Instacart Adds Features that Make It Easier to Get a Delivery Slot
Instacart is one of the most used services right now during the coronavirus pandemic. But being able to find a delivery slot is very difficult. It’s probably best to look at midnight or early in the morning for a better chance at finding a delivery slot.
There are good reasons for time slots being so hard to find though. Orders have surged during the pandemic and Instacart has not been able to hire enough workers to keep up. The company says it has seen an increase of 300% year to year in recent weeks. Plus the average customer basket size on Instacart up by more than 25% month-over-month.
Then there’s the safety issue for Instacart shoppers. While we stay safe at home, they are the ones going to supermarkets and picking out items off the shelf and delivering them. Workers went on strike recently and Instacart has made changes to improve their safety.
So now Instacart has introduced new features to make it easier to find delivery slots. You can check your app to see if they are available in your area.
Fast & Flexible
With Fast & Flexible, customers no longer need to check for delivery slots, but can just place an order and choose to have it delivered by the first available shopper. This option gives you a window of a few days, but no specific delivery time. That shouldn’t be a big issue if you are staying at home anyway.
Instacart says that the Fast & Flexible feature has increased available delivery windows by 50%. This feature is available for all orders except those containing alcohol purchases.
Order Ahead
Instacart is also introducing a new Order Ahead feature that allows customers to now place orders up to two weeks in advance. The previous Order Ahead functionality only allowed customers to select delivery windows up to seven days ahead. This new functionality allows customers to build their digital cart well in advance of when they need their groceries or goods.
It is available today in a number of high demand locations, and will be rolling out across North America to all customers in the coming weeks.
More Features
In addition to the new features announced today, the company has also expanded its shopper community over the last two weeks, growing from 200,000 to more than 350,000 active shoppers to better serve customers. In addition, Instacart has introduced a significant number of new customer and shopper product features over the last month in response to COVID-19 including:
- “Leave at My Door” delivery
- Contactless alcohol delivery
- Automatic cancellation of out of stock orders
- New “Customer Default Tip” feature
- In-app incident reporting for shoppers
- In-app customer order issue review for shoppers
- Ratings forgiveness for shoppers
- Canceling batches made easier for shoppers
- Mobile Checkout available everywhere for shoppers
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Perhaps Instacart has an Update in store for the Software? Seems like a simple FIX!!!
Had a Fast & Flexible order that I snagged for BJs after umpteen attempts. 6 days later was informed that delivery was tonight. Finally.
Around 7 pm got a message that it was running behind, and at 8:15 pm, it still had not started processing, and BJs closes at 9pm. At 8:30pm my order was cancelled. So much for Fast & Flexible.
And of course, now no delivery spots available.
My husband read that people are putting in very big tips to make sure their orders get priority with shoppers. Although some people are scamming the shoppers by reducing the tips once their order has gone through. (I didn’t know that was even possible).
Does Instacart code as grocery to use with Chase Freedom 5x?