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

Re: Instacart is playing games with its workers’ pay

#271

Post by marcosdumay » Wed, Feb 22, 2017, 3:50 PM UTC

kovek wrote: post #151

l8again wrote: post #25

Before Instacart was on the scene, my brother and I thought of about a similar service. My brother in his college days used to be a pizza delivery driver, so he had the "real world" experience. Over the weekend, I quickly created a simple dropwizard java jar that would take in two variables - number of drivers, and number of orders. Everything else was randomized to be close to reality - such as delivery times, route…

Interesting! You estimated the costs using a small program. Have you ever done this with other ideas? Is there some resources which teaches the best ways to do such estimates? I've done this before with an excel sheet for a specific business my friend was enthusiastic about. It turned out he would have been alright had he gotten a loan.

There is a concept called "Monte Carlo Simulation" that can help on that. Pushing random numbers into a program can be as rigorous as you want.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monte_Carlo_method

Re: Instacart is playing games with its workers’ pay

#272

Post by criddell » Wed, Feb 22, 2017, 3:51 PM UTC

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #266

inimino wrote: post #262

The author totally lost me at this point: "To get to the tip option, customers would have to click on a small arrow to the right of the service fee that doesn’t give any indication where it leads. Even if someone knew to click on that arrow (but honestly, why would they?)" Seriously?? Has this guy never seen a mobile app before? There is a line reading "Service (10%)" with an actual dollar figure and an arrow pointin…

'Service (10%)' doesn't scream 'Tip' to me. Why on earth not just say 'Tip'?

Because you would then assume that the tip is going to the person that served you. In this case, the service charge is essentially a tip to the Instacart company.

Re: Instacart is playing games with its workers’ pay

#273

Post by strictnein » Wed, Feb 22, 2017, 3:53 PM UTC

vaishaksuresh wrote: post #87

rm999 wrote: post #66

Wait a minute... wait. Those service fees I've been opting to pay haven't been going to the shoppers/drivers who are processing my order? On my last order I asked the shopper to specifically go out of her way to check on an out of stock item. I did this with the assumption that my 7 dollar service fee was going directly to her, and that she would therefore be happy to go out of her way. When the delivery person (I th…

I think DoorDash does similar thing. You pay Tip, Service Fee, and Tax. It would still be ok if the food was being delivered from far off, but most of the time it is within a 2-5 mile radius. A $20 order easily becomes a $40 order.

And didn't DoorDash just bump their fees recently? Could be just my area, but man I swear the delivery charges increased substantially in the last couple of weeks. Lots of places with $5.99 and $7.99 delivery charges attached to them.

Re: Instacart is playing games with its workers’ pay

#274

Post by inimino » Wed, Feb 22, 2017, 3:58 PM UTC

wheaties wrote: post #267

inimino wrote: post #262

The author totally lost me at this point: "To get to the tip option, customers would have to click on a small arrow to the right of the service fee that doesn’t give any indication where it leads. Even if someone knew to click on that arrow (but honestly, why would they?)" Seriously?? Has this guy never seen a mobile app before? There is a line reading "Service (10%)" with an actual dollar figure and an arrow pointin…

Once upon a time I made a UI where there were several things. One of them was a gigantic text box with the title "Biography" and another a 2 character wide box with a title "years of experience." We had to change that to a drop down. Why? Read on... We got a lot of complaints. People couldn't see their resume in the "years of experience" box. Worse they kept getting error messages saying their resume was too long. It…

Yes, thanks, but I am already quite familiar with the idea that users will break and misunderstand any UI in creative and unexpected ways. That's why we do testing of any new UI designs. That's totally unrelated to my point.

My point is that the author writes as if something that is perfectly familiar to any mobile app user--and is literally the standard way to present a default option that can be changed--is something that has never been seen before. As I said, find me a mobile user who doesn't know what that arrow means in the screenshot in his article. He gave up all credibility with me at that point in the article. It may be that there's a story here, but either way this is just terrible journalism.

Re: Instacart is playing games with its workers’ pay

#275

Post by marcosdumay » Wed, Feb 22, 2017, 3:58 PM UTC

dkarapetyan wrote: post #31

Why does startup after startup think they can make delivery a viable business? The numbers never work out.

Somebody should be able to. It's very likely a task for a big company, but it ought to be a problem that has a solution, as a lot of companies do "solve" it in an ad-hock fashion that seems to cost much more than it should.

Re: Instacart is playing games with its workers’ pay

#276

Post by mrits » Wed, Feb 22, 2017, 3:59 PM UTC

pshposh wrote: post #160

rahimnathwani wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've seen Uber drivers discuss this on forums. For some drivers, 'no tip' = 'no 5 star rating for the passenger'

What are the implications for a passenger with a poor star rating?

