Woman uses Instacart credit to buy groceries but claims credit was returned and her bank account charged instead: ‘We have a massive overdraft’

Instacart has come under fire after a woman on TikTok alleged that the delivery service stole money from her bank account. The woman claimed that she made roughly $300 in grocery purchases using credits she had with Instacart; however, shortly after the purchase, the credits were apparently refunded, and the $300 was taken from her account instead.

“I never thought that I would be doing something like this, but I see a lot of other people get results when they do it,” TikToker Alicia Coulter says at the start of her video. The mother of four goes on to call out Instacart, claiming the company “should be ashamed.”

The drama with Instacart started when Coulter’s family gave her credit for the service “because we’re struggling with money.” She says she used the credit to make a $300 grocery purchase to feed her children but was prepared for an extra charge to be taken out of her account for delivery fees, etc. However, shortly after using the credits, Coulter found that they had been refunded, but the full cost of the groceries was taken from her actual bank account instead.

She claims that the money taken from her account was money for bills that have since come out, leaving her with “a massive overdraft.”

Instacart can’t do anything

While the desperate mother of four tried to contact Instacart about the issue, Coulter says she was informed that nothing could be done about the charge, but she could still use the credits she had been refunded. “I can’t use the credit to pay the bills,” she vents. Coulter also says that her trust with Instacart has been broken. “Why on earth would I trust that the credit would be taken again?” she asks.

“Everybody is about a month away from being bankrupt,” she says, adding that the money might not be a lot to others, but it was a lot to her. Others on TikTok sympathized with Coulter’s financial situation, and the video quickly blew up, receiving over one million views and 150k likes.

“Call your bank and dispute.” One commenter recommended, “You didn’t authorize that form of payment,” they added. “No quirkie brand comments?” another asked, while many tagged the official Instacart TikTok page. Others took it a step further and commented on the videos posted by Instacart: “Give that lady her money back,” wrote one person underneath a recent video.

In another video posted shortly after the first, Coulter thanks the community for making her video go viral, claiming that the virality led to Instacart reaching out to her to process a refund. “That’s great news,” one commenter wrote, “but people shouldn’t have to go that far. This is so sad.”