So I got an opposite story here. Instamart, Zepto, Blinkit all had gold coins available but the lowest price was on Instamart at Rs 8150 per 1g a day or two ago. Market rate in my city today is Rs 8250. Local gold dealers knock off 1.5% as their margin if they know you and 2% to 3% if they don't know you.
But with the HDFC card, there's a 10% cashback upto Rs 1500 per billing cycle. That brought the effective purchase price down to Rs 7335 but there's talk on r/creditcardsindia about MCC so I bundled each coin with a small box of camphor or a dairy milk just to be safe and didn't add more than one gold coin per order.
So I was looking at a "free" Rs ~750 per gram for a couple of hours of my time. No one else I knew was interested in this (they're all in the >8LPA club so this was not worth it for them) so I pooled together all the cards I could get and started buying all of the available stock from Instamart.
By the fourth or fifth delivery, I was on a high, easiest money I've made in months, and I got taken advantage of. I gave the OTP for delivery before checking the contents. I did have other measures in place, everything was being recorded by a CCTV camera that I set up outside specifically for this purpose (but I didn't tell the delivery people about this) along with my phone in the my pocket recording with camera facing outward.
One of the deliveries arrived in an unsealed paper bag. The delivery person looked unassuming and there was no way in this life or the next that I would have guessed he would've turned out to be a thief. But he was careful not to let me inspect the contents and instead focussed on taking photos of the bag, the inside of the bag, selfie with me, selfie with me holding the bag, selfie with him holding the bag — strange because no other delivery person did this. Then he said something along the lines of "It's gold so I have to be careful" which was odd because they're not supposed to know what's inside. Anyway, he left and I went through the contents and the gold coin was missing. The packaging for the gold coin was intact but there was nothing inside.
I couldn't help but laugh with how expertly he took advantage of me by simple misdirection.
Anyway, I spent an hour with Swiggy chat, escalated to multiple supervisors but they all wouldn't go beyond advising to email Instamart support, so I did:
Today, I received a full refund. Which was a huge relief, otherwise this loss would've wiped out all the "free" money I made.
Everything hinged on the delivery person tampering with the sealed plastic bag and trying to deliver it in an open paper bag. If he was a little bit more clever and had spare plastic bags, I don't think this would've resolved in my favour without police involvement.
So I don't think I'll be doing this again unless if I'm waiting directly outside the Instamart store. But the thrill was amazing, like back when woot.com was still independent and slickdeals.net was the best place on the internet.