Instacart is playing games with its workers’ pay • Hacker News Board

Re: Instacart is playing games with its workers’ pay

#251

Post by driverdan » Wed, Feb 22, 2017, 2:33 PM UTC

eridius wrote: post #197

dawnerd wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like even if they paid their delivery people a reasonable wage they'd still expect tips. Ive had movers that made over 50/hour not including the cost of materials/truck/etc ask for a tip. I was all for Uber being tip free until drivers started driving for Lyft which does tips in-app, and now all the drivers expect it. I've always felt this way with Pizza. Most places charge a delivery fee. That itself should b…

Just to be clear, for pizza places that charge a delivery fee, most of the time that does not go to the driver. You should still tip your driver.

It depends on the pizzeria. Some give part or all of it to the driver, some don't. Ask the driver if you want to know.

Re: Instacart is playing games with its workers’ pay

#252

Post by ghaff » Wed, Feb 22, 2017, 2:35 PM UTC

tyre wrote: post #8

They have tens of thousands of customers, yet are worth multiple billions of dollars (valued at $2bn in 2015.) That's just incredible. Let's say they have 100k customers who each use the service every week. That's 5.2m orders per year. Let's say $100 per order, to be generous. At a 10% service fee, that's $50m for a two-year-old 40x revenue multiple. Before paying their contracted workforce. This does not make sense.…

>What is the market for +10% on groceries and basic necessities?

Lots of people are willing to pay for delivery even if they own cars though it's not necessarily a huge market. In general, in the US, people haven't really embraced online grocery shopping unless hopping in a car and driving to the store is inconvenient for some reason.

Personally, I used Peapod for a period when I was on crutches but it wasn't great. (Frequently didn't deliver everything, etc.) I'd probably use Instacart now and then today but it's not available where I live. Friends who live in a city but aren't easy walking distance from a good grocery store and don't own a car use it all the time.

Re: Instacart is playing games with its workers’ pay

#253

Post by SippinLean » Wed, Feb 22, 2017, 2:46 PM UTC

wwalser wrote: post #44

rdl wrote: post #14

Wow, that seems gratuitously dishonest -- especially misleading customers about what's a "tip" vs. a surcharge. Having an $x delivery fee (paid to the company) and then a tip as a separate item ($ or %) would be fine. Making the "delivery fee" into a "service charge" is itself dishonest; making it adjustable when it doesn't go to the user is pretty bad, too. I can't tell if this loses them more goodwill with customer…

How is it dishonest? It's a fee for the service that one receives. You pay one amount for groceries and another for the service of those groceries being delivered. That's exactly what a service fee should be. Consumers should understand that services have a cost. Companies should charge consumers an amount that is commensurate with the cost that it takes to deliver that service (unless they operate in a non-competiti…

That service is Instacart's product though.

Re: Instacart is playing games with its workers’ pay

#254

Post by leesalminen » Wed, Feb 22, 2017, 2:48 PM UTC

baby wrote: post #248

harryh wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you also not tip at restaurants? Cultural norms are what they are. Just because you don't like them isn't a good reason to screw over working people.

Always tip a fixed 5$ if you get a good service, why tipping if you don't get a good service though?

$5 on a $100 bill? In the US? That's awful.

Re: Instacart is playing games with its workers’ pay

#255

Post by bluetidepro » Wed, Feb 22, 2017, 2:51 PM UTC

krzrak wrote: post #243

The real WTF is tipping in advance for the service when you make an order.

Yeah, this is one thing I will never understand when apps do this. Especially ones that FORCE a min % of tip when you make the order (most GrubHub/Seamless restaurants). Just call it a fee if you're going to force me to do it before I can even evaluate the service and tip accordingly, let alone if there is a min tip %. It's incredibly frustrating, and ironically makes me tip less than if I would if I could just tip after the fact. I don't want to risk an up-front tip, so I tend to stay on the lower end, but since the service of these places is usually pretty good, if I got to tip after, I would actually be tipping more. But they screw up just enough times that makes me not want to take that gamble.

With Instacart specifically, this creates a confusing dilemma by giving me the option to tip before any service is done. Mainly because Instacart DOES allow me to modify the tip after the order is complete, which is good, but here is the dilemma...

A) Do I not tip when placing the order (with intention of tipping when the order is complete and I can evaluate the service to give a fair tip), but also risk that the shopper knows I didn't tip when I placed the order thus thinks I won't tip at all making them not care as much and do a poor job because they think I'm cheap.

