Member-only story
This Thanksgiving, Shop For Your Own Meals
Convenience can be costly — leave personal shopper apps alone
This Sunday has been pretty adventurous already. My husband and I thought we’d use personal shoppers to get our items so we can relax. Unfortunately, due to a culture of wanting things done for convenience and digital products being easy to hack into, we can run into a bit of a problem.
The first problem we encountered is actually a problem I’ve faced before with Instacart: the shopper does not communicate. Some are very sweet and will even call if they have questions, but the shopper I had today did not pay attention to my note. They shopped what they wanted and so I got the wrong kind of lasagna.
The second issue is one of hacking.
Three times in a row since having this app, I’ve seen the face of the shopper on my app, but when they got here it would be a different person — a whole different race/gender/age. This is sort of frightening because who was I communicating with before? I read online that some people hack other’s Instacart account and pretend to be that person.
Third, and finally, any app these days take your money first and then you have to see how the service pan out. For instance, you don’t know how your Lyft driver may act until after you get into the…
