‘A punch to the gut’: Instacart worker baited by fake tip

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PORTLAND, Ore. (KOIN) — Food and grocery delivery apps have made social distancing easier but some delivery workers in Portland say they’re being scammed by app users.

Annaliisa Arambula is a personal shopper for the Instacart app. She told KOIN 6 News she spends up to 60 hours a week delivering groceries.

Like most delivery apps, Instacart pays for a personal shopper’s mileage but Arambula said they rely mostly on tips.

So a couple of weeks ago when a customer needed groceries from a store near Arambula’s house and offered a sizable tip of $55—she quickly accepted the job. “There was really no issues,” Arambula said of the request. “It was a shopper’s dream: everything was in stock, everything they wanted was there in the quantities and the sizes they wanted.” But the job was truly too good to be true.

Shortly after dropping off the groceries, Arambula checked the app and her entire tip was gone, with a message explaining the “customer modified the tip post-delivery.” “It was just like a punch to the gut,” she recalled. “It was really baffling to me that somebody could do that, especially knowing the climate we were entering into and the risk because so much was unknown about the virus at that point, too.”

Arambula is the breadwinner in her home. Her husband has health issues that prevent him from working—which means she has to be extra careful when she returns home from work.

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