BREAKING: Target-Owned Shipt has found a new way to under-pay its shoppers, yet again, with no warning at all. We are just learning that sometime in the last 24 hours, Shipt made another pay model adjustment, this time changing how cancelled orders are paid out. Shoppers are getting all the way through the process of order acceptance, shopping the order, check-out, and in some cases even delivery, before discovering that the minimum pay they were promised when they accepted the order has been slashed when the order was cancelled. As has been reported, Shipt started transitioning from a commission based pay model to one controlled by an algorithm. This new model, dubbed “V2” was initially limited to specific markets. The switch on this most recent change appears to have been flipped nationwide.
Before last night’s change, if a Shipt order was cancelled any time after the shopper entered the store and started shopping, the shopper would still receive the base payment offered, plus any “promo” or pay boosts that were offered when they accepted the order. As of today, that looks to no longer be the case. Some shoppers have seen pay on these cancelled orders fall to as low as 29 cents.
During the Coronavirus pandemic, Shoppers are already contending with exposure to COVID-19, longer lines, and virtually no support from Shipt. Now Shoppers face a devastating change in their compensation. As the volume of orders for app-based grocery delivery apps has increased, so have the number of cancellations. The majority of these cancellations are for reasons outside the shopper’s control — failure of the technology used to run the app, delivery windows that get further and further away, and customer cancellations for out-of-stock items like toilet paper and canned goods all contribute to the rise in cancellations.
This new pay cut hits workers in the V2 markets especially hard, where payouts have already fallen as much as 71.25% on orders over $90 after the V2 rollout. The V2 model is supposed to guarantee a minimum pay for each order, but shoppers who have experienced this latest change firsthand say that guarantee apparently means nothing. An order that promised a $10 minimum payment might now turn into just a couple of dollars if it’s cancelled.
In the face of a global pandemic, without notice Shipt has blindsided and bamboozled Shoppers while still loudly declaring their hero status to the rest of the world.
