What: Shipt pays you to shop and deliver grocerties, promising pay of up to $22 per hour. But that promise includes tips, which are not guaranteed
Expected pay: 7.5% of the receipt, plus $5, plus tips (if any)
Husl$core: $$$
Commissions & fees: Not applicable
Where: Nationwide
Requirements: Be 18 or over, have a valid U.S. driver’s license and auto insurance, a reliable vehicle (1997 or newer), ability to lift 40 pounds, smart phone (iPhone or Android); insulated cooler bags and shopping experience.
Review: Like many of the delivery platforms, Shipt says you’ll get paid generously — as much as $22 per hour — but its pay projections factor in tips, which are in no way guaranteed. The hourly rate also relies on you being able to shop extremely quickly and efficiently. That’s also a long shot, even if you’re a skilled shopper. The hitch: You’re buying off of someone else’s list and can’t use your own judgement to substitute when a particular item isn’t available.
Shoppers complain that they often spend half of their time frantically text-messaging customers to ask about viable substituions, which makes it challenging to complete the shop in the alloted hour. In rural areas, they also complain that they may be sent to a market that’s a half-hour drive to deliver groceries 15 minutes from the market. If you only have an hour, that doesn’t give you much time to shop, check-out and cart the groceries to your car. Being late or cranky can get you a bad review. Even marginal reviews can get you booted from the platform.
That said, the platform does pay a higher delivery fee for small orders that would otherwise net you a minimal commission. And, if you deliver a set number of orders without problems, the platform will sometimes allow you to shop two grocery lists at a time, making the pay far more attractive. In some cases, Shipt offers bonuses to new workers, but they’re tough to get, as you can see in the second shopper comment below.
After accounting for gas, wear and tear on your car and possible parking expenses, the net pay is likely to only slightly exceed minimum wage. But you say that you love driving and going to the market? Then also check out Instacart, or, for well-paid straight-delivery work, Amazon Flex.
What their users say: (from Indeed)
Your role at Shipt is managed through an app which allows you to create your own schedule. They pay you 7.5% of the customer’s receipt, plus $5, so if a customer pays $100 you get $12.50 ($7.5 + $5). But you are not guaranteed orders, so you could be on the schedule and on call, but have nothing to do.
What I want to address is the $500 bonus when you first sign up. Here is the gist: complete 35 orders in your first two weeks and get an extra $500. (Sounds amazing and doable, right?). Here is the fine print: “two weeks” starts the day you are approved, NOT the day you receive your Shipt card. You can’t even complete your profile until your card arrives, which means you can’t take any orders. By the time you get your card, you have about one week. More fine print: Only orders that are on time count, which makes sense, but if you are literally a second late, that whole order is null towards your 35. You can’t accept any promo orders, and there are a lot of them. So anytime there’s one in your area that’ll pay an extra $2, $5, even $10, that order won’t count. Each order takes about an hour if you include the driving to and from the store. So if you have another job, it’s essentially impossible to do 35 orders in ONE week, NOT two. To top it all off, my roommate kicked butt when she joined. Even with a full time job, she spent about 10-12 hours on both Saturday and Sunday doing orders and another 10-15 orders during the week. She DID complete 35 orders on time, and when she called Shipt to make sure she’d get paid, the SHIPT people were shocked. Literally several people from Shipt couldn’t believe she got the bonus. So that right there should tell you that this whole “bonus” is a (nearly) impossible sham that Shipt knows is a sham to reel people in.
Shipt has been an absolute blessing to work for. And I will continue to work for them part time. They have been there for me through the worst year of my life and I am eternally grateful. They allow you to have the flexibility that life demands as a single mom with 2 kids.
Super easy to do with a smart phone and a car. Thermal shopping bags are recommended. You do need basic phone skills as well as know your way around the grocery store. Also need an app for directions. And the pay is low, if you count the cost of driving.
I can’t even say enough awful things about this. Pay is low, you’re penalized for picking up promo orders. You have a hour window to deliver the order. so say you pick up a order that “says it’s 36 items” you get there and it’s really 66 items because things are in the SAME section. For instance they want 5 boxes of lucky charms or 10 yogurts, it counts as 1 on the app. The issue is if the item is out, you are sitting there attempting to contact the customer asking for sub options or trying to locate a store employee to see if more is in the back. Half the time the app is not working. The app malfunctions in the store! Customers don’t respond at all so you’re sitting there burning up time! You are highly graded on your stats and if are late or customers rate you awful, you get fired or don’t get orders offered to you. These shipt shoppers on FB sites are like a cult, some LIVE and breath to shop for people. They obtain regulars so your basically SOL if you do this here and there for extra cash. Some people even take it to the extreme of given thank you cards after every shop to their customers. I feel like I literally use the money I make just for the gas I burn up to shop! Waste of time! Everyone tells me i need to put myself on the schedule and stop taking only promos or I’m going to be fired. Most orders only pay $7-10 dollars if you’re lucky! You can’t take double orders until you get 10 orders in.
