I have access to both Amazon Prime Now and Instacart in my market. Prime Now has access to a high-quality local grocery chain, and Instacart has basically everything else including Whole Foods. That local chain is much better in terms of selection and quality than anything Instacart has, especially Whole Foods, which I find to be overpriced for pretty indifferent quality.
Despite that, the service quality from Instacart is so much better than Prime Now that I prefer to use them unless there's something I absolutely cannot get except from that local chain. I'm crossing my fingers hoping that the outcome of Amazon's acquisition is that Instacart loses Whole Foods and the local chain moves over to Instacart, because then I will never order groceries from Prime Now ever again.
By service quality I mean all of these: good judgment in selecting items like produce and meat (although the meat quality from Whole Foods is very inferior), ability to add items before the order is shopped (you can't do that even if you place an order for the _next day_ with Prime Now), ability to cancel or otherwise alter an order (I had to cancel a Prime Now delivery in an emergency, and it required calling customer service), interactivity in selecting substitutions, good judgment in selecting substitutions, and accuracy and granularity of order status page.
I'm not saying I haven't had the occasional bad experience with Instacart on any of those, but they're good enough that I'd trust them to get me the groceries I need before a party I forgot to shop for. Prime Now I wouldn't trust unless I knew I had a good fallback if they mess up.
Prime Now and Amazon Fresh seem very different to me. I use Prime Now as a faster version of Amazon.com--if I do something stupid like move apartments and forget to buy a shower curtain until after the shops are closed, I can put in a Prime Now order for first thing in the morning. My wife uses Prime Now as a slower and more cost-effective version of goPuff sometimes.
Amazon Fresh, in contrast, is my primary source of groceries. Unlike Instacart, prices are consistently reasonable, the website actually knows what's in inventory so I don't have to make backup plans for everything I'm trying to get, and when I buy frozen foods, I get handy chunks of dry ice that I can use to make homemade smoke machines. Amazon Fresh is the first service I've ever used--and this includes previous incarnations of Amazon Fresh--that makes me seriously wonder whether I will ever make a trip to the grocery store again.
Can you clarify what you mean by "prices are consistently reasonable"? We do try to publish precisely what business model we are operating with pretty prominently on our storefront (e.g., if we have price parity with the store, or have a markup).
It's been a couple years since I've used Instacart, but I remember Costco deliveries being consistently expensive enough that I was better off going to the store myself unless I was literally crippled (which I was at the time).
Fresh isn't available in my area, and my understanding is that they've recently been withdrawing from some regions, not expanding. The subscription fee is also not attractive for something I expect to use maybe once or twice a month.
Do you only buy groceries once or twice a month, or are you expecting that you wouldn't use Fresh as your primary grocery store?
I had the same expectation for years, but I'm really pleasantly surprised by Fresh these days--and I was outspokenly critical of it at first. I was a regular Costco shopper previously, so I don't mind paying a membership charge if I'm going to actually use it.
Despite that, the service quality from Instacart is so much better than Prime Now that I prefer to use them unless there's something I absolutely cannot get except from that local chain. I'm crossing my fingers hoping that the outcome of Amazon's acquisition is that Instacart loses Whole Foods and the local chain moves over to Instacart, because then I will never order groceries from Prime Now ever again.
By service quality I mean all of these: good judgment in selecting items like produce and meat (although the meat quality from Whole Foods is very inferior), ability to add items before the order is shopped (you can't do that even if you place an order for the _next day_ with Prime Now), ability to cancel or otherwise alter an order (I had to cancel a Prime Now delivery in an emergency, and it required calling customer service), interactivity in selecting substitutions, good judgment in selecting substitutions, and accuracy and granularity of order status page.
I'm not saying I haven't had the occasional bad experience with Instacart on any of those, but they're good enough that I'd trust them to get me the groceries I need before a party I forgot to shop for. Prime Now I wouldn't trust unless I knew I had a good fallback if they mess up.