One thing I am wondering is just how accurate Aldi’s inventory counts are, considering their “special buy” business model. When we used their service, it was late November, and I did notice some holiday candies that popped up—clearly part of their seasonal inventory—but I didn’t see if they were a part of that week’s ad, or a previous week. I would imagine it would be kind of hard for the inventory to keep track of their Special Buy items, since they are added weekly and not replenished once sold out, and can’t seem to find a specific answer on it. If anyone has any more knowledge on this topic, I’d be glad to hear it in the comments!

I knew through extensive previous research that there were markups on certain items, but I was shocked to discover that there were also many that had no such markup. I sadly know far too many prices at Aldi, so picking out the ones that had a few extra coins attached was pretty easy for me; I’m sure it’s a lot harder to spot if you’re ordering from a more traditional supermarket, where prices tend to fluctuate more. The most glaring markup came from something we desperately needed: milk. I haven’t seen it cost more than $2 at Aldi in over a year, yet it was $2.69 in Instacart. Since we were also going to run out of that by morning, I had to pull the trigger with disgust—from what I could tell, though, the other items that had additional markups seemed to be around $.20 to $.30 each.

Once I hit the threshold and was satisfied with my order, I was taken to a “substitution screen”: Based on specific counts in that store’s inventory, it lets you know which items could possibly be sold out or hard-to-find, and lets you auto-approve certain substitutions, preventing your shopper from having to contact you during the trip. By default, similar items are recommended, but you can either add your own substitution, or skip it if you just want to be contacted in the event of an outage. It’s a nice feature, considering you already will be getting a dozen messages from your shopper, so any you can eliminate is one less annoyance to deal with. From there, I placed my order, and scheduled it to be delivered the following morning between 10-11 a.m., the earliest window for delivery.

Later on, my wife received the first of a million messages from Instacart/the shopper: We had put cinnamon French toast sticks in our order, and I had auto-approved regular ones if they were out. Apparently, they were also out of our backup option, because the shopper contacted her to ask if a substitution for blueberry pancakes and sausage on a stick would be okay. That’s a rather odd suggestion, but I guess she felt our hearts were set on some sort of frozen breakfast food. But by the time my wife logged in and went to respond not five minutes after receiving the request, we were informed that it was too late to review the substitution, because the shopper was already checking out. Okay, so apparently you can’t do anything while waiting for your order because you have to drop what you’re doing and respond immediately to any and all questions…wait, where’s the convenience again?

Also, the shopper went ahead and substituted the pancakes on a stick…which was $3 more than our original requested item. And all within five minutes of the initial request. I mean, we ate them, but what if it was something that we didn’t like, or even worse, were allergic to? I’d almost rather she just left it off entirely, but then I suppose people would get upset with that, so its one of those “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” kinda things from the shoppers’ perspective.

The delivery finally came around 11:30, a half-hour later than the tail end of our originally requested hour-long window. Since I was still at work, my wife said the lady who delivered it was really nice, but there was an odd mixup concerning the grocery bags. The shopper brought them in the large, reusable Aldi totes, mentioning something about them being out of regular bags (?), and then hovered around after handing the groceries over, as if waiting to get her bags back. My wife, taking care of a baby and whining dog, and hating the idea of being rushed to empty groceries, made it pretty clear that wasn’t going to happen, at which point the lady kindly said she could just get more, and left. I know the shopper didn’t mean anything by it, and handled the situation well enough to prevent it from escalating, but forcing someone to unload groceries while you wait so you can keep the same bags seems a little…dumb? Rude? Awkward? If there isn’t a way for Instacart to add the cost of normal bags into the order total (and Lord knows their system allows the addition of many types of fees already), then that’s something they should really look at implementing.

So, would we use the service again? After all, we do get two additional $10 discounts (off a $35 minimum purchase) which, in theory, can work out to some pretty decent savings. However, after using it, I physically hate the service even more than I initially hated the thought of it, which is a lot. Sure, it’s a great service for rich people, who have loads of expendable income, but for the average Joe, I don’t feel like the tradeoff is even close to worth it. I won’t say I’d “never” use it again, simply because kids, and—well, life in general—can be pretty unpredictable, and you never know when you’ll run into a situation where it could come in handy, but I can say I’d certainly never, ever use it to replace a normal shopping trip.

On top of the additional markup on random items–which Instacart estimates to be somewhere around 15%, but which online users have found to be closer to 25%, or even more (depending on the items in the order, and store location), there is also a service fee of an additional 5% (which, for our $45 order, was a little under $2.50; this is basically a donation to the service, as none of it goes to your driver) , a recommended tip of 5% (which all goes to the driver and can be adjusted accordingly in either direction; we kept it at default which basically doubles the service charge) and, while our deal offered us free delivery, there would also normally be another $3.99 minimum charge for delivery. And keep in mind that, while the other fees are shown as you check out, the markup costs on individual items are never specifically revealed. In this case, we probably paid around $10 extra in markups (by saving $10 on groceries and receiving free delivery), but adding in the delivery charge would have put us around $15, or 33% of the original tab. Oh, and it gets even better: They charge a higher delivery fee for delivery during peak times, so your charge could double and go up to $7.99 if you order, say, New Year’s week.

Delivery costs during peak times double.

Yet, somehow, even with all those fees, the company still can’t afford to pay its workers all that much, with average pay-per-hour reportedly hovering around the $15/hr mark (of course, the website touts that shoppers can make upwards of $25 an hour, though by virtually all actual accounts, maintaining that mark is virtually impossible). That’s not a terrible wage in and of itself, but considering the beating you’re putting on your own car, most of that money will probably just end up going to fixing it when it dies. Oh, and there are no additional benefits for its shoppers: No gas discounts, no medical care options, no 401k, no nothing.

Really, these delivery companies all seem to be knee-jerk reactions to taking advantage of a fad before it dies down. Now, I don’t think grocery delivery itself is a fad—a growing number of people are either lazy, or legitimately busy, and eliminating a trip to the market can potentially free up an hour or two of free time—but the current business models of said services just don’t seem to be very sustainable. Once the grocery stores themselves start offering delivery, complete with their own associates in their own branded vehicles, then we might be looking at a service worth using. Until then, these services all just feel like pop-up cash grabs, targeting the rich and those that value the convenience, without taking the time to research the downsides. Hell, Instacart has even received substantial press for hiding additional fees in the past, an issue that they’ve supposedly resolved. But if we’ve learned anything from business culture, that just means they’ve learned to hide them a little bit better.

I’m not naive enough to think what’s best for me is what’s best for everyone: there are no doubt many scenarios where Instacart can be a legitimate time/life-saver. But for the average Joe who just hates going to the grocery store and is living paycheck to paycheck–you’re better of dragging your ass off the couch and going yourself.