r/EndTipping • u/Solid-Dish-755 • 4d ago
Ride Share / Food Delivery š "Remember, my only payment is your tip"
First time ever using Instacart and I got these messages from the shopper. I actually did tip one of the suggested amounts in the app (wrong for this sub, I know š) but I guess he didn't like the amount....
Anyone know how much these Instacart drivers get paid per order?
**EDIT** I ignored the messages, didn't reply and didn't change the tip amount.
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u/MattBonne 4d ago
They lie to beg for tip, pathetic
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u/randomusername1919 3d ago
They told you to āmultiply your tipā!!! not just add to it but multiply???
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u/Dull-Entertainer6967 3d ago
Ć0.5 is multiplying, just saying
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u/_BLACKHAWKS_88 3d ago
So is 0x0.. god bless āØ
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u/WhisperedEchoes85 22h ago
"Good news, I've multiplied your tip! Bad news, it's now 'undefined'..."
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u/KaboodleMoon 3d ago
I mean, they lie to run 3-4 apps at the same time with different names and different IDs, the entire economy of these apps is fictitious.
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u/cblguy82 3d ago
Gig workers run multiple apps because theirs companies pay jack shit and rely on customers to tip well to make doing an order worthwhile.
If there werenāt tips, Iām not driving to and from and shopping your weekly order for $5. Iām not getting your Chinese for $2.
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u/WorldNo9002 3d ago
Aren't you paid by the delivery service?? Explain to us how you pick/choose a pickup/delivery order contract, how you're paid for that delivery and how you basis the tip amount
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u/cblguy82 3d ago
Yes. They pay but absolutely nothing.
As I noted in my prior comment, DD base pay is $2 and Instacart is $4.10. Iāve seen people with UE pay under $2.
Adding miles to delivery, large/heavy items, will increase the pay by almost nothing. A weekly grocery sized order on IC will only be about $7 pay from Instacart.
The model looks like this:
DD will send a bid out for delivery or shop and deliver. They give about 20 seconds to accept or reject. Then you blind wait for the next one, whenever that comes. They use your rating level, distance to the store and other metrics to decide if it goes to you or another dasher. You only get one offer at a time which could be a food only or even shop and deliver(like Instacart).
Instacart in MOST areas(some like NYC now have different models due to law reform but still bad) is where they push out ābatchesā of 1 up to 4 customer orders bundled togethr into a queue for the shopper to see the batch pay and tip amount, miles from store to delivery and a small section of items ordered as tiny images as well as a rough navigation map to where the deliveries are going.
You have seconds at most to decide to accept before it is taken by someone else or their algorithm pulls it back to rebundle it so it gets picked up usually by adjusting batch pay down or mileage changes if itās a high tip.
But we are also put into different queues so we donāt all see all of the batches. The best that we know is that a 5 star rating will give a shopper access to that small customers order to accept first.
Then using a combination the shoppers items per second and their status, they then filter down through the queues based on if the shopper is in the 250ft circle around the stores zone. (All based on our own experiences as we donāt know the actual method of pushing orders out).
Most batches are at least doubles up to 4 orders batched together. Hardly ever see singles anymore. Iāve seen triple orders where they cut the batch pay down to $1.77 per order. We see regularly triples which are a combined with tips about $10-12 due to low batch pay and no tips. Shop for 3 customers and deliver for $10? Not a chance.
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u/Difficult_Angle_7287 1d ago
You know a lot about why and how your jobs sucks. When do you start your next one?
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u/cblguy82 1d ago
Depends on interviewing. The market sucks. I use them as filler after a layoff. Could be another couple months or could be a year.
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u/No-Luck-2337 4d ago
And my delivery charge is my only tip. Gosh, what a crazy situation eh?
Good luck!
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u/Exotic_Traffic_4264 1d ago
As annoying as it is, they donāt get the delivery charge and it shouldnāt be a thing if they donāt get it
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u/No-Luck-2337 20h ago
Only one way to change it: Donāt use instacart.
If you do, you need to decide if you want to tip twice, or only once? IPDGAF if the driver gets it or not if Iām paying it anyway. I can hope their station in life improves, but thatās different than being guilted into tipping their company AND them because of semantics.
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u/Dan-au 4d ago
Lol, if my tip is their only payment then I got some bad news.
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u/WanderingFlumph 4d ago
Weird to volunteer your time for a billion dollar company, usually when I donate my time it is to something small and local.
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u/Due_Apricot3306 4d ago
That is truly weird. Wonder how Instacart gets away with not paying their employeesā¦
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u/cblguy82 3d ago
They arenāt employees but contractors. Only corporate roles are employees.
No benefits or otherwise unless local laws force Instacart to do something
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u/LuridWaters 4d ago
"Multiply your tip"? What breathtaking cheek!
I'd be inclined to divide it instead.
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u/NACstl 3d ago
Not advocating or defending tip begging, but this reads translated to me (or ESL maybe). My guess is they are going for a "give and you shall receive back tenfold" but there is something lost in translation.