The pay is low and they do not reimburse. They say we dont need permission to substitute but then customers get angry. I made over $700 in a week and then BOOM I’M FIRED. The distances between store and delivery are insane. Customers dont answer or respond in a timely manner, there are codes and restrictions to neighborhoods. It is just a poor system. Will not recommend. No matter how hard you work, you are liable to get fired without notice if customers rate you bad.
I worked there one day. I had to drive 20 mins to store the shopping took 1 hour 30 mins on a trip that was supposed to be 35 mins because the app didnt work properly and the store didnt have many of the items the customer wanted so we had to keep texting back and forth. I waited in line for 10 mins and it took me 10 mins to get to the persons house. I got paid 8.50. I almost died. I tried contacting someone about the app. They never got back to me. Not worth my time.
I am a new shopper at Shipt. I love it so far! My pay is averaging just about what Shipt promises. If you are in a busy metro, are familiar with grocery stores, are a people pleaser and a problem solver, you will succeed. Not a lot of driving, most of my orders have all been less than 10 min away. My first one was 5 min away. I also run my own skin care biz full time and worked in restaurants for 18 years. This job is perfect for people who are NOT new to commission only jobs, have had restaurant or food industry exp, or customer service orientated jobs and are self starters. You make what you want and set your own sales goals. Members have been so nice so far, it’s a fairly easy job but you have to be aware and have extreme attention to detail + plus good personality and communication skills. Hope this helps! I plan on working for Shipt for quite a bit longer as my side hustle. It’s really fun job. Tiring sometimes but you will definitely get in shape. Love it! 💚💚💚💚💚
I tried it out because I am in grad school and thought how great the extra money with flex hours would be. It was a bit of a nightmare. First, you pay for gas, parking etc. and where I was (White Plains) you pay for parking (that’s usually about $2 per order). It took me way over the time expected to shop because many times they are out of stock of this and that (constantly had to keep texting the customers) PLUS they don’t have good service at this particular store so every time I wanted to text I had to go to the front of the store for service. I gave it a go for 2 weeks and after crunched numbers just to realize I was making about $9.75 an hour. Great for Shipt and Target AWFUL for shoppers. That was my experience. I hope your’s goes better if you give it a shot.
I have seen ALL of the Shipt videos that everyone has. I loved them and so I joined. My biggest problem with this job is that I live in Miami, where NO ONE tips. I’m a single parent, who is going to school full time and this job was a means to make some extra cash. NO ONE in Miami, Kendall, Hammocks, The Crossings, Pinecrest, West Kendall and Tamiami tips. So I waste gas and run my only vehicle down into the ground for NO TIPS. I did this job for 2 solid days and then I put it on hold because $44.46 isn’t going to do much of anything but put wear on my vehicle. I love the job. Also the Shipt customers were barely answering their messages when I would run into problems. Thank god I could solve them but the customers barely answered so I purchased according to the list.
Most importantly, they purposely and intentionally HIDE the payout percentage, which is 7.5% plus $5 on the order total. I had to call 14 times, wrote 12 emails, spoke to 5 “supervisors” posted on the shipt corporate FB page (which they deleted) to find out how they calculate the payouts. They never did reveal it! I had to find it on Reddit. That is BIZARRE. It’s posted nowhere on the app or in writing. Many people will comment about that. How do they get away with that? Very few customers tip. The only way to make any decent money is to shop 2 orders at a time, but they make you complete 10 orders before you can accept/shop 2 orders at one time. So that’s 10 times you’re going to work and use your car for 4 or 5 dollars an hour. The other way to make money is by doing Promo orders which are orders so small that no one wants to do them, so they add additional compensation to them to get someone to accept it.This is a desperation gig. The fact that they are still luring people in with the lies of $20 an hour is despicable.
