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Some Costco stores have started asking Instacart shoppers to wait for orders offsite, according to interviews with shoppers and a review of Reddit posts and discussions on the policy.<\/p>\n
Instacart does not require shoppers to wait in a store\u2019s parking lot to be eligible for an order, but it does tell its contractors that they have better odds of scoring an order or a batch of orders if they are close to a store.<\/p>\n
Many Instacart shoppers used to be able to claim orders even when they were at home or miles away from the store. But competition for orders has increased, and as a result, many drivers pull into store parking lots and watch the app in hopes of scoring better orders.<\/p>\n
Costco has not yet commented on the policy, and it is unclear how the company is monitoring its parking lots or enforcing the requirement.<\/p>\n
Unlike other big-box stores such as Walmart and Target, Costco has invested comparatively little in simplifying the fulfillment of e-commerce orders. Costco only began experimenting with curbside pickup at a few stores in early 2021.<\/p>\n
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