Deactivation is the thing shoppers whisper about. Somebody in the Facebook group posts that they're gone after two years and 3,000 orders, no warning, no reason given, and everyone spends the afternoon guessing.
Shipt actually publishes the standards. Most shoppers have never opened the page.
Three statuses, and they aren't the same thing
Worth getting straight, because the group chat uses them interchangeably.
Deactivation is permanent. Shipt describes it as a status where access to the shopper app is permanently revoked for violating the standards.
Account suspension is temporary and happens while something is being investigated. You're not gone. You're parked.
Account lock is a security measure that stops you logging in. It's the least alarming of the three and often has nothing to do with your performance.
If you can't get into the app, find out which one you're looking at before you panic.
The three numbers
Shipt lists service minimums and they're specific:
- Member rating: 4.7
- On-time percentage: 90%
- Reliability percentage: 90%
Fall under any of them and you're in trouble.
Now the part that gets misreported constantly. Shipt says some of those standards are calculated on a rolling number of recent orders. It does not publish what that number is. Shoppers will tell you it's your last 50, and it might be, but Shipt's own page doesn't commit to a figure, so treat the specific 50 as folklore rather than policy.
The practical read is the same either way. A bad rating stops mattering eventually, and the way to survive one is to keep working so it gets diluted.
Distressed drops
Shipt has a name for the thing a lot of shoppers do without thinking.
Dropping an order or route within one hour of the delivery window is a "distressed drop," and it's listed under behavioral standards, not filed away as a minor scheduling issue.
The logic isn't hard to follow. Inside that last hour there's no realistic chance of another shopper claiming and completing it, so the member gets nothing. If you're going to bail on something, bail early. A drop three hours out is housekeeping. A drop twenty minutes out is a violation.
The categories that end it fast
Some of the list is what you'd expect and doesn't need a lecture: harassment, discrimination, violence, working while drinking or high, unsafe driving, weapons.
Alcohol is the one worth spelling out, because it catches people who thought they were being nice. Shipt names not checking ID, forging a customer's signature, and delivering alcohol to a minor. Someone tells you to leave the beer on the porch because they're in the shower. Don't. Same for handing it to the roommate who came to the door instead.
Fraud has a wider definition than most shoppers assume. Theft and bonus manipulation, sure. But Shipt also names repeated or excessive use of personal credit cards for reimbursement, and pay manipulation, which it defines as anything that falsely inflates your reporting of time, effort, or distance.
That last one should register for anybody who has ever thought about padding a mileage figure.
The quiet ones
These are the violations that don't feel like violations, which is exactly why they show up.
Unauthorized substitutions. You couldn't find their brand, you grabbed something close, you figured they'd be fine with it. Shipt lists that under delivery misconduct. Text and let them choose.
Marking items not found that you actually purchased. However that happens, whether it's a mistake or a shortcut, it's named on the list.
Tampering with, consuming, altering, damaging, or improperly transporting goods. The frozen stuff sitting in a hot trunk for forty minutes is in that sentence somewhere.
It's meant to be progressive
Shipt describes a range of actions rather than a single trapdoor: reminders and opportunities for ongoing education, written warnings, and loss of access.
So the surprise-deactivation stories usually have earlier chapters. A warning that read like a form email and got swiped away. A note about on-time percentage that arrived during a bad month.
Read the emails Shipt sends you. That's the whole advice.
What Shipt does not publish is any timeline. There's no stated gap between a written warning and removal, and no stated window for resolving an appeal. Don't count on having a set amount of time to fix a slipping number.
If it already happened
There's an appeal form, and one detail on it matters more than the rest: documents submitted outside the form will not be reviewed during the appeal process.
So don't argue in a reply to the deactivation email. Don't post screenshots in the group and hope somebody escalates it. Put everything into the form.
Upload supporting documentation. Which means you need some. Dates, order numbers, delivery times, what actually happened on the order in dispute. A shopper who can produce a record of the specific delivery is in a completely different position than one who can only say they remember it going fine.
Keep it factual and short. The person reading it has a queue.
What actually keeps you on the platform
None of the survival advice is exotic.
Drop early or don't drop. Card every alcohol order, every time, no exceptions for charming people. Never substitute without asking. Deliver inside the window, because on-time is 90% and it's the number that slips quietly while you're busy chasing a promo across town.
And keep your own records. Not because Shipt asks for them, but because the one time you need to prove what happened on a specific order at a specific address, your memory will not be enough and the appeal form will not accept anything you send outside of it.
Auto Tip Map is an Android app that automatically records every order you run, with the address, times, pay, and tip, so you have a dated history of your own work instead of trying to reconstruct it after something goes wrong.