My complaint:
My store is in a residential area mostly educated families. We have Whole Foods, Trader Joes, Fresh Market, and Greenwise near. Not much farther is a Sprouts. We have three, 3!! Publix within 2 miles of our home. This is background information.
When I order Publix instacart, the inventory pushed to me is inventory from my local store meeting my demographics. So I order products we usually purchase.
Lately Instacart has started pushing orders to random shoppers all over the place. Examples:
1. Store at least 12 miles away in a demographic area of singles, apartment living, just demographically very different. After the shopper informed me nearly 50% of what I ordered wasn’t available I asked which store she was using and found out she was in a store with different inventory nowhere near me. I called customer service. They have no control over where shopping occurs so I had to cancel. I reordered and again it was sent elsewhere but the store was only 5 miles away with same demographics and the shopper checked to make sure the inventory matched before she started shopping.
2. Today. I ordered per my store’s inventory and again, shopper started shopping and sure enough, shopper was more than 10 miles away in another demographic with clearly different inventory. I cancelled because there is no point in ordering if products requested aren’t available. I reordered and finally it went to the store Instacart pushes to me for shopping. Once the shopper was in the store assigned to me. The organic pizzas and Honest tea were now available to me so they were delivered.
Suggested solution:
1. Ensure products are available by fixing system so orders get pushed to shoppers in buyer's store or to a nearby store. We have 3, 3!!! Publix stores within 2 miles of our home but Instacart has been pushing to stores with different inventories at least 10 miles from our home
2. Notify buyer where order being pushed so buyer can cancel if store in location unlikely to have items ordered
