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Who's ready to work for free 🥕🛒

I received a big long email from Instacart the other day, as did all shoppers. The title of the email was "Creating new ways to earn", which is ironic considering what was within the email.

In typical corporate fashion, they sprinkled in a bunch of mumbo-jumbo to fool the less intelligent shoppers. Repeating stuff they had said before that we all knew about already, trying to pretend like previous updates were brand new again. I realized right away just how bad of a letter this was for shoppers as a whole. The Instacart Shoppers Subreddit was filled with other shoppers who were equally frustrated.

The most important information in the email was one sentence at the very end. Take a look at it for yourself:

It's the part that says the smallest/quickest batches will have a $4 batch pay. That is reduced from the $7 minimum batch pay that I'm used to, which itself is much less than Instacart used to pay. This means that 50% of the few orders that I have left to accept will now all pay me $3 less. It may not seem like a lot, but it adds up.

At this point, we are fully reliant on customer tips to make this job worthwhile. The $4 batch pay MIGHT cover gas, but it won't help go towards other forms of car maintenance. There will still be many $0 tip orders and people will accept them. You may wonder why, I think it's because they are either totally crazy or completely idiotic. I'm sorry, but I'm not shopping and delivering to somebody for what equals out to be close to no pay at all. Tips will become more important than ever now.

This coincides with the fact that Instacart has continually increased its fees for customers, so fewer people are choosing Instacart for their grocery needs. They've hired way too many people and the increased number of workers and fewer orders is causing people like me to barely be able to earn anything these days.

Do I think Instcart is dying? Sadly, I'd have to say yes. I just do not see how they will be able to sustain through the next few years. All the signs of bleeding profits are right there in front of your face. You'd be crazy to think they weren't forced to lower pay over and over just to stay afloat. It's not looking good for Instcart shoppers. My only hope is that during the fall I finally regain some of my orders and am able to earn a liveable wage.

If it wasn't for Hive, I'd be totally screwed at this point. I remain confident that another crypto bull market will soon be upon us and then it won't matter one bit whether I earn a single dime from Instacart. I look forward to the day of not having to think about money every single day. Until then, the show must go on and we have to adapt to new situations.