Publix Delivery & Curbside Reviews

by Nubiapin

I made my first order and when reviewing I realized that I was overcharged $10 even when considering all service, delivery and tip fees. The agent on the chat told me that the reason was because there is a policy that the retailer (in this case Publix) can mark up the prices of individual items in PublixDeliveryCurbside . Meaning that although you pay for a service, delivery and a tip, the prices on PublixDeliveryCurbside are marked up but you won’t know until you look at the regular receipt upon delivery. You would have to do an item by item comparison between the instacart and store receipt to see which items have been sold to you at a higher price. My biggest problem with this mark up policy is that IT IS NOT TRANSPARENT! You would think that a service fee would take care of this or that you would know which items are priced differently than store prices.

by Mrs I Love My Music

I placed an order today - about $80 in groceries. While I was pleasantly surprised with the fee structure and ordering process - that’s about where my approval stopped with this. As my order delivery time approached, I got an email telling me that my order is delayed. The new estimate time was sent. That time came and passed. I waited 30 min after the new estimated delivery time and my order said it was still in the store . I finally called customer service - and the customer service rep apologized and offered me a free delivery on my next order. When I explained to her that offering me a discount if I should choose to spend more money with them doesn’t rectify the situation. I asked her to go ahead and refund my order since she couldn’t give me an estimate on delivery and had no details on the status of my order.

The net result was 3 hours later - no food and waiting 7 days for the credit back to my card.

This will be the first and last time I order with them. Next time I’ll just drive to Publix and save myself the wasted time.

by Lkpolo

Being “sheltered in place” in Atlanta due to the coronavirus, I decided to try PublixDeliveryCurbside and order online. I placed my order on a Sunday and got a confirmation of a pickup time window on the following Wednesday (fine, I know they’re very busy in these trying times) at the closest Publix. I showed up in the designated curbside parking near the end of the pickup window, called into the store and was told they had no record of my order. A very nice customer service person came out and I showed him the confirmation email, and he said I was at the correct store, correct time and that, yes, I had ordered ... BUT BUT BUT, some “third party” (i.e., not Publix itself) handled and processed the orders and they had not gotten it at the store, so no items were pulled for me. I was told to call the third party, which I did ... and the wait time was 69 MINUTES ... riiiiight ... I did nothing wrong, just wanted groceries, and I have to wait there for another hour ... I don’t think so ... I then cancelled the order ... THIS IS A TERRIBLE APP ... SHAME ON PUBLIX AND WHOEVER THE HECK THE MYSTERIOUS “THIRD PARTY” IS

by Jeffv1982

They show you buy one get one free items and let you place them in your cart and even pay. Once your shopper is at the store they will message you and tell you that these items are not available and they preselect replacement options for you. Feels like they lure you in with false advertisement just to get you to buy groceries. You also have to pay delivery fees and pay driver tips as well. Not to mention that in the writing it shows you that prices are higher on PublixDeliveryCurbside than in store to cover costs for insta cart!!!! Use caution will never order like this again. How do we know the people in the store are sanitizing their hands while handling your groceries. Also they charged me about 30% more money to cover any issues but yet it takes them up to 7 days to refund left over balance??? Where is my interest for borrowing my money??

by Brand0n13

Instacart Publix is one of the worst mobile ordering apps I use. Inventory is never accurate. The search is horrible. You could search “Publix Greek yogurt” and you won’t find it until you scroll all the way down and ask it to load more. They also recently introduced six sponsored items for every search, which means you’re going to scroll down twice past a bunch of irrelevant items before you even get what you’re looking for. Search “cheddar cheese” and you’ll be presented with sponsored items for all other kinds of cheese, but most definitely not the one you searched for. The chat doesn’t update without refreshing the page (and sometimes restarting the whole app is necessary). PublixDeliveryCurbside reports you get to the store well before you actually arrive. You also can’t change your car color/type until it thinks you arrive, which often confuses the employees. Everyone else (Target, Sam’s, DoorDash) has this figured out but Instacart must have some of the worst leadership or developers or Publix is an awful partner.

by Cartman Skywalker

Update. Now they’ve lost or deleted the group cart feature which was the best feature outside of being able to add instructions for certain items. You had a good thing going and I don’t know who screwed this up but they need to fix it.

