Instacart Driver Say Customers Keep “Tip-Baiting” to Trick Them Into Making Deliveries

If you're working as a food delivery driver and receive multiple orders, it would make sense that you're going to give a higher priority to orders that are offering the promise of a higher tip.

Presumably, these customers are giving you more money for a more premium customer service experience, so you might want to high-tail it or be a little more assiduous in getting the food from an establishment to ensure that whoever you're delivering the food to gets it more quickly.

The problem is, however, that sometimes those tips get taken away once the delivery is completed, which is something that Instacart driver @romeshopper1 says he experienced while working for the popular grocery delivery application.

"So...this happened to me yesterday on Instacart. Order originally paying close to sixty bucks. Grabbed it. Picked it up. Communicated with the customer, she communicated back."

He continues, saying that the job was a straightforward experience: "Pretty relatively easy order going seven miles. Delivered the order she said thank you so much."

But the Instacart shopper soon discovered that the customer decided to take back a hefty portion of her tip, "About thirty minutes later the tip got decreased by thirty bucks."

He initially thought that perhaps she had a problem with the way he delivered the item or that she had a negative experience with her order, "So there I waited till the next day to see if she somehow gave me a bad rating cause this is the second time this has happened to me."

@romeshopper1 says that when he went back to check the rating that she gave him for the order, it was perfect: "She gave me a five-star rating."

He then speculates what her thought process was in rescinding a portion of the gratuity he gave to her: "She just decided to just tip bait me and like I said this is ridiculous it only happened to me twice, ever."

The Instacart shopper then delineates his initial tip-baiting experience, "The first time the person gave me a bad rating. But this one was just like an obvious tip bait. And yeah, you know Insacart y'all gotta do something about that man."

This isn't the first time a food delivery driver has complained about being tip-baited by a customer. DoorDash drivers have said that they've been lured by decent gratuities in a bid to get them to prioritize orders, only to complete their job and see the money taken away.

An Uber Eats driver also said that they, too, had a $30 tip taken away upon bringing their food to a customer.

@romeshopper1 asked other TikTokers in a caption of his clip, "let me know in the comments how many times this happened to you!"

One viewer wrote, "This shouldn’t be an option for them after they tip. This happened to me as well," while another said, "This happened to me on Uber Eats Monday. An order showed up for $58 to drive 30 miles and I took it dropped it off an hour later no tip like zero tip"

It seemed that several other folks in the comments also remarked that they've had the old bait and switch performed on them as well: "I got tip baited today with Uber eats. Not cool," one wrote.

Someone else wrote: "Happened on Spark as well to me. $25 tip changed to $5. Shopped 175 items for a $5 tip. I was furious"

Have you ever worked for a delivery service and experienced tip-baiting? What was your reaction? It would seem like a simple way for applications to combat this would be to make it impossible for customers to reverse their tips.