When in Minneapolis, in my efforts to never leave the house and also never interact with people, we use the Instacart grocery delivery service. We choose our groceries online, and a shopper who isn’t me or Bob has to go to the Wedge, brave the parking lot, and package up the myriad bulk groceries we order. There are some flaws; we’re relying on someone else to choose our fruit. Mostly it works great. Really great, and totally worth the delivery fee and gratuity. And since I initiate the “shopping,” Bob puts away the groceries when they’re delivered.
There were a couple problems with our last order. First of all, our shopper packed the cabbage on top of the bananas. Come on. There are highly skilled Wedge staff available to pack groceries if you happen to suck at it, like I do (know your strengths, folks). I order a full 2 lbs of bulk fresh spinach to go into our morning (noon-ish) smoothies each day. That’s a LOT of spinach. This time, we got a couple handfuls of spinach, yet were still charged $14.98 for two pounds at $7.49 per. I weighed the spinach – it was 6 oz of spinach. For $14.98. An outrage! And of course I wondered what else I was getting fleeced for. The Wedge tracks all purchases made under their member numbers, so one quick phone call and they were able to email me my last two receipts to compare to Instacart. There were more discrepancies – 14, to be exact, plus one item that showed up on the Wedge receipt that I neither ordered nor received. It seems that for bulk items, like all produce that isn’t pre-packaged at a set price, and all of the other bulk stuff the Wedge carries, sometimes they use the actual weight of the item, and other times they default to the “ordered” weight, even if the reality doesn’t come close to matching that.
Because I WILL NOT LET THIS INJUSTICE STAND, and might be a tad hormonal, I’ve now spent literally hours comparing numbers, making a spreadsheet, and emailing back and forth with the high schoolers who make up Instacart’s customer service department. Every message gets a reply from yet a new customer service agent, and no matter how I explain the problem, they all be sure to point out that I can’t compare the two receipts directly: the Instacart receipt will be different because of the delivery fees and gratuity.
Oh, no shit? Look, you fuckers, unless you’re hiding fees in inflated spinach prices, I figured that part out.
I take much joy in carefully crafting messages, dropping scary words like “defraud,” “fraudulent,” “fraud,” “class action lawsuit.” I’ve said I’m looping in the Wedge customer service, so they will know about these bad business practices. (I could.)
The response to my first complaint was an apology and a credit of $2.94 to my account, to be used for future purchases. I went apoplectic, as is apparent from my response:
“$2.94 for 12 smashed bananas, five things that aren’t limes, and 6 ounces of spinach for which I was charged $14.98? Not even close.”
Unbelievable. They then required further documentation on the “things that aren’t limes,” forcing me to take photos. I know now that they were, technically, limes, but Kaffir limes, which are not a substitute for normal limes. Seriously, had my shopper never seen a lime before? The whole thing was fishy, including that the shopper was “Annie” yet was actually a man.
Now that I’ve dedicated a considerable percentage of my life to this fight for justice, I should note that when I showed Bob the spreadsheet comparing the last two Instacart deliveries with the actual Wedge receipts, he pointed out that even with the significant spinach fleecing, overall, the way they’re handling bulk item pricing, we’re actually coming out ahead and paying less than we would in store.
I’m now conflicted between my need to set the record straight and my frugality. It seems that the Wedge isn’t getting screwed – the mistakes must be eating into the Instacart service fees. Whatever. I tried. But then, in order to REALLY know, I should compare all of the receipts over the last year and see how we come out, right? “Class-action lawsuit…” I wouldn’t be doing it just for me, but for the little people: all the other less fortunate, trusting Instacart clients who pay strangers to do their grocery shopping when they can’t be bothered to do it themselves. And who (unlike me, apparently) don’t have time to pore through receipts, make elaborate spreadsheets and craft scathing email messages.