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People are baiting Instacart workers with huge tips then slashing them to zero:
Instacart workers are being wooed by orders with large tips only to find them dropped to zero after a delivery has been made, according to a new report by CNN. Instacart lets users set their own custom tip with each shopping request, but it also allows them to change it for up to three days after an order is completed to adjust for experience. Workers, however, claim that some users have been abusing this feature, baiting them with big tips to get their shopping requests completed sooner amid the pandemic rush — only to find the tip slashed afterward without much feedback.
One Instacart worker said their tip was dropped from $55 to $0 despite finding everything the customer needed. Another worker claimed their tip changed to $0 since they could not find toilet paper in stock, to which the customer described in the feedback report as "unethical."
[...] Instacart says shoppers who experience tip-baiting can report instances in-app, though some workers say this relies too much on their end and that the company should make a 10 percent-minimum tip mandatory for all orders during the pandemic.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Monday April 13 2020, @03:27PM
Ha, your country obviously lacks the capitalist value of: nothing comes for free.
There was a time, perhaps 10 years ago, when the local monopoly was in the process of squeezing out the competition that they would have done something like that. Now they're back to the "core values of society" where you "get what you pay for..."
Just to continue the rant... a couple of years ago, when I still shopped there on a regular basis, they offered just one bag of chips for less than $3. It was 12oz and had a picture of a Mexican on it (since the local populace is prejudiced and many simply wouldn't buy groceries "intended for Mexican families.") - well, that finally ended as they upped the price from $2 to $2.69, then a month later made the bag 16oz and raised the price again to $3.09. On one of my last trips into the store, they had the "Mexican Chips" "on sale" for $2 (you know, the regular price from the previous month). So, I threw two bags in the cart and checked out, only to see the price ring up as $2.69, even though there were signs all over for "Special Low Price! $2". So, to get them to make good on their error, you go stand at the "customer service" counter, wait while the homeless in front of you purchase their tobacco products and lottery tickets, and finally get to talk with the smiling manager who goes through seventeen gyrations at the register to hand you a store credit card for the difference, and if they're in a good mood they'll even kick in an extra buck or two to "thank you for pointing out the error". Now, it's not always their error - I ended up accidentally purchasing two half gallon tubs of sugar-substituted ice cream once, didn't notice the subtle difference in the packaging until I was loading it into the car, walked right back in and processed an exchange or refund, my choice, which they cheerfully did, as they put the ice-cream that I had walked out to the parking lot and back into "returns" because they can't resell refrigerated product that has left the store. Nice, but all in all the customer is usually not even making minimum wage for the time invested in processing the exchange.
So... to loop back somewhere near to where this diverged... the competition based 3000 miles away can manage to sell 32 oz bags of similar corn chips for $2.99, so I'm not sure why it was so impossible for our local chain to keep a $2 12 oz bag on the shelf, other than the fact that NOTHING in that store goes for less than $3 anymore, and it's rapidly heading for $5. Too bad that Amazon's Whole Foods is part of the inflationary process, rather than genuine competition. Oh, and we've got WalMart foods here, too, but somehow the "low price guarantee" store manages to not have even competitive prices on food.
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