I've never tipped in hundreds of Uber rides and I have like a 4.9 last I checked. Because I'm not a special snowflake I would think that most people have a good rating. But if you don't and there are options of who you can pick up, you gotta think that someone with a 4.5 would be picked up over a 3.5.

Re: Instacart is playing games with its workers’ pay

#277

Post by siranachronist » Wed, Feb 22, 2017, 4:02 PM UTC

inimino wrote: post #262

The author totally lost me at this point: "To get to the tip option, customers would have to click on a small arrow to the right of the service fee that doesn’t give any indication where it leads. Even if someone knew to click on that arrow (but honestly, why would they?)" Seriously?? Has this guy never seen a mobile app before? There is a line reading "Service (10%)" with an actual dollar figure and an arrow pointin…

https://www.nngroup.com/articles/computer-skill-levels/

You are not your user You are not your user You are not your user

~~

Beyond just that, putting things behind a chevron dramatically decreases actual usage. It's why things like hamburger menus are so bad--significantly reduces discoverability, -even when users understand the pattern-. A chevron is even worse, because it generally indicates "details", "settings", or "advanced". Nobody wants to do that.

Re: Instacart is playing games with its workers’ pay

#278

Post by inimino » Wed, Feb 22, 2017, 4:08 PM UTC

mconzen wrote: post #270

inimino wrote: post #262

The author totally lost me at this point: "To get to the tip option, customers would have to click on a small arrow to the right of the service fee that doesn’t give any indication where it leads. Even if someone knew to click on that arrow (but honestly, why would they?)" Seriously?? Has this guy never seen a mobile app before? There is a line reading "Service (10%)" with an actual dollar figure and an arrow pointin…

If you have actually used the app, you'd understand that the author's point is valid. It is certainly misleading that the "Tip" section (which defaults to 0%) is hidden entirely under the "Service (10%)" line item at checkout, which used to have an arrow but now has a button which says "Edit". Why would you click on a button next to "Service 10%" to find out how to tip, or even know whether tipping is a part of this…

> If you have actually used the app, you'd understand that the author's point is valid.

That may be true, and I'll take your word for it. However, if I have to have used the app to understand the author's point, it's a poorly written article. Catching this kind of thing is why newspapers have editors. It's bad writing and it weakened whatever point the author had.

Agreed about the ambiguous wording and whether this goes to the company or directly into worker pay is unclear.

Re: Instacart is playing games with its workers’ pay

#279

Post by siranachronist » Wed, Feb 22, 2017, 4:09 PM UTC

inimino wrote: post #274

wheaties wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Once upon a time I made a UI where there were several things. One of them was a gigantic text box with the title "Biography" and another a 2 character wide box with a title "years of experience." We had to change that to a drop down. Why? Read on... We got a lot of complaints. People couldn't see their resume in the "years of experience" box. Worse they kept getting error messages saying their resume was too long. It…

Yes, thanks, but I am already quite familiar with the idea that users will break and misunderstand any UI in creative and unexpected ways. That's why we do testing of any new UI designs. That's totally unrelated to my point. My point is that the author writes as if something that is perfectly familiar to any mobile app user--and is literally the standard way to present a default option that can be changed--is somethi…

The way I read the article, the author is pointing out the sneakiness of 1. conflating service with tipping, and 2. hiding an option people assume isn't adjustable (who would think you could waive a service fee, and what normal person would want to pay a ~higher~ service fee? note that service fee vs. tipping has different connotations) behind a nav.

There certainly is a understanding problem here, even if the individual components are all familiar, because it's not at all clear what tapping a chevron on a "service fee" would do anyway, and it's certainly far from default to assume that that's how you would tip, especially if you were unfamiliar with Instacart, and didn't realize tipping is a thing.

Re: Instacart is playing games with its workers’ pay

#280

Post by closeparen » Wed, Feb 22, 2017, 4:17 PM UTC

cmdrfred wrote: post #237

coldtea wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

How do they get to work? If they don't work, with what money do they buy food?

To get to work, you might walk 30 minutes to a train station, wait 10 minutes, and ride a packed train for another 30 minutes. Many (grudgingly) find it acceptable to do this 2x/day for commuting, but aren't keen to do it for a quick grocery run.

It's easier for public transit to do an okay job with "trunk" routes from the suburbs to downtown at commute time, than to do a passable job with connecting neighborhoods to their nearest grocery stores at all the times people might want to go shopping.