an employer only try to do something like that go strait to the jail. Now is in progress a process to guarantee to the guys employed in the delivery of food by bike a minimum wage because they was exploited by some companies, but that case isn&#x27;t distantly comparable to this one. I can&#x27;t believe this behavior it&#x27;s tolerated in a civilized nation.

What absolute garbage, it defies the entire point of tipping. Is this even legal? If a restaurant got caught doing this, they would definitely lose many customers or even get run out of business.

Why do they even have a “tip” field is beyond me, you already paid for delivery, what do you tip for??!!! And on top they ask you for a tip amount <i>before</i> the service is even performed. Tip is to reward for extra work that server did, what extra work is there in food delivery service? And how do you measure it <i>before</i> you even got the food??

The whole tipping system should be stopped. The businesses will be forced to start paying fair wages to their workers.

My wife looked into instacart and we canceled after learning they don&#x27;t provide business car insurance for their drivers. What a scam.

This is terrible for the worker and highly deceptive to the client. Surely this is fraud? Collecting tips but not passing it on?

I guess this is how you actually disrupt a labour-intensive industry. You lower costs, or provide a much better service that somehow established companies haven&#x27;t been able to provide profitably.<p>Sure, you can try to use technology and innovation to reduce overhead. That&#x27;s the pitch usually, I think. If you can provide a service with a lower headcount, you can be much more cost-efficient. But it seems a lot of the companies aiming for disruption aren&#x27;t able to actually do that, so instead they reduce payroll costs by simply refusing to take on the responsibilities employers are traditionally expected to take.<p>It&#x27;ll be interesting to see how long this model of &quot;disruption&quot; can be sustained.

(The following is completely predicated on the truth of the report that a customer tipping $x doesn&#x27;t result in workers&#x27; total compensation being increased by $x)<p>As a YC alum, I&#x27;m disgusted to see a YC company behaving like this.<p>Instacart: It shouldn&#x27;t have to be said, but you don&#x27;t cheat your customers and workers. Whatever internal rationalization you&#x27;ve developed for this practice is just that — a rationalization.<p>Stop cheating people. If your unit economics are so broken that you can&#x27;t survive without deceiving and cheating people, then shut down instead.

Uber was great until they introduced tipping, and somehow now we are supposed to tip employees for delivering stuff when the <i>entire</i> business model of the company we are also paying is delivery?! Why are we supposed to tip door dash drivers, but not Amazon delivery drivers or FedEx&#x2F;UPS&#x2F;USPS? I refuse to use Door Dash due to the expectation of tipping their employees on top of the super high up-charges and service fee I&#x27;m paying FOR DELIVERY.<p>Tipping has ruined this whole new batch of convenience services for me.

people should simply NOT tip. At restaurant maybe because it is socially mandatory, but anywhere else, a signal should be sent that it is stupid and doesn&#x27;t make any economical sense to tip!

The tip economy SUCKS. When will it stop! Now it&#x27;s part of the future that is being sold to us as the new nirvana. Why can&#x27;t things change?<p>Employers love it since they can underpay. Some employees love it since they can make a very good living but that&#x27;s a fraction of the total. But overall it creates an economy subclass that&#x27;s constantly struggling. They have trouble paying the bills. It&#x27;s tough work plus they have to deal with upset customers even though they likely had no control of the situation.<p>I&#x27;m a fan of a permanent surcharge on the bill rather than having to deal with giving a tip. Pizza delivery places have a delivery charge now plus a fuel surcharge, as far as I am concerned they can add a service charge too.<p>Yes, services will become more expensive. But over time an economic equilibrium begins to appear at which time we can reevaluate and change. But the last thing we need to do is bring it into the future.

This is why I never tip on Prime Now, Instacart, Uber, Lyft, or Postmates: I don&#x27;t trust them. Show me whatever the price is, and based on that I&#x27;ll decide whether to use your service today. I&#x27;m not interested in voluntarily giving your business money.

