Instacart 'shoppers' baffled by shrinking paycheques

Delivery people who work with Instacart, the app that collects online orders and drops them off at customers' homes, say it's impossible to understand how the company calculates what they're paid, but that one thing is clear — their earnings have fallen significantly over the last few months.

"I've probably analyzed 3,000 to 4,000 of my payments from Instacart, just trying to figure out how they establish their pricing model, and I can't," said Daniel Feuer, 52, of Whitby, Ont., one of six Instacart delivery people from across the country who spoke to Go Public.

"I'm making much less money, and it's not about the number of orders going down, it's about the actual payment for those orders decreasing."

He's not alone. Private Facebook groups which include over 7,000 of the more than 20,000 Instacart workers in Canada, are loaded with complaints about pay. Starting in July, comments about specific batches of orders began to proliferate, with descriptions of the fees as "gross," "a trap," and "ridiculous." 

All six "shoppers," as the company calls them, who spoke with Go Public say earnings have fallen. Where once they made as much as $40 to $50 an hour, they now say it's often less than minimum wage. 

Instacart considers them independent contractors, however, so shoppers are not covered by minimum wage legislation. They are paid $7 to $10 for a "batch," which can include as many as three orders. They are reimbursed for mileage, but that is "incorporated into a shopper's batch pay," according to Instacart. 

The private, California-based company has been a major beneficiary of the pandemic's boom in delivery services.