Pros
Flexibility—Could set my own schedule. It could also be fun, and sometimes quite rewarding when customers were nice and appreciative. I credit Shipt for introducing me to gig work, as it led me to other, better-paying gig jobs while keeping the schedule flexibility that I need.
Cons
Pay—it’s pretty much poverty-level considering how much work goes into shopping for customers. While I didn’t Shipt full-time, I DID put in at least 30 hours a week doing this shopping. For all of that, the most I made in any given year was $13,000! And I worked hard, got great customer reviews and consistently good tips.
Occasionally, there would be newspaper articles about the random Shipt shopper who made $100,000/year! What such articles glossed over (this fact would be buried somewhere deep in the text) was that the shopper in question consistently worked some 80-100 hours per week. So if you broke down that fabulous six-figure pay by how much time the shopper was spending doing the work, it really doesn’t come out to all that much.
The other pay issue worth mentioning is that in 2020, right when Covid was rampant, Shipt announced that they were “restructuring” the way they paid shoppers. What this translated to was that they were now paying us even less than they had previously done! That’s when I began to be soured on Shipt. I continued to do it for a while longer, but eventually went to other gigs that paid more.