I started Shipt shopping and really liked it to begin with. The biggest problem is the rating system. I am not against the customers being able to rate you, but you have absolutely no feedback on what you did wrong. They say their shopper coaches will be able to let you know more, but they can’t really tell you anything. They will probably respond to this with that same copy and pasted response you see on all of these reviews. You simply cannot control what people will rate you- even when you’ve done everything well. They could literally knock you down on rating for not liking the car you drive or the accent you have or whatever. The rating is what controls your job security so your job security is in the hands of people who are well off and lazy enough to have their groceries delivered (not the most empathetic of individuals). I have had orders where I have not had to substitute anything, communicated with the customer through the whole shop, dropped off in the first fifteen minutes of the delivery window, had her check over their order, and was then given 4 stars. Why? I will never know. As a contractor you should have a right to know what went wrong and have the ability to try to make it right. I have just fallen to a 4.6(4.7 is what you are expected to maintain) so I’m waiting to be canned. When I first started I read some of these reviews and naively assumed that the people complaining about the ratings were just bad shoppers, but I should have listened.
A sample size of 16 orders averaged $11.10 per order. Larger orders pay better, but can take up to 2 hours to complete. An average order takes between 30 – 45 minutes (not including delivery time). The tips are the difference maker — IF you get tipped. My same sample size of 16 orders: Only 8 customers tipped me, netting an average tip of $6.52 per order. Shipt does not reimburse you for your travel time or your mileage. They pay strictly for the shop. You eat the rest. Not a bad deal for Shipt. Not a great deal for their independent contractors. Welcome to the world of W-9’s. I highly recommend keeping a mileage log so you can deduct all of those miles. I did the math and was averaging just under $12 per hour. Not enough when you consider all of the costs incurred.
I know that they are fairly new, but I can’t be available 12 hours a day and only take 3 orders. There are barely any customers using the app and the most you can make is $12 per order. No one tips, if they do good for you. The hours are flexible….for the customer. I can say I want to work certain hours, but there is no guarantee that there will be any orders during that time. Mileage for your vehicle will skyrocket at best. Pick something else, save your time and effort.
I have never made $22/hr on just the order. I have made it with tips, when I get tips, but by the time you factor in gas that you spent, it’s far less than $22/hr. Also, I can’t figure out how they factor the pay. I have shopped orders and delivered within the first five minutes of the delivery window only to get paid the lowest amount in the range. Probably my biggest issue is that you don’t know exactly where the order is until you accept it. Even when you choose the “zone” that you want to be in, you could be anywhere in that zone. Depending on the city, that zone can be quite large. This has led to me having a large order in one part of a zone and then having another large order in another part of the same zone with deliveries still in other parts of the zone. Recently I had an order that the grocery store was about a 30 minute drive from the delivery address in the woods, in the dark. The grocery store for my next order was a solid 45 minutes from that delivery address, but they were all in the same “zone.” Anything that I made that night was eaten up in gas. I didn’t even make it to my next order, because of how far apart they were, the grocery store was closed by the time I got there. Zones are also strangely created. There’s a zone that starts five minutes from my home, but stretches 20 minutes from my house. If the delivery is near my house, but the store is 20 minutes away, that’s 40 minutes of drive time, plus shopping time that could be 40 minutes or longer, only to make $10 on the order. Now I’ve spent an hour and 20 minutes on this order and really only made about $5.00, when you factor in gas. None of this seems to be factored in when sending out bookings.
The numbers that shipt boasts 15-25/hour are a lie. The more common number $7-$12 You only get that if the customer tips and it usually takes over an hour closer to 2 hours for a large shop because of travel time. Store time can take up to an hour and then driving can take up to 30 min if not more. You cannot choose what store you want to work in your area if there is more than one in your zone. And you can expect delivery addresses that are 30 min away, probably more because of traffic. If you don’t hate driving through a lot of traffic for minimum pay and putting a lot of miles on your car its decent side money. You HAVE to accept shops or your acceptance rate (AR) suffers because you don’t want to drive across town for $7. Not all customers even give tips and a good amount of them are $5 or less. Some are generous but don’t expect it. Sundays are the best to work just because of the sheer mass of orders available. But sundays tips are fairly rare to get.
When I calculated the time I spent shopping and driving, plus the auto expense (I used 50 cents/mile to calculate), not worth the time and effort. While shopping, if items were not on the shelf, I usually had to text the buyer and wait for an answer to substitute something else. I tried to shop while waiting for a response, but the wait still added to the time I was shopping. No way was it the $22/hr they have in their ad. More like maybe $8/hr considering time and driving expense.
Try Shipt
