Completing home deliveries is kind of difficult when there’s no home to deliver to.
This is exactly what happened to Instacart driver and TikToker user @exotic_landscape while working for the popular mobile application that connects customers with delivery drivers who complete their shopping for a nominal fee.
Clients can pick whether or not they want their driver to leave their goods for them outside of their house or stipulate they be handed off to them personally. For @exotic_landscape, neither of these options seemed like an appropriate course of action, as the house they pulled up to had just burned down.
They delineated their situation in a viral video that’s accrued over 704,000 views as of Tuesday.
“POV: you’re insta cart order brought you to a burnt down house,” a text overlay in the video reads as the TikToker swipes through applications on their phone to display that they were, indeed, at the correct address.
However, when they pan their phone up, they show that a fire ravaged the house in question. Its frame was covered in ash and char.
The TikToker added in a caption for the video: “We were so lost. An no it was not the wrong house.”
One commenter, who saw her video, joked, “Girl I think you got there a little too late,” while someone else remarked, “‘leave at door’ uh what door.”
“Prolly was the customer’s old house and they didn’t update their info on the app for the new house,” another viewer suggested.
However, the TikToker responded that she called the phone number listed on the order and that she and her partner had no luck connecting with whoever made the order in the first place.
Someone else speculated that this was the case too: “I’d bet they moved to a new address and didn’t realize their typical address was still saved on their profile. Happened to one of my own orders recently.”
Other folks had their own theories as to what happened with the mystery of the Instacart order and the burnt-down home.
“I have had this happen on Shipt & it’s usually someone ordering w/ a stolen card etc. You’ll drop it off and they’ll come grab it once you’re gone,” one person wrote, speculating that it was a hustle.
Someone else joked, “I know someone whose house burnt down but they lived in the yard til it was rebuilt. wonder if there was an RV or trailer somewhere.”
Burned-down houses with temporary mobile homes camped out on the property seemed to be a common trend among delivery drivers on the app: “I used to work and deliver for Domino’s, and a house I took an order to was a burned down mobile home, they were cleaning it up.”
Other Instacart shoppers have vented their frustrations online in not being able to complete deliveries they feel they should otherwise be able to carry out, like when customers don’t answer the door despite specifically requesting that the items be handed off to them.
@exotic_landscape We were so lost. An no it was not the wrong house. #fyp #instacart #foryoupage #viral #trending #fypシ ♬ original sound – CFB_Daily
Some Instacart scams involve customers who ask for hand-offs but intentionally decline to answer phone calls or have their orders delivered to locations without residents in the hopes that the driver will simply leave the order. This way, they can argue with customer service reps for the application that they didn’t receive their food and get a refund while walking away with a bunch of goodies at no charge.
The Daily Dot has reached out to Instacart via email and @exotic_landscape via TikTok comment for further information.
The internet is chaotic—but we’ll break it down for you in one daily email. Sign up for the Daily Dot’s web_crawlr newsletter here to get the best (and worst) of the internet straight into your inbox.