App is continually developing New weird bugs. It’s really annoying. Current issues include communication with the shopper not appearing in the chat box portion of PublixDeliveryCurbside if they send a photo all text disappears from the chat portion of PublixDeliveryCurbside . Also if you try to switch to text as your preferred method of calm communication once they close out your order, PublixDeliveryCurbside decides to then display an alert your phone for every message you take back-and-forth despite the order being delivered and on my kitchen counter my phone is blowing up with every text we made.

by Noicecool

I haven’t had the time to actually attempt to use their service because their inventory compared to the publix website is so poor. The only sliced bread you can get is from the publix bakery no matter how I type in or go through the different categories (sliced bread for instance). When I do type in the brand of bread I desire which everyone in FL carries I get beef jerky. They have request field, but if I had to do that for every item it defeats the main purpose of using the service. The publix app/website has the item, and happily provides the aisle number. Other delivery/curbside apps also happily provide this item, which is why I’m going to use them over this one. If you’re looking for something specific like bakery items publix has (like cannolis) or laundry detergents then this is your app. If you’re looking for something else that everybody carries until they make some serious upgrades you better look elsewhere.

by Shaechel

I placed an order on here for the first time at 6:55 pm told my order would be delivered 7:55-8:55. A little later got an email saying the order was delayed 9:30-10 ok I’m not usually up this late but I’ll stay up and wait the hold is already on my card so wait it out right? 10:30 rolls around I call and they tell me they are still looking for a shopper in my area. I said the store is closed! They said well we can give you free delivery on your next order and have this order to you at 10:30 tomorrow morning. I was getting stuff to make breakfast for my family so that’s not an option. I had them cancel my order and I will go there myself at 7 am when they open! If I had known this from the beginning I would’ve just canceled and went before the stores closed. Not to mention the hold for $170 is now on my card for 3 business days! Will tell everyone I know not to use this.

by N4TALI

In the last two weeks, PublixDeliveryCurbside stopped sending push notifications regarding the orders that were placed. Even when the shopper tried sending messages about the shopping, the notification was never sent. I didn’t know the shopping had been done until the groceries were outside my house. This is problematic because we ended up with refunds on things we could have used replacements instead. Other issues is that it is not always clear if you are ordering 1 count or 1lb of something.

The other major problem with PublixDeliveryCurbside is that for curb side pick up, if PublixDeliveryCurbside tells you to go inside to get your own groceries (which not sure why that happened), there’s no way on PublixDeliveryCurbside to scan the groceries. So even though PublixDeliveryCurbside tells you no one is available to deliver your groceries, you can’t go inside to get them yourself because you can’t scan them out to finalize the order on your app. I stopped trying curb side pick up after running into that issue twice a few months ago.

by Florida Aware

If an item is not available, you’d think it wouldn’t be offered. PublixDeliveryCurbside doesn’t seem to be in sync with the stock. And the prices are not the same as in the store. So you’re not only paying a delivery fee and a service fee and a gratuity but you’re also paying more per item. PublixDeliveryCurbside also says that The service fee is 5%, but it is charging me 10%. I was told to just call the next day and get it refunded. Plus when you enter the option of a 20% gratuity, when the shopper can’t buy the item because it is not in stock, then my total is lower, But the original 20% gratuity is the same. Some problems need to be figured out…
It’s a great service to have when you really need it though. I can’t often get out because of health issues. So this is really really convenient for me and I do greatly appreciate it.

by Krisinashville

I can never trust that the items I choose will actually be available. My order tonight had 6 “changes”. Two of those were for a recipe that didn’t allow for changes, so I had to delete the other ingredients in the recipe after the shopper had already gotten those items. It’s never odd items either. One time they were completely out of bananas. Another time I had friends over and one of them required a gluten free item. It was canceled and no alternative was offered. This time it was cilantro, ice cream, green onions, almond butter, raspberries. The reason I use this service is so I don’t have to deal with the hassles of shopping, but I find I have to constantly watch my phone because of all the changes.

by Mama Hips

Marks ups on items for the service definitely add up and then with a tip on top of that can make this an expensive option. It has been worthwhile during this time of social distancing, but not a service I would use frequently going forward. Some shoppers are great at communication while picking out your items, but more than a few have been less than stellar such as charging for items not delivered, charging for incorrect items and in some cases not even buying the correct item. It can be frustrating if you are depending on an ingredient. On a positive note the service has quickly refunded me in the form of a credit for these items.

by Noname0808

I love the idea of ordering groceries for delivery and PublixDeliveryCurbside handles the basics just fine. But one of the features I would like to enjoy is the ability to place an order for delivery several hours later. I do this while at work and want things delivered at night. PublixDeliveryCurbside lets you do this but every single time - not just sometimes, every single time - I do so the delivery comes early. Sometimes I’m home for this but not always, and if you’re not home they cancel the order. When I called to complain both the cust svc rep and his supervisor said they didn’t know how to fix, explained how this wasn’t really a cust svc issue and tried to explain that their algorithm for giving orders to drivers probably was the issue. i asked a simple question - how do we make sure this doesn’t happen next time? They couldn’t answer it.