I&#x27;ve always wondered why someone hasn&#x27;t tried to reverse the model on these delivery service apps (postmates, doordash, instacart)<p>Instead of delivery people blindly accepting orders and hoping for the best, the people who are requesting the delivery should have to set a rate at order time and make the full order and destination visible so couriers can decide if it&#x27;s worth it and make a counter-offer if it&#x27;s too low to be worth it.<p>If you ever go read what the workers are saying in subreddits for these services, it&#x27;s clear that the incentives for quick and accurate deliveries just don&#x27;t line up with the current gig system.

I suspect DoorDash is doing something similar, that&#x27;s why I always choose 0 tip on the app and tip them cash when they arrive.

German reader here. Because of minimum wage you&#x27;d only tip if service was good (or always tip if you have enough money, my parents generation are more frugal than I am). Delivery services often get around minimum wage because they use the &quot;Uber&quot; trick and technically the drivers are &quot;self-employed&quot;, always tipping those folks.<p>Anyway: Are tips taxable in the US? Here in Germany tips are tax-free under certain conditions: If I give it directly to the barber, waiter, etc., it is a non-taxable event, while if the employer collects the tip and divides it up under all employees it is a taxable event.

Instacart is not the only one of these apps doing this. Amazon Flex&#x2F;Prime Now also does the same thing: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.reddit.com&#x2F;r&#x2F;AmazonFlexDrivers&#x2F;comments&#x2F;66zkx7&#x2F;who_is_going_around_telling_customers_that_amazon&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.reddit.com&#x2F;r&#x2F;AmazonFlexDrivers&#x2F;comments&#x2F;66zkx7&#x2F;w...</a><p>There is some back-and-forth in that thread, but the gist of it seems to be the same as here, where Amazon takes tips into account when they calculate the base wage, which can result in getting a low base wage if there&#x27;s a large tip.

Update: Instacart is introducing a $3 minimum on all jobs, in the wake of the 80-cent debacle. <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.fastcompany.com&#x2F;90300962&#x2F;reeling-from-algorithm-glitch-instacart-institutes-3-minimum-fee-for-drivers" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.fastcompany.com&#x2F;90300962&#x2F;reeling-from-algorithm-...</a>

FWIW Good Eggs directly states their pro living wage (and no tip necessary) policy on their website:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;help.goodeggs.com&#x2F;hc&#x2F;en-us&#x2F;articles&#x2F;360007378212-Do-I-have-to-tip-my-Good-Eggs-delivery-driver-" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;help.goodeggs.com&#x2F;hc&#x2F;en-us&#x2F;articles&#x2F;360007378212-Do-...</a><p>I have no stake in them but it&#x27;s interesting that they addressed this at all, and well before this instacart controversy.

This makes me wonder why people bother working for Instacart when there are so many alternatives. I googled for &quot;service economy gig&quot; and got this huge list:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.wonolo.com&#x2F;blog&#x2F;best-gig-economy-apps&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.wonolo.com&#x2F;blog&#x2F;best-gig-economy-apps&#x2F;</a><p>I guess this Wonolo service is for choosing the right services to work for. Now I&#x27;m wondering how many Wonolo clones there are. :-)

Instacart doesn&#x27;t list any company officers or important contacts on their website. I guess because they would end up dealing with irate customers too much.<p>But here are the vile people responsible for this practice: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.crunchbase.com&#x2F;organization&#x2F;instacart#section-current-team" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.crunchbase.com&#x2F;organization&#x2F;instacart#section-cu...</a>

This really isn&#x27;t that different than tipping at your favorite bar. Employers artificially pay service workers less than they should with the assumption that the customer will make up the rest. The real answer is to supporting the broken tipping model. Pay people an honest wage and expect them to do their job without expecting a consumer to pay a bribe to get good service.

