TAMPA, Fla. — It’s probably not something you really think about, but you can actually learn a lot about a family from their shopping list.

For example, items can tell if the family has little kids, if there’s a dog in the house, or if someone is sick or has health issues. If you’re doing the shopping and delivering, you also know where the family lives and even what kind of car they drive. 

These are small pieces of information that can make a big difference if they fall into the wrong hands. Some of the latest scams are coming from 3rd party grocery shopping apps.

“You do place a certain amount of trust in these apps,” said Tampa resident and Instacart customer Erin Kendrick.

Recently, she and her husband ordered basic groceries with Instacart.

It wasn’t the experience she was expecting.

“He got like a notification that the groceries were delivered like an hour ago. And I’m like ‘that’s weird’. No one ever knocked on our door, we have a Ring and nothing alerted us, we opened the door and there’s nothing there,” Kendrick said.

Immediately the couple took a closer look at their bill.

“It said that we were refunded for Claritin medication and some type of probiotic which neither of us had ever ordered. It said it was refunded, but we had never ordered it in the first place,” she said.

They never got their groceries, but after a call to Instacart they were refunded immediately. 

It was only after Erin noticed a trend locally on a few social media pages that she knew something wasn’t right.

“Noticed someone else posted about it, so I posted about it, and it was like all these people were like ‘this happened to me too!’ This is kind of crazy,” she said.

Erin called Tampa police.

Right now there is a current investigation into another case.

Police say customers should always be careful using third party shopping apps.

Police said a few ways you can protect yourself as a customer:

• Keep your orders simple and avoid vague measurements. As an example, ask for a pre-filled bag of potatoes rather than potatoes by the pound.
• Stay in communication with your delivery person throughout the experience, and write down their name. You may be asked to provide it in the event of a dispute.
• When your shopper delivers your groceries, check off your items with the person who delivers them before they leave.
• Because you may not get a receipt, check your app to see what items were placed in your order,
• Make sure your charges match what you were expecting to pay when you placed your order.
• Any concerns regarding fraud should be immediately relayed to the app support number; be sure that the app you use has a method of direct contact for customer support.
• In spite of everything, be courteous to your delivery-person.

“Looking at the situation, so many people every day getting their groceries delivered, I feel like unfortunately there are bad people in the world and they seem to have found a loophole,” Kendrick said. 

We reached out to Instacart to ask about their current policies in place.

Here is a breakdown of their procedures for hiring and shopper accountability:

• We take the safety and security of the entire Instacart community very seriously.
• To shop with Instacart, prospective shoppers must agree to and complete a thorough background check. No shoppers are given access to the Instacart platform until they are cleared through a background check. 
• Instacart shoppers are held to a comprehensive set of account access guidelines once they begin. These account access guidelines are intended to ensure that shoppers and customers alike can use and enjoy the Instacart platform in a safe and professional manner. 
• As part of these guidelines, shoppers may be deactivated for any fraudulent activity, such as misuse of their Instacart-provided payment card.
• Any shopper that fails to abide by these guidelines may be deactivated from the Instacart platform. 
• In regards to adding items to purchases, shoppers pay for each order using a payment card provided by Instacart that is capped at the amount needed for each individual order, with a credit line for any necessary item replacements. 
• Shoppers are restricted to a specific spending amount per batch. If a shopper manually adds goods to the order that exceeds the capped amount, Instacart receives an alert and our teams manually review the order to take action as needed.
• If a customer ever has an issue with an item that was charged to them, they can always reach out to the Care team, who is available 24/7.

“It does make you feel a little violated because they can look at your grocery list and make a lot of assumptions based on who you are as a person or how many are in your household and obviously having access to your address,” Kendrick said.

If you believe you have had a similar experience like the Kendricks, you’re encouraged to call the police.