Instacart is slashing prices as the war against Amazon heats up
Haha.   I moved to NYC this year.   I used Instacart for months, because I&#x27;d have to sign up for another service to use something else, and they mostly seemed equivalent, and I may even have had some YC-brand-loyalty, even though I was quite unhappy at times with Instacart.<p>Instacart will often allow me to order more of something than is in stock, because they have no real concept of &quot;in stock&quot;.  For any order of more than 5-6 types of items, chances a very good that something will be missing, so you can&#x27;t rely on them for tonight&#x27;s dinner -- instead, you have to order the night before so that you have time to stop by the store yourself on the way home from work the night you want to make the meal requiring all of those ingredients, to get the thing(s) they allowed you to select but &quot;couldn&#x27;t find&quot;.<p>I have placed orders through Instacart which didn&#x27;t happen at all because they &quot;couldn&#x27;t find&quot; anything in the order and it was all do-not-replace.<p>I have placed an order through Instacart mid-day which was shopped, and then delayed until my SO finally called them, whereupon she was told it would be the next morning, but not to worry, everything had already been shopped, and had been put in temperature controlled holding!   But then the next day most of the order was refunded before a few things were delivered, because the shopper &quot;couldn&#x27;t find them&quot;.<p>Instacart will commonly put frozen food, bags of chips, dish soap, and 2L sodas in the same bag together, and then roll the dice on whether things are crushed, too warm, or otherwise came to ruin.<p>I may have a lot of anger built up at Instacart.<p>Although I&#x27;ve also become increasingly disgruntled with Amazon, at least I was already signed up with Prime, so I decided a couple weeks ago to try PrimeNow.  I don&#x27;t think I&#x27;ve used Instacart since.<p>I cannot stress how different the experience was:<p>When ordering from Amazon (not the individual grocers), PrimeNow wouldn&#x27;t let me order more 2L sodas of my usual brand&#x2F;flavor than were in stock.<p>When I ordered something crushable, it was in a separate bag, and uncrushed.<p>When I ordered something frozen, <i>they put an icepack in with it</i>.<p>Instacart slashing prices is laughable.  Price is not their main problem.   I would gladly pay twice as much, if only I could count on them, but as it is, it&#x27;s possible now that I&#x27;ll never again use Instacart.