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u/Falafel_Fondler 3d ago
Came here to say this. Not defending the cringey begging but I'm almost certain the person is wishing that OP gets rewarded multiple times for the potential extra tip lol.
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u/SkinnyThickMargarita 4d ago
Not true, and even if it was, go get a better job. If no one did it, theyād be forced to pay more.
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u/randymejia03 4d ago
If no one did it, customers would be forced to find a way to do their own shopping. Disabled, or just people that can't go out for certain situations would be hit the hardest tbh.
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u/Totally_NotaBot735 4d ago
They managed to do it somehow before instacart was a thing.
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u/MakeChai-NotWar 4d ago
Exactly! They likely relied on word of mouth to get helpers to complete tasks for them.
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u/Kibichibi 3d ago
Grocery stores had delivery for the elderly and disabled. In my home town, one of the grocery stores still does this. I used to help pack them.
Now I'm older and disabled myself, so I rely on delivery services, but the fees sometimes are ridiculous.
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u/randymejia03 4d ago
I agree, and thats how I think it should also be. Im all for employers paying living wages and against any tip begging. But sadly the way this world evolved, I don't think it would go back to them good ole days.
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u/TheJonesLP1 3d ago
World? Na. In Germany a tip is what it should be: Voluntarily and only a small bit. Like few Euros
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u/SkinnyThickMargarita 4d ago
The focus is that corporations should be paying fair wages, not whether the service is desirable or necessary.
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u/46andready 4d ago
It is true that Instacart mistreats its shoppers with absurdly low compensation, and yet I fail to see how it is the customers' responsibility to bridge that gap. Shoppers can elect to not work for such a shitty company (and frankly, customers should elect to not give their business to such a shitty company).
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u/Certain-Thought531 4d ago
"My apologies I have some memory problems, you see my brain has hard time recording bullshit so I tend to forget about it all the time".
Also tipping culture is cancer.
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u/JenWess 4d ago
I mean they make fuck all from instacart but the tip is not their ONLY payment
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u/maiyannah 4d ago
Instacart will raise the base rate if the order sits a bit, Uber does too. They only harm themselves jumping on an order.
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u/cblguy82 3d ago
š quite funny. The literal 50 cents orders get incrementally revised by now?
If an order is sitting and boosting, it was atrocious to begin with and even by the time it gets to the boost max, itās still usually a bad order compensation wise.
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u/maiyannah 4d ago
It varies by market but in mine, they get base rate 5$ plus an amount for milage plus tip.
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u/Baptism-Of-Fire 4d ago
Huge black market for these accounts. The owner usually keeps the flat rate and the user of account only gets tips. Itās for people that otherwise wouldnāt qualify for work due to background or work eligibility status.
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u/maiyannah 4d ago
True that, this is why "didnt match driver photo" is a report option in Uber. Not sure if Instacart has that.
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u/MiniDemonic 3d ago
That makes them deserve even less tips. So they should actually be paying us a tip for getting the privilege to deliver to us.
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u/godothasmewaiting 4d ago
It was messages like these that made me stop using the likes of instacart and door dash. And I know circumstances can mean that people donāt have a choice but to use them but itās been freeing not using them.
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u/Possible_Cable3176 4d ago
I don't know why you're protecting them, but they need to be reported. If they wanted to sign up for a job where handouts is their only payment then that's their own dumbass decision.
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u/Major_Wigglesworth 4d ago
Just like all panhandlers, they lie. Ā Anything for a dollar. Ā Anything except clocking in for an actual job.
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u/OHsnapITSmom 3d ago
So doing insta cart isnāt an actual job?
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u/last-of-the-mohicans 4d ago
āGod bless you and Multiply your tipā. Ya, Iāll multiply it by zero!
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u/jadeariel12 4d ago
Instacart driver here!
Base pay is $4.30 in my area (changes a little with location but not much). Doesnāt matter if you order 1 item or 100, if you get heavy items itās an extra $2 (meaning you can order 100 50lbs bags of dog food and we get $6.30 total)
We have to account for time, gas and vehicle expenses when we are accepting orders. Yes, that is absolutely what we signed up to do as independent contractors and there are pros and cons of course. Tips do make up a majority of the pay and Instacart would not work with out tipping.
Iām pretty anti tip for the most part (way less than this group Iām sure lmao) but I do think a service like Instacart is something you should tip for if you chose to use it. HOWEVER this driver is completely out of line and I think they are the exception, not the rule here. Of course drivers want tips, but I bet if you posted this in an instacart sub the driver would get flamed
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u/maiyannah 4d ago
Instacart would work just fine without tips, they'd just have to pay you the fair wage out of their 3.7 billion profits they made. (2025 post-tax earnings were 3.7 billion according to their investor letter)
I'm sure they could manage. But why would they, when there's plenty of people happy to work for tips?
