My 29th Instacart paycheck 💸 🛒

After taking two whole weeks off from Instacart to prepare and then enjoy a vacation with my family, It was finally time for me to get back to work. I felt the need to go extra hard to make up for two weeks without a paycheck. This was also going to be my first chance to work since Instacart lowered batch pay by $3 just as I stopped working a few weeks ago. Let's discuss how my first week back to Instcart went.

I plan on doing a weekly Instacart Financial Report like this one, so if you enjoy this kind of content be sure to follow me if you aren't already doing so.

I'm going to be breaking down each day of work individually. Luckily, the Instacart Shopper app makes that extremely easy to do. Let's go ahead and get things started.

Monday, August 7th

I really wasn't sure that I was going to get any orders all day. I started my day early but wasn't seeing any good orders. Then there was the fact that we had thunderstorms and even a tornado warning, the second of which is very rare for our mountainous area. Thankfully, I did get a few orders later in the evening, it's a good thing I decided to keep the app online.

I made about $49.98/hr on this day.

Both customers were people that I have delivered to many times before. Each of them is a solid tipper and always easy to shop for. I am glad I didn't miss their orders and I also didn't get rained on one bit as the storm had already passed. All in all, it was a decent first day back.

Tuesday, August 8th

No orders = No work

Wednesday, August 9th

Wednesday was a worse day than Tuesday and I didn't even make any money on Tuesday. Let me explain. My first order of the day was excellent I earned $37 in only 30 minutes and did very little driving at all. I was hyped, especially because it was a new customer who once again lives right nearby my apartment. That was the end of the positive part of Wednesday.

I made about $33.18/hr on this day.

The reason my hourly pay was axed down to one of my lowest in quite some time is because the second order went to shit. I accepted it because it was for $35 and less than 4 miles away. My first mistake was not looking closely at their items, because they had over 24 6-packs of soda and a whole bunch of other stuff. It took me about 30 minutes to shop and I had two carts full. I waited in line and unloaded all of my items that would fit on the belt, then as the cashier scanned my barcode, the nightmare began. My phone said the scan was successful. The grocery store system said an invalid barcode. I had to load my carts back up and step to the side.

I spent 10-15 minutes talking to support only for them to once again be no help whatsoever. Instead of resolving my issues so I could complete the order that was already almost finished, they canceled my order without warning. This meant I would not receive the nice tip and my customer would have to wait for somebody else to accept their order.

I went back and forth with support telling them that there is no way my batch pay was only $5 considering how heavy all of my items were. The dumbass assured me he was correct but eventually bumped me up to a whopping $7. For one hour of work and a lot of stress. So not worth it. I was so pissed off that I wanted to leave the store and quit for the day. Instead, I put all of the drinks back because I felt bad for the cute girl who was going to have to put back all of the stuff in my other cart.

Safe to say that Wednesday went from great to complete shit in less than a few hours. Oh well, onwards we go. This had me internally chanting the mantra "Fuck Instacart" for a solid hour, then I was over it.

Thursday, August 10th

No orders = No work

Friday, August 11th

I woke up Friday to an alert that there was an Instacart promo from 10am-1pm. So I got my day started early and turned the app online right at 10. Plenty of orders were coming up for me, but the only thing is they were all total shit. The pay or drive distance was insane and I wasn't about to waste my time working for very little money. Instead, I wasted my time waiting on orders all morning and afternoon.

I made about $86.66/hr on this day.

I eventually got one really good order that took me less than half an hour and was less than a mile from the store. Sadly, there was nothing else for me after that and I went offline at 4:30. This means out of the 6.5 hours I had hoped to work, I worked for half an hour only. Damn, Instacart has been sucking so bad here lately.

Saturday, August 12th

Saturday was a joke. This used to be guaranteed the most busy day of the week, but not anymore. There were no orders all day long worth taking, besides the one I had around 11 am. So although I had a decent hourly wage, I didn't even work a full hour on the "busy" day. That just shows you how shit Instacart has become as of late.

I made about $42.26/hr on this day.

The night prior I got a notification that there was a promo happening all of Saturday. Sometimes these are worth completing and other times it will maybe net you a couple of dollars. The promos lately have really just upped the pay to what it always was normally until they most recently decreased batch pay for all shoppers.

As you can see, I got nowhere close to completing 6 batches. They entice you to work but then provide no work for you to do. It's as if Instacart is a psyop to get people to waste their time sitting around thinking about working.

Even if I had been able to complete this promo, it wouldn't have awarded me much extra. Some quick math for you. $52/6 batches = 8.66.

Batch pay now ranges from $4-7 typically. It used to be that batches were a minimum of $7 no matter what. So the "promo really would have just been an extra $1.66 per batch. 6x1.66=9.96. This means the promo would have been a bonus of $10 for me, which in this world is not going to go very far in terms of purchasing power. Not much of a promo if you ask me. What a shame that Instacart can't provide right now.

Sunday, August 13th

No orders = no work

End of week hours and pay 🤑

My weekly pay was just barely over to $175 and I only worked about 3.5 hours total all week long.

I made about $49.19/hr on average this past week.

This was my worst week of Instacart yet, besides the weeks where I didn't even turn the app online.

Doing it again next week 👀

Instacart went from being great money to being very unreliable. I'm not even earning hardly any at all at this point. I hope something changes for the positive very soon.

I hope you have enjoyed this insider look at what kind of pay is possible while working for Instacart.