Instacart shoppers: What you can do about low ratings

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Did you know that customer ratings have a big impact on Instacart shoppers?

Customers can rate shoppers on a 5-star scale and leave feedback about item quality, replacement quality, and other factors.

Here’s the issue for shoppers: Low ratings and customer complaints can lead to shoppers losing ‘batch priority’ for incoming orders. Fewer orders = less money!

As a shopper, how can you defend yourself and fight back? Read on!

How the shopper rating system works on Instacart

Instacart customers can rate their experience on a scale of 1 to 5 stars. A shopper’s rating is the average of their last 100 ratings.

Shoppers must maintain an average rating of 4.7 stars or higher to see batches before other lower-rated shoppers. 4.7 or above is considered a “Standard” or “High” rating. Below 4.7 is “Low.”

Shoppers with “Standard” and “High” ratings see batches a few minutes before shoppers with “Low” ratings.

In addition to leaving a star rating, customers can also make select specific complaints or compliments about their experience. Common complaints are missing items, damaged items, poor replacements, or poor service.

Go to Menu > Your Stats in the Shopper app to see customer comments and order issues.

Customers are not required to leave ratings, so a non-rating order is not included in the overall average. Ratings are refreshed overnight each night.

Instacart will sometimes remove a low rating—a system called ratings forgiveness—for situations out of the shopper’s control.

• Not getting batches on Instacart? How to get more

Ratings forgiveness: Some low ratings are automatically removed

Instacart acknowledges that not every customer rating is fair. To ease the negative effect of unfair low ratings, Instacart offers ratings forgiveness. Here’s how it works:

• The lowest 2 ratings out of every 100 ratings are automatically removed
  • If you have less than 100 ratings, 1 order is removed
• Low ratings are removed for factors out of your control, like extreme weather, out-of-stock items, and app service outages
• Ratings from customers who frequently leave low ratings are excluded
• If you choose a replacement suggested by Instacart and a customer marks it as a reason for a lower rating, the rating will be removed

It’s hard to predict if and when Instacart will remove ratings for the above reasons. If you believe a low rating was out of your control, contact Instacart.

Here’s what ratings forgiveness can look like in the real world. The shopper below had over 7 low ratings removed! 2 were automatic removals of their lowest ratings, 4 were from customers with a pattern of low ratings, and one was for an app-recommended replacement that the customer didn’t like.

How to get low ratings removed

A low rating that qualifies for ratings protection will be automatically removed or discounted—But that’s not always how it works! The system isn’t perfect.

To have a low rating removed, contact Instacart support and ask. Instacart support can give you more details about customer feedback and they have the power to remove ratings, but it’s not something they frequently do.

Use as much proof as you can. Try to keep your story short, including only the necessary details.

Stay persistent, but try not to be rude. If you keep up the effort, it’s possible that Instacart will remove the rating.

When do low ratings drop off?

Your rating is the average of your last 100 rated orders. In the past, a low rating would fall off after 100 orders even if some of those orders didn’t have a rating. Now, low ratings fall off according to your last 100 rated orders.

It will take longer for a low rating to fall off because customers don’t always rate. You might only get one rating for every three or four orders.  

Regarding the order that ratings fall off in, it follows a ‘first in, first out’ rule. Ratings disappear in the order they come in, meaning newer ratings replace your oldest ones.

Let’s say you’ve completed 130 orders and your lowest ratings are a 4 and a 2. The 4 and 2 will be removed from the ratings calculation. One order later, someone rates you a 3. Your two removed scores would then be the 3 and the 2, and the 4-star rating would be added back into your overall ratings calculation.

Cart Star: Rewards program that can give you ‘priority access’ to batches

Cart Star is a rewards program that gives points to shoppers for completing batches. Points unlock three tiers: Gold Cart, Platinum Cart, and Diamond Cart. Each tier unlocks new benefits.

The benefit of Diamond Cart priority access

Priority access—unlocked at the Diamond Cart level—can be a valuable benefit. With priority access, you can get batches before other highly-rated shoppers who don’t have the same perk.

Here’s how it works: When you have priority access and position yourself closely to a store, you will see batches before other shoppers who are further from the store.

Other performance stats: Accuracy and speed

Instacart also tracks other performance factors: Quality and speed. Quality and speed don’t affect your average star rating, so getting a low quality or speed rating won’t prevent you from getting the best batches.

Accuracy ratings: Instacart tracks the accuracy of your batches by using customer feedback and other in-app data.

Customers can either like or dislike your replacements, contributing to your Accuracy stats.

The app also tracks your % of found items. Customers are more satisfied when you find all their items, but you aren’t punished for out-of-stock items under the latest ratings system.

