WEST RICHLAND, Wash. – A local couple did something new in their Super Bowl preparations this year, when Harley Grinder and his wife used Instacart to order their Game Day refreshments.
The couple has used the app only a few times before, estimating five times in five years. They aren’t frequent users. When the order arrived, Grinder says his wife first noticed something wasn’t right.
“She messages me about a couple of items that were missing on the Instacart, a jar of queso,” said Grinder. “Then discovered that there were two other items, two small ticket items that were ten dollars a piece that were charged to our account, which we didn’t order.”
The couple found they had been charged for two bottles of silver rum that they did not receive. They hadn’t ordered any rum. Grinder’s wife reached out to Instacart, but the couple told us all that happened was a “ding” on the driver’s account.
“Unless you were looking for it, you might not notice,” said Grinder. “The only reason she noticed is because we were missing a jar of queso dip.”
NonStop Local also reached out to Instacart, who said in part:
“We take the integrity of our platform very seriously.”Instacart shoppers are held to a comprehensive set of account access guidelines once they begin shopping with Instacart.”As part of these guidelines, shoppers may be deactivated for any fraudulent activity, such as misuse of their Instacart-provided payment card…”Shoppers are restricted to a specific spending amount per batch. If a shopper manually adds goods to the order that exceeds the capped amount, Instacart receives an alert and our teams manually review the order to take action as needed.”If a customer has an issue with an item that was charged to them, they can always reach out to the care team to process a refund.”
Grinder said this hasn’t happened to them before, making him wonder how long it’s been happening and if others in the community have had similar experiences.
“I’m sure it has,” said Grinder. “You look at Instacart’s Facebook page and there’s a whole list of complaints about the same issue.”
We asked Grinder if he would ever use Instacart again, to which he said he “had no reason.” He said he’d use other services or go to the store himself instead.
The Grinder’s doorbell camera showed the Instacart shopper dropping off the order. We’ve blurred out their face, as no charges have been filed at this time.