Could someone explain to me what&#x27;s up with those tips? If I&#x27;m doing a job I expect to be paid a specific amount. Tips to me seem like pittance which you would give to someone who at least can&#x27;t work or something, for services you just pay a normal price which the owner of the place needs to calculate with.<p>I&#x27;m often thinking about Mr. Pink in Reservoir Dogs <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=V4sbYy0WdGQ" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=V4sbYy0WdGQ</a> he makes the point I&#x27;m also trying to make. People should get paid for doing service and not need to rely on pittance of the customers because their bosses don&#x27;t calculate the real cost of doing business. If it were up to me tips would be forbidden.<p>In Japan (as far as I understand) it&#x27;s an insult to tip, it&#x27;s almost like: &quot;This business probably isn&#x27;t doing well enough to pay you a proper salary, so here&#x27;s a little something extra.&quot;

Absolutely terrible practice, and dishonest to both their workers and customers. Shame on Instacart -- never using them again.

Always tip in cash. Tips should be a purely private thing, nobody but the tipper and the tipped should know about the tip.

Gigeconomy is just modern day slavery dressed as an informal employee contract with, &quot;work your own hours&quot;.

This is why the tipping system in the US is absurd. The whole &quot;you must tip because they get paid peanuts&quot; argument is a circular logic. How about making sure that the worker gets paid fairly by their employer and customers can then optionally tip for outstanding service?

I’m confused and hoping someone can clear it up. My understanding is you are allowed to pay well below minimum wage to employees that receive tips. If the sum of those tips plus what you pay them does not equal or exceed minimum wage the employer is required to pay them more money until they reach minimum wage. This isn’t often an issue because tipped employees will beat minimum wage significantly.<p>Is this not Instacart doing the same thing where your wage is .82 plus tips as long as that amount is above x wage. If it’s below x they will pay you x.<p>However in this instance it’s an issue because the tipped employees are not often making more than x even with tips therefore the consumer is misled about who their tip money is going to.

In a context of pushback over casual hire&#x2F;gig-economy workers and their actual employment status this feels like both egregiously stupid and possibly illegal behaviour, which the company does because its a scofflaw. If its legal its wrong. if its illegal then its wrong both equitably and legally.<p>I can&#x27;t see in either case how its sustainable business practice to offer gig work, but claim the tip is the pay.<p>I really wish there were penalties reserved for CEO and Board of these startups, which couldn&#x27;t be passed on to shareholders or customers.<p>Flaying alive feels like it might be about all we&#x27;ve got left.<p>Happy to put on an old crone&#x27;s clothes and sit below the scaffold knitting, while it happens. Maybe the sans-culottes had a point?

Should be shut down.

Isn&#x27;t this what restaurant&#x27;s do with wait staff in the US? I know in NJ wait staff are required to be paid minimum wage. Typically the restaurant pays them less (I think it was around $3) and then their tips get them to minimum wage. If they don&#x27;t get enough tips the restaurant is required to pay them the difference(although in practice I&#x27;m not sure this ever happens)<p>If someone is willing to be paid $10 to deliver groceries, does it matter who is paying them $10 for it?<p>I&#x27;ve never used instacart before. Is the verbiage around leaving a tip lead the end user to believe that they are giving it directly to the person making the delivery?

In the ancient history of gratuity, tips were originally given _before_ any service was received so that you can get priority service. It&#x27;s absurd that tips now feel mandatory because of social pressures particularly in the US.

Our team of 5 went to a good restaurant&#x2F;steak place in LA last week, ate and drank for $300, enjoyed the ambience and ate great food, enjoyed the warmth of the service, spent great time together and tipped $75<p>Who should the tip go to?<p>- To the owner who spent&#x2F;spends a fortune running it in LA?<p>- To the chef who catered to our needs without seeing us?<p>- To the person who immediately and happily tended to us everytime we raised our heads and looked around<p>- To the person who cleared the used plates and never let us wanting for crockery<p>- (we tipped the valet guy separately)<p>I wonder what as a customer should I do? How do I know the share goes to all? I cannot pay cash for that amount. I carry barely $5 with me in cash.

I guess the real test of how this system works is:<p>-- if TIP &gt; minimum wage -- does Instacart record a negative -$ adjustment<p>such that a person&#x27;s payment will only ever be the maximum payment, regardless of how much tip the customer gives?<p>That would really be egregious.

