Instacart revises controversial pay policy after accusations of tip stealing

Instacart is reversing its controversial pay policy after an angry response from delivery workers and customers said that the Silicon Valley company was stealing tips.

In recent days, both Instacart and DoorDash have come under fire after admitting to using customer tips to subsidize minimum payment guarantees to delivery workers. The drama started last November when Instacart put a new payment policy into effect that gave delivery workers a single, itemized “earning estimate,” and guaranteed them a $10 minimum payment for each batch they accepted.

But delivery workers soon noticed that some of their tips that customers added during checkout were being counted toward the $10 minimum. Delivery workers, also known as “shoppers,” began complaining about huge drops in weekly earnings.

In a blog post on Wednesday, Instacart’s founder and CEO Apoorva Mehta admits to having “fallen short” with the new policy. “These changes were designed to increase transparency while also keeping pace with a rapidly-evolving industry,” Mehta wrote. “In doing so, we’ve tried, in good faith, to balance those needs, but clearly we haven’t always gotten it right.”

Going forward, Mehta says that tips will always be kept separate from Instacart’s minimum payment guarantees, and that the company would retroactively compensate delivery workers when tips were included in minimums.