Seconds per item (speed): The Instacart shopper app tracks ‘seconds per item,’ which is the total shop time divided by the number of items.

Your speed isn’t a factor for batch opportunities, and you won’t be punished for slower speed, but keeping track of speed is a useful metric that can help to improve performance.

Low ratings in quality and speed don’t necessarily cause you to lose batches, so they’re not as important as the star rating.

Instacart fixed many of the unfair elements of the rating system

The biggest complaint about the rating system used to be that just one or two poor ratings could seriously reduce your earnings potential.

If other shoppers had 4.9 stars and you only had 4.85, other shoppers could get priority over you even if one of your poor ratings wasn’t your fault.

Now, all shoppers with 4.7 stars or higher get the same batch priority. As long as you keep your ratings reasonably high, you won’t lose out on batches to someone with slightly higher ratings than you.

Why Instacart ratings can still feel unfair

Even with the many changes Instacart has made to the rating system, some shoppers still feel it is unfair.

Rating standards can feel random

An experience that is 5 stars to some might be 4 stars to others. And that might be fair if you could still get great batches with a 4.90.

But when you can’t get the orders you need with a 4.90, the natural variation of rating standards from one customer to the next feels like an unfair outcome.

You can still get bad ratings for things out of your control

Instacart does remove some ratings for things out of your control (out-of-stock items, app outages), but there are many other things out of your control that can lead to a bad rating.

For example, customers might mark ‘no replacements’ and then give you a poor rating for not finding a replacement. Or they might choose ‘no communication’ and then leave a bad rating for communication.

You can ask Instacart support to remove those ratings, but there’s no guarantee.

Customers might also be upset about a double batch or multiple store batch. Instacart doesn’t always tell customers that their order is bundled with another, so they might be unhappy about the unexplained delays that often happen with those orders.

Many customers don’t rate

Unhappy customers are quick to leave a bad rating, but happy customers feel less motivated to rate at all. Those who do rate sometimes end up being the disgruntled ones.

Some customers lie and make false reports

Whether they are looking for a fraudulent refund or just venting frustration about the service, shoppers often suffer from dishonest customer ratings.

Customers leave false reports that might say an order never arrived even when it did, or that an item was missing when it wasn’t. False reports can seriously harm your ratings and even put you at risk of deactivation. That’s unfair.

How to improve and protect your ratings

Preventing bad ratings in the first place is easier than having a bad rating removed.

Be the best shopper you can be: It’s a common-sense suggestion, but getting good at the gig is your first step. When you’re a new shopper, do demo orders. Closely read the shopper guides available in the app.

Communicate with your customer and be honest about bumps in the road. Look at your quality and speed feedback and find ways to improve. Visit forums like the Instacart subreddit to get answers to questions and learn how other shoppers navigate difficult situations.

Protect yourself against fraud: Leave a paper trail by communicating with the customer when things are going wrong. Take photos of the order before you deliver it, trying your best to get most of the items in the frame to protect yourself against missing item fraud.

Cancel on bad customers: After a while, you can tell when a customer is so difficult and unfair that there’s no way for you to satisfy them.

If a customer is rude when you communicate with them, consider contacting support to let them know the customer is abusive, then cancel the order. But keep an eye on your cancellation rate; a rate of 15% or higher puts you at risk of deactivation (more on deactivations here).

How Instacart can improve the ratings system

Instacart made a fundamental change to the rating system when they changed the way that batch priority works.

Shoppers were unhappy when batch priority was strictly based on ratings. A shopper with a 4.89 could lose out on batches to a 4.92.

The system feels much fairer now that anyone with 4.7 or higher will receive the same priority. But the system could still use some improvements!

Instacart could do a better job of explaining the rating system to customers. Customers don’t know that just a few sub-5 star ratings can cut into a shopper’s earnings.

And Instacart could also do a better job at encouraging ratings from customers, so happy customers who don’t typically rate will be motivated to leave more 5 star ratings.

Or Instacart can do what Lyft does and make the default rating 5 stars. If a customer doesn’t rate, Instacart could assume that it was a 5-star order.

One improvement is that customers must leave feedback if they rate less than 4 stars, but shoppers say that Instacart doesn’t enforce the rule. So you can still be in the dark when you get a bad rating.

Creating a balanced rating system is a huge challenge that will never satisfy everyone involved, but the current Instacart system can make some tweaks to make life a lot better for shoppers.

Shoppers: Read this next

• Deactivated By Instacart? How to Get Your Account Back
• How Earnings Guarantees & Bonuses Work
• The Highs and Lows of Instacart Pay