This is theft from the customer, who tips with the understanding that it will be extra money in the worker&#x27;s pocket.<p>Disgusting, reprehensible, and frankly unbelievable. I&#x27;ve never used Instacart and now I never will.

&gt; We include tips in the calculation so that you can get a more accurate picture of what your earnings will be after completing the batch.<p>&gt; Tips have always been included in our calculation of earnings and it helps provide a reminder to customers that you are providing a valuable service.<p>Being fed garbage like that is pretty insulting, though it&#x27;s interesting to see how far they&#x27;re willing to stretch logic to try to put a positive spin on it. I mean, &quot;we reduce your earnings so you can feel useful&quot;? Man, logic broke right there.

One of the many things that I love about the Netherlands is the lack of tipping in the culture. People get paid a decent wage, and so tipping is only something done if the service is amazing.

When workers are thieving from their employer there is a very real prospect of jail. There seems to be no prospect of jail for managers thieving from workers. Why is that?

What I don&#x27;t understand is why the law in USA allows someone be employed, and by signing some contract thing still count as if she is not employed.<p>In Russia, distinction is clear in law. Do you pay her regularly? I. e. at least one a month? Then she is employee, no matter who says what.<p>I understand less protection for workers, less vacation, less regulation overall, this is all understandable. I don&#x27;t understand why facts are ignored in favor of words.

I&#x27;ve read that similar happens in Guitar Center.<p>Basically, all floor employees salary is commission based. If you don&#x27;t get enough commission, they will pay you minimal wage but will get rid of you in several months, otherwise your sale commission kind of &quot;fills&quot; your salary until it gets to minimal wage, and only then starts to increase your wage.<p>Won&#x27;t be surprised if most of retail works in similar way.

I always tip in cash, except in the rare cases where I happened to not have cash on me. I am always under the assumption that this kind of thing is the default not the exception; when you add tip to a credit card who knows what happens when the mothership sucks up that cash and filters it through various middlemen before finally (if ever) getting to the person who provided a service to you.

What would the worker have received if the customer had tipped $50 on a smaller order? Would Instacart have pocketed the additional $40?

This really isn&#x27;t that different than tipping at your favorite bar. Employers artificially pay service workers less than they should with the assumption that the customer will make up the rest. The real answer is to supporting the broken tipping model. Pay people an honest wage and expect them to do their job without requiring a consumer to pay a bribe to get good service.

This is terrible, but unsurprising.<p>The whole gig thing is basically passing the risks associated with having employees (injuries and managing them) &#x2F; sales variation risks (having to pay people when sales are up or down) onto folks who are no longer employees.<p>The idea that they&#x27;d take even more from their contractors based on other factors just seems natural.<p>Maybe a &quot;franchise fee&quot; type thing is next....

I&#x27;m not an American so looking at this from afar - but according to this tips go straight to &#x27;Shoppers&#x27;? Are they actually doing something completely different?<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.instacart.com&#x2F;help&#x2F;section&#x2F;200761964#115005643323" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.instacart.com&#x2F;help&#x2F;section&#x2F;200761964#11500564332...</a>

Absolutely crazy. By comparison, Go-Jek in Indonesia ends up paying their scooter delivery workers about about $3-$4 on average per hour (in my experience) depending on traffic, for deliveries (food, shopping, etc). There is also no option to tip in the app, and tipping isn&#x27;t expected but isn&#x27;t alien either.

Really disgusting behavior, honestly I think the &quot;gig economy&quot; has the right idea of where we are headed, we are moving to a service &#x2F; high skill (technology) economy. Gig economy tools combine the best of both worlds, but these exploitative labor practices and low hanging industry targets have got to end.

If Instacart can&#x27;t afford to pay their employees, then they should not operate. They are stealing tips from their employees to make profit. It is unethical to use their service. Stop using it and write them an e-mail explaining why. Feel free to resume using it if they stop this practice and apologize.

Are instacart &#x27;employees&#x27; private contractors&#x2F;1099? Wouldn&#x27;t that mean instacart is even LESS legally able to take their tip money? As in actual employees who are tipped will have a minimum wage that must be met, which is why in some places tipped positioned wages can be as low as $3.

