My son used the Instacart phone App and he said his 'shopper' was in constant contact with him, texting to ask if he wanted some of this as they didn't have any of that.. and even asking if he was ok for loo roll / water .. he was quite impressed.
I may have to bite the bullet.

I use Loblaws mostly...I think they use their own/independent shoppers. They keep you up to date via text as they go through the store. I have used Instacart via Longos. I have been pleased with both.

Something similar happened with SD on a previous order - it was live text on the website which she happened to be on at the time. There's also a preference to select phone call too.

For $9.99 a month (Express membership or something) you can shop without the delivery charge (normally $3.99 here) but the service fee is still there. It's unclear whether it's still 5%. It's not very specific.
So if you use it more than twice a month it's worth paying. There's another advantage to express too...you can shop at different places in one go. So if you didn't sign up and you wanted stuff from more than one store you'd have to pay the delivery charge multiple times.

Instacart here shops at Shoppers Drug Mart, Atlantic Superstore, the Wholesale version of Superstore, Walmart groceries and M&Ms and, bizarrely, Staples.

I've 'sampled' a few prices across the range and there can be surprising differences. And the Wholesale place has stuff that Superstore doesn't. I bought a bag of goat meat

Once our order was assigned to a shopper same experience, texting and asking and showing photos of shelves to show they are sold out.

Was pretty okay, just gets expensive between the tip and service charge. $3.99 delivery charge + 5% tip which was around $6.44.

And the store was out of most of what we needed so we have to try again this week.

The store shopped at was Super Store which is a Loblaws brand, they don't seem to offer delivery in house.

Save On has the best system for delivery, flat fee, no tip driver system, all done in house by Save On employees, but very hard to get a delivery slot.

If this is true, then I feel bad for the store owner. Customers mad that packages of toilet paper were $34.99, store says the supplier billed them $31.65 per pack, if the store was indeed charged $31.65 and only marked it up to $34.99, I don't see the store at fault, they can't be expected to sell things at a loss, seems Loblaws worked out a deal with the store so they can sell it for $18.49.

https://www.citynews1130.com/2020/04...rice-covid-19/

Online grocery shop envy here a bit.
There is no way to get groceries here except for just one of us to do a supermarket shop. That's it.

It's not working that great here in Vancouver area, the demand far exceeds supply.

In one article pretty much sums up landlords in BC well. Renting in BC is awful in general. One of the landlords mentioned in the article lost a human right tribunal case against her for harassing one of her tenants and has a history apparently of treating tenants poorly.

https://pressprogress.ca/throw-their...cebook-groups/

A heartwarming story

I rather feel that himself will have chopped enough kindling for more than one winter.

Easter Bunny on security cam last night.

Ran out of dog treats so ordered a package on Amazon, they sent 5 bags of them. Contacted Amazon, they don't want them back, so Charlee got a nice surprise....