Instacart's profitability relies in part on batching orders together — something that its gig workers hate

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A man wearing a face mask and sunglasses backwards on his head looks at a receipt while standing in front of a shopping cart at a Giant grocery store in Washington DC in 2020.
Instacart has gotten its shoppers to deliver more orders at a time for the same or less pay over the last few years.

Evelyn Hockstein/For The Washington Post via Getty Images

Instacart just filed for its IPO and revealed a plan to sell $175 million in stock to PepsiCo

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instacart shopper
Instacart filed a prospectus, a document outlining its business and planned IPO, on Friday afternoon.

Photo by Nick Otto for the Washington Post/Getty Images

Some Instacart customers are losing hundreds of dollars to scammers after connecting bank accounts or Paypal to the app

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A woman with red hair puts a box of Wheat Thins in a brown paper grocery bag sitting in a cart at a Safeway grocery store in early 2020.
Some Instacart users are reportedly out hundreds of dollars after placing orders on the grocery delivery app that never arrived.

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Instacart is going public. For real, this time.

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An Instacart shopper at a ShopRite store in New Jersey
Instacart is reportedly targeting an IPO as soon as September. It's not the first time the grocery delivery company has tried to go public.

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Gig workers are tracking customers who reduce tips after delivery by marking their homes on Google Maps

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Instacart delivery
Workers for Instacart and other gig services are tracking which houses tip bait, including by marking offending addresses on Google Maps.

David L. Ryan/The Boston Globe via Getty Images

An Instacart customer said she discovered the app's higher prices cost her nearly $100 after accidentally seeing the store's paper receipt

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A male Instacart shopper wearing black jacket with the white Adidas stripes on the sleeves pushes a shopping cart with bags of groceries from Ralph's while wearing a surgical mask in a parking lot.
Instacart shoppers aren't allowed to give customers the paper receipt from their trip the store when they deliver groceries and other goods for the service.

Dania Maxwell/LA Times via Getty Images

This strange trend on TikTok could help bolster live-stream shopping

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TikTok ecommerce graphic
For retailers, TikTok live streams could be a goldmine.

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An Instacart customer was charged $2,783.25 for a Kroger order of $282 she never received. 'My heart stopped.'

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Kroger
A Kroger shopper in Ohio said that she was charged $2,783.25, about 10 times what she should've been, for an order of groceries for delivery.

Paul Sancya/AP

Tipping 'nudges' are now popping up on DoorDash. If you don't leave a gratuity, you'll hear about it.

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DoorDash drivers hope to earn more tips with the app's new post-checkout tipping feature
DoorDash is the latest delivery service to nudge customers who don't tip the worker who delivers their food.

DoorDash

Chinese online retailer Pinduoduo has a 'hyper-aggressive' culture with hours surpassing a '996' schedule, analysts write

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Colin Huang, Pinduoduo CEO
Pinduoduo founder Colin Huang

Visual China Group/Getty Images

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