B) Do I tip ahead of time when placing the order and risk that they think just because they already got the tip there isn't much I can do, so they could care less either way, and then I'm stuck paying a tip for service that wasn't up to par.

Either way it's a lose-lose and a terrible experience. And I'm PRETTY sure the shopper doesn't seem the tip when they get the order so maybe that makes both A & B irrelevant, but it's not like the UX of the app tells me that so I'm stuck in this awkward dilemma during checkout making me hesitate my conversion. It's a terrible and very confusing flow/checkout/experience every time I use Instacart.

Re: Instacart is playing games with its workers’ pay

#256

Post by harryh » Wed, Feb 22, 2017, 2:55 PM UTC

baby wrote: post #248

harryh wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you also not tip at restaurants? Cultural norms are what they are. Just because you don't like them isn't a good reason to screw over working people.

Always tip a fixed 5$ if you get a good service, why tipping if you don't get a good service though?

Cultural norms in the US are different from those where you grew up. Service employees earn a much greater percentage of their income from tips here than they do there.

Re: Instacart is playing games with its workers’ pay

#257

Post by jasonpeacock » Wed, Feb 22, 2017, 3:11 PM UTC

timcederman wrote: post #204

jasonpeacock wrote: post #123

I'm an avid Instacart user, and I refuse to pay the service fee, nor the tip. Companies need to pay the drivers fair wages, and charge the customers enough to do so. Don't push that responsibility to the customer. Also, the service fee is perfect example of a Dark Pattern[1]. The actual service fee option (which is pre-selected at 10%) is hidden below the fold in the iPad app (and iOS?) checkout widgets. You have to…

Yeah, I'd prefer to not pay the service fee, or the tip, but realistically by not doing so you're screwing the delivery folks, who get deliberately underpaid by companies like Instacart. If there was an organized effort, and it was actually sending a message, then great, let's all do it! But really all you're doing is stiffing some poor underpaid delivery person.

Where I live (Seattle) we've passed minimum wage law increases ($15, on a 7yr schedule) that has already resulted in many restaurants adding an automatic & non-optional 20% gratuity to checks, where the fine print says it will be shared between front & back staff.

So yes, there's an organized effort and it's making a (slow) difference in shifting the culture of companies under-paying their employees and expecting customers to make up the difference.

Re: Instacart is playing games with its workers’ pay

#258

Post by x1798DE » Wed, Feb 22, 2017, 3:17 PM UTC

matt_wulfeck wrote: post #5

> Instead of the tipping option appearing on the checkout page as it originally had, a default 10 percent “service fee” sat in its place. If I could take a guess, I'd say this is more related to the user experience. I hate tipping. I'd rather just attach a 10-20% fee instead of needlessly evaluating someone else's performance with every delivery. Or better yet, I'd rather just use a company that adequately pays its o…

> Or better yet, I'd rather just use a company that adequately pays its own employees instead of attempting to offload a portion of that cost on its customers.

I also really dislike tipping, but in reality it's not the cost they are offloading onto customers (all the cost is paid by the customers, since costs are paid out of revenues, which come from customers), but rather they are offloading compensation decisions onto customers - since the difference between a tip and having the cost of service built into the price is that you can decide the amount of the tip.

Re: Instacart is playing games with its workers’ pay

#259

Post by hfsktr » Wed, Feb 22, 2017, 3:19 PM UTC

leesalminen wrote: post #254

baby wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Always tip a fixed 5$ if you get a good service, why tipping if you don't get a good service though?

$5 on a $100 bill? In the US? That's awful.

I usually tip % but I don't go to eat at places with such high bills.

I can understand the logic though of a fixed tip. There are all kinds of situations where a server spends the same amount of time/effort for each table and get different tips based on what the person ate?

Why does that make sense that I would tip more because I got a steak instead of a burger and the server had to just bring it to me in either case?

Re: Instacart is playing games with its workers’ pay

#260

Post by uxp100 » Wed, Feb 22, 2017, 3:24 PM UTC

coldtea wrote: post #226

closeparen wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>What is the market for +10% on groceries and basic necessities? People who live in the suburbs without cars. Cities are successfully discouraging car ownership by making parking scarce near downtown offices and even the suburban transit stations that lead to downtown offices. At the same time, cities aren't permitting the construction of dense, walkable neighborhoods, at least not fast enough to make them affordable…

> People who live in the suburbs without cars. All 10 of them?

There are inner ring suburbs in the US that have good transit access, short bike trips to jobs, and even dense portions with trendy bars and restaurants, but getting groceries for a family there can still kinda suck. Even if the store is only a mile away, liquids are very heavy.

I've have never used instacart though.