Perhaps tipping should always bypass the company.<p>If there was a popular 3rd party app for tipping directly to any individual, regardless of where they might be or whether they&#x27;re working or not, that could actually prevent companies from snooping in on the tips. Even at restaurants.

I wonder what happens if a customer tips more than what Instacart would have paid?<p>I read through the blog post on Medium and the article, but couldn&#x27;t find any case where the customer had tipped more.<p>Is $0.80 the minimum payment they will make, or will it decrease further – negative?

How is this any different from the what wait&#x2F;serving staff experience. Most jobs are a flat wage (possibly minimum) and tips. It&#x27;s always like that and still is. Maybe, the next time you leave a dollar tip for your server, you&#x27;ll think again.

This is an outrage. I used instacart for awhile and eventually stopped - it just became too expensive. I would always waive the service fee when possible and tip the driver in cash. Glad I did - now knowing they use it to deny living wages.

Over the past two years, these kinds of complaints have piled up against Instacart:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Instacart#Controversy" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Instacart#Controversy</a>

Instacart, a YCombinator funded company pays their workers $0.80 cents an hour.

Build app to receive tips anonymously.<p>Integrate seamlessly into checkout experience (like Affirm does for micro lending).<p>This could prevent Instacart etc from reducing hourly rate based on tips (because they don&#x27;t have access to that info).

I will not use any of these gig economy BS companies.<p>They&#x27;re often exploitative of workers and this is just exactly the kind of thing that reinforces my decision to never stay at an AirBNB, never take Lyft, Uber etc.

This is taking advantage of both the customer and the worker.<p>I am not an instacart user myself but I use similar services and I expect that any tip will be delivered to the driver.<p>I&#x27;d be pissed off to find out otherwise.

We should tip shoppers with Venmo, Cash App, Paypal, etc, when the shopper delivers.<p>Instacart won&#x27;t see this transaction and therefore won&#x27;t reduce their wages.<p>Less convenient. But this policy is unfair.

Vote with your wallet - tweeting&#x2F;posting&#x2F;complaining is fine and should be done - but <i>denying them revenue</i> is a universally effective message to bad businesses.

Just don&#x27;t tip. Tipping is bullshit.<p>It&#x27;s company responsibility to set the pricing policy so everyone one gets paid.<p>If they don&#x27;t pay their workers, it&#x27;s not my problem.

It&#x27;s almost like working as a contractor for instacart is a crappy job that people should quit doing since it doesn&#x27;t pencil out financially...

What happens if the tip exceeds the actual cost of the service? If the tip was $11 would they deduct $0.20 from the tip? This is completely absurd.

No Instacart for me. This is not OK at all.<p>Others have said why. I will spend some time to make others aware.<p>I really hate this sort of thing. Viscerally.

I would be interested in seeing a gig economy service being run and equally shared by the employees, or worker-owned.

This is legal though right? Isn&#x27;t it the same way restaurants pay their servers so little wage?<p>My opinion is abolish tip culture.

It&#x27;s about time tipping died, that&#x27;s the bottom line. There never was a good outcome to opaque pricing.

So you are essentially thanking and tipping instacart, not the worker. Evil like a villain from a disney movie.

What if a tip amound exceeds a worker&#x27;s payment amount? Will they demand from the worker to pay?

Haha what the fuck? And who was the brilliant mind behind this thinking it would be okay to do this?

Hm, 42 cents of that was his mileage pay for the trip. 38 cents was his actual salary.

Anyone know if Amazon Prime Now or other similar delivery services operate the same?

I use instacart weekly. Not going to leave them any tip via the platform anymore...

Why $.22? Is that the minimum before the tip has an impact on the nominal rate?

i heard this same thing from an instacart worker more than a year ago. at the time i was confused and kind of doubted her story, but now i see that Instacart employment really is just as shitty as she said. wow.

I don&#x27;t get it. Should the minimum wage be excluding tips?<p>Edit: I meant shouldn&#x27;t.

oh really? employer paying way less than minimum wage because employee gets to keep some of the tips is shocking news now? ever heard of restaurants? they have been doing this for decades.

