There’s one thing that people do that will make you lose faith in humanity. After Instacart customers receive their order, they give the driver a tip only to cancel it after the driver goes away. This was a major issue with the platform during 2020 and still continues to this day. Because of this, Instacart is rolling out a tip protection feature that will help drivers regain their lost tips, according to The Verge.
Instacart gives people the ability to retract their tips. This is something that, when exploited, can really become a major issue. Being able to take back a tip can come in handy if the driver does a poor job. The issue is that people have the ability to take away the tip regardless of the quality of the delivery.
Instacart is rolling out new tip protection for its drivers
When something goes wrong with anything on the internet, there’s always a handy “report” button handy, and Instacart is no different; there’s a report button right in the app. Normally, if a driver does a bad job, the customer would report the delivery and then take away the tip. Unfortunately, that’s not the case.
With this new tip protection, Instacart will reimburse the driver if their tip is taken away when the customer doesn’t report the order. When the tip is zeroed out without a report, the driver will be given up to $10. This method makes sense in a way. If you’re reporting a delivery, you’ll need to provide proof of the bad service. This should, ostensibly, deter people from trying to take their tip back.
But, we can’t forget about ‘tip baiting’
This seems like a step in the right direction to helping the drivers, but there’s something that needs to be addressed. It’s a practice called tip baiting. This is where customers promise to give drivers enormous tips only to take them away. This is like promising large tips to divers so that they would prioritize that order. Then, after the order is done they would take the whole tip away.
There’s still a ways to go when it comes to fixing this problem with Instacart. Sadly, no ride service like Instacart or Uber is free from controversy.