Is shipt for real?

[Rgarner]

A friend just told me about this. It would be handy to have delivery sometimes. Should I try it?

 

[ocnbrze]

About what?

 

[treb1797]

Shipt. I don't know shipt about it

 

[MoodyBlues]

I believe it's similar to Instacart, but I've never used it. What's there to lose by trying it? If it turns out to work well for you, great! If not, don't use it again. Beware of fees, though--even with an Instacart membership, every order has a bunch of added fees, and I'm guessing it's the same with other delivery companies.

 

[nickdalzell]

Oh my God Instacart. The king of the slowpoke in a checkout at Kroger who pays twice or thrice for the same cartful and slows the line down. I always want to ask why they don't just pay once for everything like everyone else does. Yet another solution in search of a problem in a very heavily instant gratification low-patience world.

These services seriously slow the line down similar to the old lady who pays with pennies, or writes a check, or spends 5 minutes confused at the chip-n-pin terminal. I ain't kidding ya. I actually dealt with one old woman who paid for her $15 of groceries with pennies.

 

[Rgarner]

The idea is to have the order delivered, not to pay with a ton of coins in line at the store. Don't laugh at poor people who have to dig through every pocket and then put stuff back anyway. Some of them have medical bills, student loans, etc. There but for the grace of God goes everybody, I guess...

 

[olbriar]

My local grocery store delivers. I'm sure there is a charge for the service but no clue the amount. I mow for a lady that is the 24/7 care giver for her husband. She can't leave him alone so shopping online for all her goods is a must. I can see the merit in a service that could fill this need.

 

[AugieTN]

Albertson's, Kroger's and Tony's grocery stores by me have free delivery with purchases over a certain dollar amount. I would rather shop in person and check the package and expiration date.

 

[Rgarner]

I would too. I just mean occasional convenience instead of the long slog back and forth now and then. It might be ok once in a while.

 

[MoodyBlues]

The idea is to have the order delivered, not to pay with a ton of coins in line at the store. Don't laugh at poor people who have to dig through every pocket and then put stuff back anyway. Some of them have medical bills, student loans, etc. There but for the grace of God goes everybody, I guess...

I've been there, and it's not fun. At all. I remember those days of scrounging for change and hoping to have enough to buy the few things we needed, and then the disappointment and embarrassment of having to take something out during checkout because we didn't have enough money. And our checking account was in the red. And no credit cards.

It's been years since I've set foot inside a store, of any kind, but when I used to do occasional grocery shopping in person, it didn't irritate me to wait for the little old lady, with shaky writing, making out a check and slowing down the line. I figured I'd be there one day...if I was lucky.

 

[MoodyBlues]

Yet another solution in search of a problem in a very heavily instant gratification low-patience world.

Not everyone uses those services for instant gratification. Some people *need* this kind of help, and are lucky it exists now. People who are housebound or can't drive, among other things.

Others, including me, prefer shopping online and find the variety and convenience of using Instacart worth their ridiculous fees. They give me access to dozens...hundreds?...well, many, many stores without the hassle of needing an account at each and every one of them. I used to do all my shopping online at Vons, and absolutely loved their delivery guys, some of whom I really got to know and looked forward to our little chats. But since Instacart came along, I've switched to using them even when ordering from Vons; it's just easier to have everything in one place, i.e., my order history regardless of store is easily accessible from its home page.

Just keep in mind that not everyone is mobile, or has transportation, or is well enough to do their shopping in person. Sure, there are people who want instant gratification and use these services to get it, but they're not the only ones using them.

 

[nickdalzell]

Not everyone wants to live in a techno dystopia either but all the futurists out there expect me and everyone elsle should just blindly 'get used to it' while I would rather go back in time to the '50s-60s and stay there. I don't want to live in your matrix. Somehow we managed to survive just fine without these things in the past and I like the old fashioned method of seeing what i'm about to buy in person and not trusting that none of my food is tampered with in transit, or comes from some third-world country, or that my plant-based food isn't Soylent Green or something.

The internet is creeping into areas it should never exist. A toaster doesn't need WIFI. also what do we do during an outage? depend too heavily on the internet and one day bye bye internet. After that ice storm we had in 2009 I started to rethink my dependence on it.