I swear to god I am never going to order from instacart ever again.

Shame on them.<p>The gig economy has so many problems like this it is silly.

Where&#x27;s the outrage for the millions of service industry employees who <i>also</i> have to deal with this, and have been dealing with this for decades?<p>Why&#x27;s Instacart getting the unique bad press?

and to think I was just about to sign up and use it with www.bjs.com. Now that won&#x27;t be happening

DoorDash does this too.

(just tip in cash)

Problem here: Isn&#x27;t Instacart but the so called rich-hipster millenials that need &#x2F; want &#x2F; to use Instacart. Or lazy or just for the sake of convenience at the sake of a poor soul, don&#x27;t wanna shop groceries for themselves. If your time is limited then you could easily use Amazon fresh&#x2F; Walmart &#x2F; Boxed for your groceries. But nah, it&#x27;s SV 2.0 Human exploitation at it&#x27;s finest, Capitalism as usual. &amp; to people building these services, put humans first. It&#x27;s sad to see someone in HEB wearing a green tshirt shopping for someone - it&#x27;s like society has rendered these people useless only fit to serve master. Basically slavery 2.0 with a little wage on top.

Startup culture is a study in psychopathy.<p>- lack of empathy: Uber, Instacart, etc. etc. etc., exploiting the poor<p>- parasitic behavior: aggressive tax optimisation&#x2F;tax evasion, Amazon employees relying on food stamps for subsistance<p>- superficial charm: get rich quick<p>- pathological lying: cf. Facebook denying they ever did anything wrong<p>- manipulativeness: &quot;make the world more open and connected&quot;<p>and my personal favorite,<p>- grandiosity: &quot;change the world!&quot;, &quot;solve physics for good!&quot;, &quot;be immortal!&quot;

Dick move, instant back lash

Seriously, this is the responsibility consumers have in a free market. If there&#x27;s behavior you don&#x27;t like, move on. You don&#x27;t get to complain about bad actors when you&#x27;re literally keeping them in business.

What are the poor legitimately at fault for then?<p>I&#x27;m tired of this implication that the poor can never be at fault for anything, because they are so poor. It is an overly simplified sympathy that doesn&#x27;t always reflect reality.

How about paying people who serve you instead of passing the &quot;buck&quot; to the someone else?<p>Why start tipping for outstanding service, instead of setting the floor at $0 for 0 service?<p>Answer: because people like to pay less for stuff and let the company eat the blame.

Ouch. But unions are not the answer.

Instacart is AWFUL.<p>They&#x27;re paying shit wages and thus offering shit quality, because they&#x27;re offering a service that literally is unscalable. The logistics of laser-guided-bomb-type delivery of groceries from store to fridge is asinine.<p>Yo, grocery store shopping doesn&#x27;t suck bad enough to pay someone else to do both the shopping and delivering! I&#x27;ll pick up the pre-picked-up&#x2F;bought groceries. I don&#x27;t need you to delivery them directly to my fridge; I think I can handle that part. Just bring them out to my car when I pull up.<p>Problem solved, wages go up, quality goes up, I get my groceries. Everybody wins.

I am 100% in favor of tipping, and all of you people calling to ban it don&#x27;t understand service jobs. Those doing so should be ashamed, as they are effectively victim-blaming in this context (in what really seems close to wage theft, at least in spirit, by Instacart) to push this cause.<p>This is really much more a story of ethics in software development. Someone had to know they were doing the wrong thing when they wrote this.<p>edit: No, not going to talk about tipping. Like it or not, it is extremely common all over the world, and unrelated to this submission (which is about lowering &quot;shopper&#x27;s&quot; compensation to almost negligible levels when tips are given).

This isn&#x27;t uncommon or new. Many states allow for tips to offset wages, even if wages fall below the minimum wage. Some states even have a separate minimum wage for tipper workers that is below the standard minimum wage.<p>If you want to blame someone, I suggest looking for the actual culprit and not a law-abiding company. This has little to do with Instacart and everything to do with state wage laws.