by 315-OTS

PublixDeliveryCurbside worked well until the groceries were delivered. Then a prompt to write a shopper’s evaluation locked me in and would not let go back to double check my list of purchases. It’s asking me to tell it if all the items were found but would not let me go back to check and compare with the initial order. So I’m being forced to choose before I can check. Maybe with a small purchased of a few items this wouldn’t be a problem. However if you had a big list what do you do?Further I was happy with my shopper’s job and wanted to give her credit but after taking the time to write a narrative praising her performance I got stuck in the “write narrative “ section and couldn’t go forward or back or clear. I got out of PublixDeliveryCurbside and came back in only to find my page frozen in the same location. No save button or next button etc. All else went well.

by AnnieSp123

PublixDeliveryCurbside categories are not organized well. There should be a category for BOGO and organic items. Also BOGO only works in PublixDeliveryCurbside when you buy the exact same item.. not like in the store where you can mix flavors for the BOGO etc. You also can’t save items for easy access next time. You also pick the time at the end which I don’t like, i’de prefer it to be at the start. Also, there should be something to indicate them to substitute items (last week my item was out, they couldn’t get ahold of me and then I didn’t get my item), They should model PublixDeliveryCurbside to be like the Walmart grocery pickup app which is really easy and user friendly. I don’t mind paying more for the food to get Publix quality. I’ll keep using PublixDeliveryCurbside for now but am looking forward to updates.

by Seeking Joy

PublixDeliveryCurbside gets some groceries out of my dreams and into my car which is what’s most important. However, the search engine could be improved considerably. E.g., type in “fat-free milk” and it may list yogurt, sour cream, almond milk & a host of other products before any brand of fat free milk. And the different brands of fat free milk will not be grouped together when you finally get to any fat free milks. I’m not 100% sure it’s not by design: virtual version of intentional distraction to get you to buy something not on your list. Since I plan meals out carefully accordingly to calories, macros & nutrients needed & buy & prepare so as to waste very, very little I stick 100% to my list. So this thwarting is 100% inconvenient and 0% helpful.

by Sherlockssister

Convenient and occasionally super fast but I once checked the map during delivery to see how close they were and I watched the driver stay in the same place on a road that was opposite the direction of the store and my home for over ten minutes. Did he go home for a while before bring my stuff? I don’t know but usually I get a better person. My only complaint about PublixDeliveryCurbside is I hate that I choose a replacement ahead of time and the shopper doesn’t use that information. I constantly have to check if I need to tell them the replacement again. And if the replacement isn’t available you get a refund instead of an opportunity to replace again.

by Knfranklin978

We’ve been using other delivery for years and the pricing seemed right until we discovered Publix Instacart. Not only do they give you a more accessible experience, but you’re able to speak directly to your shopper from the store about your order. They send photos of other options if a product is out of stock and it’s simple to add last minute items. Much faster, much easier and much CHEAPER. Definitely using this delivery service from now on!
**the chats do lag every now and then but refreshing PublixDeliveryCurbside usually works it out.

by Denise's Laptop

This is the best delivery app I’ve seen. I haven’t been out since April so watching my items being shopped and texting with my shopper gives me some outside contact and I can shop along with them. Most of my shoppers have been very nice and chatty thru PublixDeliveryCurbside . I always raise their tip even if they leave the groceries on the front porch instead of the backyard table. The virtual human interaction is what makes PublixDeliveryCurbside better than WalMart in my opinion.
This service also eased tensions when my son had to get a second job after his hours were cut so he can’t come by weekly or during normal shopping hours. Now we can just visit in the backyard 🥰

by QueenBeeLexx

Most of the time I get my deliveries from Publix delivery with Instacart I have no problems lately though ( like the past 6-7 deliveries ) most of the employees have not been reading the instructions, like on meats or other items like where it says instructions they don’t read them, so what’s the point in writing them down? and I think that should be addressed because when people order specific things I mean you should at least try to get the closest that you can to what they ordered and I feel like the employees need to pay a little more attention to what the customers want instead of just rushing through it

by Kaiteree369

I’ve been using PublixDeliveryCurbside forever, mistakes happen no problem. But the complete lack of customer service is ridiculous. I not only had an entire bag of groceries missing, I got someone else bag, and got an email saying someone would contact me shortly... no one connected me for days. I tried calling the number just rings and rings. I finally sent an email, finally got a response saying they needed more information? Um, ok? May 10th 31 items, 3:16pm delivery. I made the list of missing items the day of but have no access to that information now days later... and then no response 2 days pass and I sent another email!!

