Surprise! Instacart Adds a Whooping $6 “Regulatory Response” Fee to Every Delivery

By FrumNews.com

Brooklyn, NY — Instacart, the food delivery service, blindsided its customers in New York City by adding a $6 surprise fee per delivery. The company claims this is a “Regulatory Response Fee” following the enactment of a new law.

The fixed $5.99 fee, labeled “NYC regulatory response fee,” came because Instacart was mad that the city placed a minimum wage of $21.44 per hour for delivery apps, at first it only applied to food delivery apps like Uber Eats and DoorDash—but it was expanded to cover grocery delivery workers as well.

The worker protection measure will further raise the minimum rate to $22.13 per hour by April due to inflation. Previously, there was no legal minimum specifically for grocery delivery workers.

Instacart, like Uber and DoorDash, responded to the new regulations with added fees, hoping its paying users will force and vote those who introduced these fees out of office.

The fees are the same for premium subscribers, such as Instacart+, which makes you wonder whether Instacart and Uber are worth the convenience in the first place.

An Instacart spokesperson told FOX Business that the new fees are in place as a “is the direct result of the City Council’s misguided and burdensome grocery delivery laws.” Adding that “For months, we raised clear, data-backed concerns that the policy would increase grocery delivery costs for New Yorkers, but those warnings were repeatedly ignored.”

More egregiously, Instacart secretly used your data to charge you more through algorithmic pricing—until Consumer Reports caught on and it stopped.

The company was also forced to refund $60 in fees as part of a settlement with the Federal Trade Commission several months ago.

The FTC alleged that Instacart engaged in deceptive practices that misled consumers about fees for its delivery promotion, made it difficult to initiate refund requests, and did not fully disclose the terms of the Instacart+ membership trial.

“Rather than truthfully advertising the cost of its delivery services, Instacart forced consumers to invest their valuable time and energy — in many cases exceeding 30 minutes — so that it could coerce them into paying hidden fees,” the FTC said in the complaint.