We have all played the grocery delivery roulette. You place an order for dinner ingredients, tip generously, and pray to the retail gods that your shopper knows the difference between a cucumber and a zucchini. Usually, the worst thing that happens is you get a bruised banana or a substitution that makes zero culinary sense. But one Instacart customer on Reddit recently hit the jackpot—or the moral dilemma of the year—when they received a massive order that wasn’t theirs, and the shopper tried to pull a reverse uno card that defied all health codes.
The OP (Original Poster) placed a decent-sized order of about $160 worth of groceries. When the delivery arrived, they brought the bags inside, only to realize that about three-quarters of the items were definitely not what they ordered. Unless the OP developed a sudden, amnesiac craving for plant-based burgers and nutritional yeast, they knew immediately that wires had been crossed.
Naturally, the OP did what any of us would do. They contacted chat support. The policy for these apps is pretty standard: once food enters a private residence, it is considered “contaminated” in the eyes of corporate liability. Support told the OP to “dispose” of the items—which is corporate speak for “keep them, donate them, or trash them”—and promised to send a new shopper for the correct order. It was a classic bank error in their favor.
However, the situation took a weird turn when the original shopper called the OP. He acknowledged the mix-up, which is fine; mistakes happen. But then he asked the OP to pack the groceries back up so he could come retrieve them and deliver them to the correct customer. The OP, standing in their kitchen with the items already spread out on the counter for a proof-of-error photo, refused.
This is where the OP is absolutely the hero we need. They told the shopper no, citing hygiene reasons. And let’s be real—would you want your expensive fish fillets and produce delivered to you after they had been sitting on a stranger’s counter, touched by stranger’s hands, and breathing stranger’s house air? Absolutely not. I don’t care how clean you are; once those bags cross the threshold, that avocados toast is compromised.
But the OP admits there was a secondary, slightly more selfish motive at play. The wrong order contained some high-ticket items like fish fillets and avocados. The OP realized they had stumbled upon about $80 worth of free food due to the shopper’s error. While the shopper kept insisting he needed the bags back to fix his mistake, the OP held their ground, partly for hygiene, but partly because inflation is real and free guacamole is a blessing.
The shopper didn’t take no for an answer. In a move that screams “I am panicking about my job,” he actually called customer service himself and put them on speakerphone right there at the OP’s door (or via the call, the story implies a heated exchange). He probably thought support would side with him to save money. He was wrong. The agent confirmed, loud and clear, that the OP was to keep the groceries.
The agent didn’t stop there. She messaged the OP privately to say she was going to report the shopper and block him from the OP’s account. That is the moment the guilt kicked in. The shopper left empty-handed, and the OP started to wonder if their desire for free fish just cost a man his livelihood.
So, is the OP the a-hole? No. The shopper made a mistake, which sucks, but trying to fix it by delivering “used” groceries to another customer is gross and negligent. If that second customer had received those bags, they would have had no idea their food had been on a field trip to someone else’s kitchen. The OP did everyone a favor by refusing to participate in that health code violation.
What would you do if a delivery driver asked for your food back? Would you hand over the goods, or would you keep the free groceries and the peace of mind? Let us know in the comments if you think the OP was savage or sensible!
I would keep them simply because I hate waste. But if they were delivered elsewhere first and then to me, I would consider them contaminated.
When I was new to shopping online at Aldi about 3 years ago, I was getting them delivered fine until one day I got my whole order, but there would be one item I didn’t order. I call customer service and they said to keep it. It seemed like I was always getting 1 item that wasn’t mine and a couple of times ibdid not get one of my items so customer service took the price of the missing item off of whatcI paid or gave it to me as a credit for the next week. I figured out this was happening when a shopper was shopping for mecand another customer. I think the items got mixed up in their cart or maybe when they checked out they put them in the wrong bag.. I haven’t had that problem in a long time. I think they either retrained the shoppers or stopped them from shopping for more than one customer at a time.