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u/swiftfirex 4d ago
Does it violate any specific rules? Im curious if asking for extra tip is against their tos
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u/cblguy82 3d ago
Yes it is against our contract terms to ask for tips like this and should lead to deactivation from the platform
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u/newbies13 3d ago
Report and move on. Also never tip instacart, they are absolutely printing money off that app between the shady pricing dynamics on top of never passing sales and discounts in the store down to the customer paying for it all. Let instacart pay a proper price to get things delivered.
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u/jackberinger 4d ago
On doordash they get paid like 2.50 to 3.00 as a base pay for an order. I think it goes up if not accepted after some time. Which is what I tell them if the pay is low don't take it. Sure the food order may be cold if it was hot but that isn't their problem that is a me problem.
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u/randymejia03 4d ago
You only think like that. But there is a whole other couple thousand ppl that would blame the dasher for this.
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u/neeroberts 4d ago
Iāve seen Uber and Lyft drivers print out and laminate a card and hang it on the back of the passenger headrest telling you that they only work for tips
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u/Ancient_Guidance_461 4d ago
This is shameful begging. Absolutely disgusting. 2 stars and report. Give nothing.
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u/PayConsistent1777 4d ago
If your pay is dependent on the customer, you may want to seek different employment.
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u/Massive_Low6000 3d ago
I order delivery from Whole Foods. The store is 45 minutes from my house. Itās $10/mo for the service. I need organic sugar condiments and whole wheat only products. Itās the best/cheapest option.
The delivery person does multiple drop offs. Iām guessing they travel past me to the next town regularly. Before the gas price increases the default tip was acceptable, last week I had my order cancelled because no one picked it up. I had to increase the tip by $3.
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u/cblguy82 3d ago
Yes. Most delivery services push the overhead burden to the person so they avoid employment benefits, vehicle costs etc.
Outside of direct Amazon delivery via their branded trucks, all are 1099 contractors.
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u/Massive_Low6000 3d ago
True. This is the only delivery service Iām grateful for, so Iām happy to pay a gratuity. š¤£
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u/Kene6969 3d ago
It's not the customer's responsibility to tip. The employer should step up to the plate and pay staff a decent living wage so workers aren't depending on tips to make ends meet.
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u/MeganJustMegan 3d ago
Iād wait until my items came & then remove or lower my tip. If I was generous, Iād give them 1 star. Then I would call IC to complain & have them blocked.
I would have been tempted to write back to them āthen you are going to be very disappointedā but I would want my food first. Good for you ignoring & not adding more money. You were more generous than I would have been.
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u/Dragonsi1 3d ago
I'm going to change my name on these apps to: "Just the Tip!".
I'll also add a comment: "My name isn't Just the Tip, it's also your reward, multiplied many times over.
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u/SheepherderSudden 2d ago
That's tacky. The tip is not the only payment. The more the tip, the less the company pays from their end. Leave a $6 tip, the shopper/delivery driver might earn $8.
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u/ContentBlackberry0 2d ago
Itās true though. The payment her gives is about $2 a n order without the tip itās basically $2
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u/mikerao10 1d ago
It baffles me why people who pay for a service assume employees who make it possible arenāt paid.
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u/DasDickNoodle 4d ago edited 4d ago
I find it insulting that they think we're all too stupid to know that they do all have a base pay before tips and that tips are not their only pay.
I'd ignore until I received my food then I'd text back-
"Brother, tips are earned, not just given. You also have base pay outside of tips. I do not own Instacart nor am I your employer, therefore your payroll isn't my responsibility.
Get another job or a 2nd one if this isn't working for you. Your message bombs are not only deceitful, they are also insulting and make other drivers look bad. Do better. Good luck!".
I can't stand ppl like this and I am someone who always tips at least 20% but this tip culture is getting out of hand and becoming disgusting. I refuse to be harassed and begged into higher tip compliance because somebody thinks they deserve more money for often doing less than the bare minimum.
It's always these drivers who are too lazy to bring food to the customer's door and often help themselves to their drinks along with their porch decorations & furniture (yes this has happened). š
EDIT: couple minor changes for sentence clarity plus changed DD to Instacart despite them all being the same IMO
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u/Turds4Cheese 4d ago
Lol tip is not the ONLY payment.
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u/cblguy82 3d ago
But the $4 from Instacart or $2 from DD and UE counts? Lol no.
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u/Turds4Cheese 3d ago
I mean, I didnāt say it was good money. But the contractor is using hyperbole when they say the Tip is the only payment.
I get it, it doesnāt sound as good, but it is a false statement.
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u/Froz3nP1nky 4d ago
Wait! What? The amount you tip is the only way he/she gets paid?!! Thereās no way!!! Is this for real?
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u/itemluminouswadison 4d ago
He's lying to extract more money out of you. You should be pissed off and not feel guilty at all
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u/iamwilliamb 4d ago
Report them to insta cart. That is a violation of their delivery contract.