Instacart Raises Shopper Pay in Seattle, Cuts Pay in Boulder, CO
Instacart announced last week that they are raising the delivery rates for full service shoppers for both full service shops and delivery only orders. The rate increases was supposed to start today, but it seems as if Sunday’s rates on 9/10 was also higher than the previous Sunday. Back in October, Instacart moved to dynamic pay, which means that pay can change from day to day and also week to week. During the first few weeks, most shoppers saw their pay decrease by $0.25 to $0.50 every other week because Instacart did not get as much revenue from the service fee as they predicted. This was due partly to the campaign waged by shoppers to have customers waive the service fee and add a tip to the orders.
The dynamic pay over the past year amounted to fairly drastic pay decreases for many cities, including Seattle. While the delivery rates in Seattle are much higher than the rest of the country, the delivery rates in Seattle have been cut over 25% in the past year.
Instacart January 2017 Shopper Delivery Rate Cuts
Back in January of this year, Instacart went to many major cities and cut their rates. Not every city received a cut back in January, and the cuts ranged from 50 cents to up to $1.50 for both delivery only and full service rates. You can read more about it in the below post:
Instacart Cuts Instacart Shopper Delivery Rates Next Week
Instacart Raises Shopper Pay in Seattle
While it is true that they are increasing shopper pay in Seattle, they are increasing them close to what they were late last year in 2016. Take a look at the table below of the rates everyday in four different weeks:
| Jan 6th, 2017 | Jan 14th, 2017 | September 4th, 2017 | September 11th, 2017 | |||||
| Full Service | Delivery Only | Full Service | Delivery Only | Full Service | Delivery Only | Full Service | Delivery Only | |
| Sunday | 8.8 | 5.55 | 7.65 | 6.5 | ||||
| Monday | 8.65 | 5.55 | 7.7 | 5.2 | 8.25 | 6 | ||
| Tuesday | 8.35 | 6.5 | 7.4 | 6.15 | 8 | 5.75 | ||
| Wednesday | 9.25 | 6.1 | 8.3 | 5.75 | 5.6 | 3.8 | 7.75 | 5.5 |
| Thursday | 9.05 | 5.65 | 8.1 | 5.3 | 5.35 | 3.7 | 7.75 | 5.5 |
| Friday | 9.85 | 6.25 | 8.9 | 5.9 | 6.35 | 4.4 | 7.75 | 5.5 |
| Saturday | 9.75 | 5.65 | 8.4 | 5.5 | 5.8 | 3.95 | 8 | 5.75 |
While the increase this week was about $2 across the board, it is still below the rates that were paid out earlier this year and much lower than the pay last year, as represented by the week of January 6th. In addition, there doesn’t seem to be any other increases in shopper pay in any other city. If this is the case, I suspect that Amazon Flex in Seattle has stolen many shoppers from Instacart due to substantially higher pay. The maximum I have earned from Instacart is about $25 an hour, whereas I can easily average $23-$25 on Amazon Flex throughout the day.
Instacart Cuts Pay in Boulder, CO
Some shoppers have noticed that there has been a rate decrease this week and next week. The rates got a lot of attention because the delivery only rates this week is only $0.40. If you have just one delivery order, you would earn just 40 cents to deliver someone’s groceries.
Below are the pictures of the original post service-fee pay back in October of last year, along with the actual pay levels last week and this week in Boulder, CO:
You can see that their full service delivery rates were supposed to be about $9.50 per order with delivery rates around $7.00. Now the rates this week is $4.55 for a full service order while delivery only will be $0.40. The most delivery only orders I had in a batch was 4 and it took me about an hour to do it, even though all of the orders were within a mile of each other in downtown. It takes at least 10 minutes to park and deliver the groceries, let alone drive to the next customer. The delivery only rate in Seattle was around $6, so I was getting about $24 an hour, which wasn’t too bad. However, at $0.40, the maximum you can earn in an hour is $2.40, which is below minimum wage.
Instacart Doesn’t Really Care About Shoppers, Only Profits
These price changes really show that Instacart doesn’t really care about shoppers but about the bottom line. Take a look at a screenshot of next week’s pay:
How much is the delivery only rate? -$0.10. Of course this was an error, but how can an error like that happen? Doesn’t anyone check what they put on that screen? It is one of the most important screens for shoppers and Instacart just keep cutting rates and allows for a negative number for a delivery only pay rate.
They claim on Twitter that it was an error but their Twitter response was a bit lacking:
This is a display error please feel free to reach out to [email protected]. – LA
— Instacart (@Instacart) September 10, 2017
[Updated] At this time, it is unclear what the delivery only rate is for September 20th. For Tuesday (9/19), it is $1.40 and $1 for Thursday and Friday (9/21-22). Some shoppers believe that it may be about $1 for delivery only next Wednesday (9/20). This week, it was just 40 cents. I don’t know if anyone would delivery anything for just 40 cents and I wonder how many shoppers realize at the end of the week that delivery only rate is just $0.40.
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