and again, we aren't the ones doing the markup -- those are coming from the retailer directly, who may (or may not) mark up prices, which is their prerogative. we put all of our costs in the checkout screen transparently.

So you claim, but since you refuse to list what the IC markup is then it's impossible for us to tell. You're essentially using the retailer markup as an excuse to hide instances of when you do it yourself.

Thus the lack of transparency.

In any given transaction, I have NO idea what the actual % that was added by IC. I do not have this problem with Amazon Prime.

and, in the one case where we do not have a signed relationship with the retailer, we do explicitly note the percentage.

we aren't hiding anything. and, you have that precise problem with amazon prime -- what markup are they charging?

I find that hard to believe. That's the retailer markup? So you're just relying on the 0.01% (I know, arbitrary) where you do, and the opt-out $10 Service Charge to make money?

> "A mark-up is added to item prices at this retailer to cover the cost of the Instacart service. Prices are based on data collected in store and are subject to delays and errors."

There is no good, ethical reason why a delivery service should show me an item price that's different from what's in the store. It's completely ethical if the company wants to say, "The service fee for this store is X% (as a percent of item prices)", or "This store has an additional $X service fee". That is honest and reasonable. I expect a delivery service to quote me the same item price as the retailer quotes in its store.

The reason I have this preference is because of a delivery service's value proposition: shopping in my store, on my behalf. I have access to the same products and can buy them directly. So I want to directly consider the service's value proposition, by considering the service fee I'll need to pay versus buying things myself. (EDIT: Simplify)

instacart is not marking anything up.

edit: it seems clear that we can do better in terms of communicating this, so i've passed that feedback on to the team.

consider changing the messaging there? until now, i was under the impression that the markups were just another way for y'all to make some money off of me.

Intuitively it seems like the store should be more incentivized to offer lower prices to Instacart since they provide a steady stream of business, reliable payment, etc.

The paragraph reads like IC is responsible for the increase, not the retailer itself.

As for the source of the markups, that really doesn’t matter to me. I care about the total difference in cost between using Instacart and going to the grocery store myself, irrespective of who that additional money goes to.

i was mainly noting the source for markups as we cannot tell you that delta -- it's up to the stores to tell us what they want to charge online. we do want to be as transparent as possible! ("possible" being the operative word here)