Paul Sancya/AP
- A Kroger customer in Ohio was charged 10 times what she should've been for a delivery order.
- The order, filled through Instacart, also never showed up, TV station WCPO reported.
- Demand for grocery delivery has tapered off relative to a high early in the pandemic.
A Kroger shopper in Ohio ordered a few hundred dollars' worth of groceries. But she was charged almost ten times that amount — and never got the order.
Jill McCormick placed an order for $282 worth of groceries on Tuesday, according to Cincinnati TV station WCPO. Instead of getting her order, though, McCormick got an alert from her bank for a $2,783.25 charge, WCPO reported.
She said that the shopper filling her order claimed that the charge would be cancelled but stopped communicating with her shortly before she got the notification from her bank.
"My heart stopped because I'm thinking panic mode," McCormick told WCPO. "Something is happening, and I have to react very quickly, and I didn't even know where to start."
After an hour of trying to contact customer service about the order, Instacart, which partners with Kroger to fill some of the grocer's delivery orders, canceled the order.
"We understand a customer was overcharged for an order placed on August 9, 2023," a Kroger spokesperson told Insider. "We rectified the incident as soon as it was brought to our attention with an expedited refund to the customer's original form of payment and a gift card to apologize for the inconvenience."
Instacart did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment on the story.
McCormick told WCPO Kroger had agreed to a refund and offered her a gift card worth $250. But she said those steps aren't enough for her to order groceries online from Kroger again.
"I'm not looking for that," she told WCPO, referencing the gift card. "I'm looking for a fix and outcome."
Demand for grocery delivery has fallen off from 2020, when the pandemic pushed many consumers to order essentials for delivery instead of going shopping at their local supermarket. Since then, shopping habits have largely returned to normal.
Instacart, one of the largest grocery delivery services in the US, recently cut base pay for its shoppers to $4 per order from $7. Shoppers have told Insider that the pay cut has made their jobs less financially feasible, and some Instacart contractors want to quit the service for other jobs.