Instacart complaint: Branded as a serial complainer?

“Since we received a high number of order issue reports from your Instacart account, we can’t approve your refund, credit, or redelivery request at this time. “-Instacart

Dear Celestina from Escalation team,

In the time that I have been enrolled in the Instacart program, I have enjoyed your services a great deal. As a disabled person, limited in my ability to shop for groceries, I have depended on Instacart for a couple of years. During this time, I have spent $15,481.82. Also during this time, I have had to dispute $69.19 worth of goods that arrived as incorrect, spoiled or damaged. This represents a return rate of less than .45%. In some cases, it was bad produce. For example, I order Asparagus fairly often but it’s a fragile commodity. If the shopper is not observant, it is easy for himherthem to grab spoiled Asparagus. I fault the produce managers for not removing the expired Asparagus from the shelves but regardless, my Instacart shopper had delivered food that could not have been eaten. I had paid for the food that could not have been eaten. Instacart is in the business of delivering food which is, by definition, edible. Did you expect that I would just shrug my shoulders and not let you know? Surely not. Surely you want to know of such issues so you can reach out to your shoppers and, perhaps, even the grocery stores themselves.

In other cases, my shopper had delivered the wrong goods entirely. Most notably, I had ordered a sugar-free version of a product as I am diabetic and cannot eat sugar but the shopper delivered the “normal” version that contains sugar. It’s an easy mistake to make but it was a mistake on the part of your shopper and I shouldn’t be branded as some sort of “serial complainer” because I didn’t want to pay for something that would have put me in a coma if I had not been vigilant and scrutinized the goods that were delivered to me by Instacart.

One of your criteria for a shopper is “making good choices.” I shouldn’t be penalized for seeking to avail myself of good choices and rejecting the “bad choices” made by the shopper.

I have recommended Instacart to virually everyone I know. I cannot make such a recommendation if you are going to condemn me for my requests for a refund for unusable deliveries.

You have branded me as a serial complainer. If you cannot see your way to clear this designation from my account (allowing me to reject “bad choices” on the part of my Instacart shopper and obtain a refund) then I will cancel my Instacart account and request that you refund the pro-rata value left on my account. I am hoping it won’t come to this.

Sincerely yours,

Lenore Fromm