Instacart causes these people who still have to go to the store to pay three times for the same cart of groceries instead of all at once. It's similar to Redbox, it's an app but offers no streaming service. You still have to physically pick up a DVD at a brick and morter anyway so what's the point?

 

[MoodyBlues]

I like the old fashioned method of seeing what i'm about to buy in person and not trusting that none of my food is tampered with in transit, or comes from some third-world country, or that my plant-based food isn't Soylent Green or something.

READ ITS LABEL. On the product page for that item, at the store you're shopping for an Instacart order, like this for my favorite vegan cheese:

It's NO DIFFERENT than holding it in your hand and reading the label, like I always do before buying anything, and I mean ANYTHING, whether it's food or a new purse, its ingredients AND sourcing are very important to me. Actually, it's BETTER than in person, at least for me--with my elderly, tired eyes that can barely read a label without a magnifying glass. On a laptop, I can make the image as big and clear as I need!

Instacart causes these people who still have to go to the store to pay three times for the same cart of groceries instead of all at once. It's similar to Redbox, it's an app but offers no streaming service. You still have to physically pick up a DVD at a brick and morter anyway so what's the point?

Are you serious, Nick?! How else do you think they're going to get groceries if they DON'T go to a brick and mortar building to buy them? I mean, really! Groceries aren't falling out of the sky...at least not the last time *I* checked.

Now, there used to be an AMAZING online grocery option, HomeGrocer, that I used from its inception to its demise, back in the dot-com-bubble-burst era. They had their own warehouses, and their shoppers did just roam their aisles packing orders, without going to existing stores and checking out like regular shoppers. Unfortunately, they were way before their time... *sighs a nostalgic sigh*

 

[Rgarner]

Have you read Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs? That's pretty good. Bring your biggest containers...

 

[nickdalzell]

Moody, there are services like DoorDash and of course, Amazon, that do this amazing thing, they actually deliver the goods right to your door. I don't use or trust them, but they exist. Instacart still requires the drive, and it holds up the checkout line, so you get zero advantage. Similar to Redbox, why not just use a streaming service, and save the trip entirely? at the least it's better for the planet. Why go to the effort of having an 'app for that' while still having the 'inconvenience' of having to do all the driving and pickup anyway? At that point just find a movie rental place and pick a DVD up. Instacart and Redbox aren't solving any problems, just doing the same old same old but worse. If i'm going to kroger anyway, I just buy all my things and go, unlike an Instacart shopper who still has to go to the store like me, but ends up holding the line up paying three times for the same order.

I also don't trust an image on a website over seeing the item physically. I'm just too old fashioned and skeptical of it. I have heard horror stories of online orders being tampered with in transit, with some food either being spoiled on delivery, or even having date-rape drugs injected into them. I just don't bother. I don't need to depend on the internet to creep into where it never belonged in the first place and I don't want to be caught off guard in an outage. I am not about to end up like those fools that couldn't function in that ice storm.

We truly need to rethink our dependence on technology. It's getting too invasive to begin with.

 

[ozonetrooper]

I also don't trust an image on a website over seeing the item physically.

When is the last time you got a Whopper that looked like the one on the menu sign ?











'Sides, Soylent Green ain't so bad once you get used to it !

 

[nickdalzell]

I never liked most fast food before I went vegan, and certainly don't today after the fact, so their crazy marketing has zero effect on me.

I don't even watch ads anymore. I just would rather be able to physically hold and check the ingredients and such on a real item vs. trusting a website to be honest. much like I don't call a corporation and ask if they test on animals for their products as if they're that into profit, they will lie to keep a customer over risk losing one telling the truth. i also prefer to know country of origin. Tons of stuff on Amazon is listed 'made in usa' but is made in china on arrival.

Look, I have no problem if you are into internet shopping and having it creep into every aspect of your lives. But don't for one second think it's ethical or right to force everyone to get on board because not everyone is comfortable with it. There ain't anything wrong with doing some things the old fashioned way if the person likes it that way.

 

[Rgarner]

Amen to that, let's go back to the good old days. I also want to congratulate you on being vegan. It's better for people, the planet, and certainly the animals who would have died to feed you. If everyone who could go completely vegetarian did, it would make a big difference in terms of sustainability and probably lower pollution as well. There's nothing wrong with walking to the store, counting out those pennies, and leaving with a container of tasty, nutritious plant milk.

