(I started talking to most of my drivers after Jason Fried posted to Twitter that he'd been getting uniformly positive feedback from his drivers; that has not been my experience, although I've never gotten overtly negative feedback.)
I'm always hesitant to relate anything I hear from talking to Uber drivers because I'm worried that Uber might be smart enough to track online comments back to drivers.
Yes, I hope I haven't done that here... I intentionally eliminated as many details as I could.
I would also add that it is much easier for Uber to roll up their charges and markups into one fee (only one service provided and consumer generally has a wider range of acceptable cost) than it is for Instacart to do so (multiple products, easy to estimate cost of a loaf of bread).
According to Instacart's FAQ[1]:
"Can I tip my Personal Shopper?
Yes! Tips are not required or expected, but Shoppers appreciate them and receive the full amount. After delivery, you'll receieve a link via email and text message that you can use to leave a credit card tip."
I am not affiliated with, nor do I use, Instacart or any similar/competing delivery services. Just pointing out what's listed on their FAQ.
I could be making a mistake and perhaps not understanding the difference between "Personal Shopper" and "Driver" (as used in your context). Are there two individuals that perform the shopping/delivery: one shops for the item, and another delivers it to your door, and the tip only goes towards the shopper?
Since it seems like you (and probably many other users) would prefer a "single fee with everything rolled in", would you prefer to have no markup, no tip and a single, but higher delivery fee? Or would you prefer a higher (but opaque/variable) markup with no delivery fee and no tip?
Personally, I wouldn't put too much stock into what one driver says. The claim that some service employees are getting a commission seems unusual and surprising. Commissions are usually reserved for jobs with a sales component.
It would indeed be very hard to do this without charging a markup if you want to show customers the price in the app before they buy. This seems like a pretty important feature.
On the other hand, the challenge with a higher delivery fee (say $10/delivery) with no markup is that a competitor could simply charge a higher but opaque markup, and a lower delivery fee (say $3.99/delivery) and appear to be "cheaper". The only way you'd find out for sure is by comparing item by item between the two competitors - which most people are loathe to do.
Now compound this with a general degradation in quality of service: Recently I've had a driver attempt to deliver the wrong groceries to me, in fact the driver almost left before I could tell them that these were not the groceries I had ordered...prior to that I've had several incorrect or missing items that I was billed for. I wonder if this push towards changes in their driver employment terms has led to a overall lowered quality in the service? This is just speculation of course, a number of factors probably contribute to this. But the bottom line is my experience as a customer has continued to deteriorate.
I had reached out to Intacart directly over email to try to understand how the drivers were compensated so I could determine how much to tip the drivers. I also inquired about the exact mark up over the base cost of an item: I feel like I'm being charged at minimum three times over the base cost: 1) mark up 2) delivery fee 3) driver tip. Contrast this with Uber, who roll everything into a single fee that I never have to think twice about. At any rate, I never received any response from Instacart and I'm still not sure how to appropriately compensate the drivers. It's really disappointing that Instacart has both declined in quality and made it more difficult for me as a customer to understand them as a regular expense.
I would probably be better off just walking to the grocery store or taking a cab: at least then I know exactly what I'm paying for and can anticipate the rough cost.