I don’t understand how I got someone else’s bag of groceries I’m missing a complete bag of groceries and no refund no email... really?

I won’t be using this service anymore. Extremely disappointed.

by Ach4811208

I had a delivery today that was delivered early, before the time frame that I requested when I put in the order. I messaged the delivery driver advising I left work early to meet her, even though she was early and asked her to wait for me. She then proceeded to leave my groceries by the front door, in 80 degree weather, in the blazing sun. All of my perishables were spoiled, I had to drive to the store and replace them myself so we could have dinner. I messaged customer service, and they offered free delivery for my next order. They refused to reimburse me for the spoiled food their driver ruined. I am shocked by their insulting response to this situation. I will be filing a complaint with the better business bureau, deleting PublixDeliveryCurbside , and I will recommend everyone I know who uses Publix Delivery to do the same.

by Tuto5

This was literally the worse ever. If ic an give this no stars I would. I’m not the type of person to leave reviews but this was so bad I had to make one to advise you not to use this. I ordered a sub that said it would take 2 hours to get here ! I thought wow that’s a long wait but no matter they’re usually busy. 3 hours go by and nothing ! 30 mins after the shopper asked me what bread did I wanted when I already wrote on the instructions that I wanted white so I didn’t reply hoping they will figure it out. Another 20 mins later , frustrated I asked what was taking so long and he replied you never told me what bread !? They have my phone number and never thought to call if they really didn’t know ? So almost 4 hours later ? Poor customer service for almost double the price. Never again

by Ashley10295

Rude and condescending. My brother tried to use this service and his order got dropped not once but twice. When he called to have the issue resolved and possibly be refunded, he spoke to a person named Jason who thought it appropriate to belittle my brother while he was frustrated by calling him “bud” and “buddy” and told him- the wronged customer- to “keep it professional”.

My brother called again after dealing with Jason to speak to a supervisor, and while speaking with her she started laughing at him.

Unbelievably bad customer service, use with caution. If your shopper decides they don’t want to complete the order, you won’t be told why and will have to deal with rude incompetence to have the possibility of getting your money back. I’m surprised and a bit saddened that Publix is associated with them; Publix usually has such good customer service.

by Namless1234

I had hurt my foot so decided to give this a try. I was upset with my first order because as stated on PublixDeliveryCurbside I payed higher prices to cover the service but they then charged a $9 service fee on top which is outrageous. They also messed up and charged me for both items with bogo deals. They fixed the pricing error but the rest they explained was they were a business...this was double charging.

I decided to try one more time before my trail period ended and that charge is $149 for the year. The person that showed up at my door was not who they said it was going to be on PublixDeliveryCurbside . A person who did not work for them showed up at my residence. The solution? They offered me a $10 credit towards my next purchase. Hardly comforting after putting my safety at risk. Also useless considering I will never use this again!

by Psw8387

First off, PublixDeliveryCurbside is charging you around 20-50 cents extra per item, which I can somewhat understand as it’s a convenience but there’s also a service charge and of course you should tip your delivery driver. However, the shoppers/delivery drivers are constantly not finding the correct items when they are clearly in stock. I just placed an order for pickup and all of the most important items on the order were swapped for something else when they were actually in stock, the person just didn’t bother to find them. Called instacart to refund whole order and they said there’s a 15 dollar cancellation fee?! Luckily, the person said they are putting in to get it waived.

by Cakepopz

nothing is the same as a publix sub which is why i decided to order one, but when i used this i had no high expectations. most other delivery apps are awful as well, because they take so unnecessarily long to arrive. i was supposed to have my order arrive in 2 hours, but it went to 3 hours. this would have been acceptable except i live 5 minutes from publix. it would’ve taken less time to walk there, get my food, and walk home! my person spent 40 minutes in the store getting 3 THINGS. i’d use this if i wanted a large amount of things and didn’t have time to shop, but any other reason i would not. not going to use PublixDeliveryCurbside again!😀

by Malmotos

Being elderly and having spent lots of time in hospitals and rehab, I am not able to do my own shopping at present! The instacart gives good opportunity to look at each item before purchasing, and you can edit and revise your list up until the time they are actually starting to shop for you!! A great convenience for those of us who need it for whatever reason! I now know more younger people who use this service because it is a great timesaver for them!!