 

[nickdalzell]

I don't mind people writing checks in line, but counting out 15 dollars in pennies in a jar was just infuriating either way. the Instacart person was faster in comparison, but it's just odd that they had to pay three times for the same cart of groceries when anyone else just pays once. Worse was that they stood there seemingly confused at the app wondering where to tap, ultimately handing the phone to the attendent, then rinse and repeat two more times. It was closer to 'insta' for me who just put card in reader, beep, done and gone. So where is Instacart an improvement again?

Even when I was non-vegan I hated the taste of milk, and grew up eating dry cereal. I outright thought milk was disgusting. cheese on the other hand...

But many recipes calling for milk are lies, much like ones calling for eggs. they put those ingredients there to appease the industries not out of necessity, knowing that most people following a cookbook don't bother questioning it and just use eggs or milk. Same with the many snacks in stores that add dairy that are not dependent on it. I cannot count the number of times that a salt and vinegar potato chip variety has milk in it. Why? it's not needed. In fact it's to take advantage of people who don't take the time to read ingredients, so the dairy industry profits from ignorance.

As I adore classic, black and white TV shows, it makes me cringe to see the Beav drinking milk like it were coca cola on the show. I thought kids only drank it in school back when they literally forced kids to drink it up until like the 90s. but in Leave it to Beaver they're downing it like Cola all day long without being told. I cannot for the life of me imagine how much propaganda they must have used to influence kids in the '50s to do so. Because milk is disgusting and tastes awful.

 

[mikedt]

Before the interwebs, our family bought some items from catalogues that weren't available from local shops. Big thick catalogues with a thousand printed pages or more, like Freemans of London.

Today I buy many of my clothes online, again because what I want isn't available locally. And I always book my flights, trains and hotels online. Where back in the day, I would have had to go out to an actual physical travel agent shop.


I think in the UK, supermarket home deliveries doesn't actually go through the customer checkouts, because it's the supermarkets themselves that do the home delivery services, e.g. Tesco, Sainsbury's, ASDA. and not some third-party like this Instacart in the US.

 

[olbriar]

Sears and Roebucks was the huge catalog we received when I was young. I don't recall my parents ever ordering anything but everyone in the fam got the chance to peruse and dream.

 

[treb1797]

There was nothing better than getting the Service Merchandise catalog right before Christmas to thumb thru. Thing was huge,it must have killed 3 trees by itself. But as I got older the Service Merchandise catalog ran second to the Victoria Secret catalog

 

[MoodyBlues]

Moody, there are services like DoorDash and of course, Amazon, that do this amazing thing, they actually deliver the goods right to your door. I don't use or trust them, but they exist. Instacart still requires the drive, and it holds up the checkout line, so you get zero advantage.

I don't know if you're being intentionally obtuse or what, but you're definitely missing the point. So let's try this from a different angle!

Assume that you're UNABLE to physically go shopping at your local supermarket. You're housebound and cannot leave. You cannot get to a store. You cannot walk around a store. You don't have a car. You're stuck at home. And you need groceries, including perishables and non-perishables, produce, vegan milk and yogurt and coffee creamer, toilet paper, Oreo Double Stuf cookies (vegan!), bread, dish soap, flour, spices, frozen vegetables, frozen meals, vegan ice cream, etc. Please tell me how you're going to get these--on a regular basis. And make it generic, not specific to you. In other words, take into account the general public, with their finances and living arrangements, etc. Do not assume that everyone has a close friend or neighbor or relative who will, week after week, gladly do the shopping for them. Assume they don't! Assume they're on their own and have to somehow acquire their groceries themselves. Please explain how you'd do it.

 

[AugieTN]

Sears and Roebucks was the huge catalog we received when I was young. I don't recall my parents ever ordering anything but everyone in the fam got the chance to peruse and dream.

Also Montgomery (Monkey) Wards had a huge catalog

 

[Rgarner]

Don't forget Sears and J. C. Penney. There was also Johnson Smith. The last time I saw their catalog it seemed to be catering to rednecks, sort of Bass Pro Shops minus the ourdoor gear. I got a Frog Togs rainsuit from Bass once and it ripped.