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Postmates launches Amazon Prime-style subscription service

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Re: Postmates launches Amazon Prime-style subscription service

#21

Post by bluetidepro »

bastian wrote: post #19
bluetidepro wrote: post #17

> "Postmates is limiting the free deliveries to orders over $30, which make up about 50% of the orders" 1. I guess as a single person, I don't fall in this 50%. I never have orders that large, which makes this service something I'm obviously not that interested in. They should have made it appeal to all 100% of their users, like Amazon Prime. They could have made it so it was free delivery based on just select places…

Postmates Co-founder here: 1. We will bring this down over time, give us a few weeks. ;) 2. We have over 3,000 Plus merchants across the markets we're operating in. I can't think of a direct competitor who has more and we're adding many, many every week. 3. Our customer service has been suffering lately - this is a totally valid point. At some point we didn't catch up well enough with our growth. I'm personally worki…

I appreciate the (quick) response, bastian! I do like the UX of Postmates, and I hope this subscription service ends up panning out well for everyone! I don't think I'm in that target market for the subscription service just yet, but I will be excited when I am! Hoping you can ramp up the CX side of things, too. Best of luck to you and your team!

Re: Postmates launches Amazon Prime-style subscription service

#22

Post by ssmoot »

melvinmt wrote: post #12
ghayes wrote: post #2

> In order not to lose money, Postmates is limiting the free deliveries to orders over $30, which make up about 50% of the orders on Postmates. New employee here (just joined this week) -- one of the things that I find so compelling about Postmates is that it's focused on building a profitable business, without having to subsidize orders.

> without having to subsidize orders If there's another market player that is willing to subsidize orders and provide the same service as you (let's call them Amazon, Google, and Uber) then commanding a profit is not feasible, so I'm not sure if that's the right thing to be chasing at this moment, as Jeff Bezos famously said: "Your margin is my opportunity". On-demand delivery is increasingly becoming a commodity bus…

There's enough opportunity to go around. There was 1 grocery delivery place I was aware of for us (Artizone.com) and they shut down.

Postmates doesn't even deliver to my Dallas address, despite claiming to deliver to Dallas. What they really mean (I guess) is that they'll deliver to within a 5 mile radius of down-town I guess.

That's cool and all I guess. Maybe they'll expand eventually. It was actually a surprise that this wasn't yet another SV-only delivery service on the front-page of HN.

Re: Postmates launches Amazon Prime-style subscription service

#24

Post by Dwolb »

stephenitis wrote: post #10

I feel like uber deliveries, postmates, amazon prime, google express are all converging towards similar business models.

I dunno, I feel like this is a mash-up between GrubHub and Amazon.

Postmates is cool because they have the logistics to get you your food but they ALSO have the integration with the store menu and ordering system (maybe in the future, real time inventory).

It's more like Instacart, but the grocery is the restaurant, the shoppers are the food preparers, and the delivery people use bikes or walk instead of a car (important due to lower fixed costs for the delivery people).

Re: Postmates launches Amazon Prime-style subscription service

#25

Post by sshumaker »

Between my wife and myself, I've ordered from Postmates over a hundred times. But we barely use the service anymore because it has gotten so unreliable.

Even aside from the frequent "No Postmates are available", a large number of orders have issues, from excessive delays to missing items to even orders that don't show up. And while they eventually get taken care of by customer support, after waiting for two hours for dinner only to find out it's not coming, getting a refund is small consolation.

(I almost feel like sometime last year they switched to a model where the delivery person places the order instead of a call center. If that's true, it would help explain the drop in timeliness).

So while the app UX is decent the overall user experience leaves a lot to be desired.

I realize it's a different model, but we have way better luck with caviar.

Re: Postmates launches Amazon Prime-style subscription service

#26

Post by choward »

ghayes wrote: post #2

> In order not to lose money, Postmates is limiting the free deliveries to orders over $30, which make up about 50% of the orders on Postmates. New employee here (just joined this week) -- one of the things that I find so compelling about Postmates is that it's focused on building a profitable business, without having to subsidize orders.

> without having to subsidize orders

Now stop making me subsidize your employees by encouraging me to tip.

Re: Postmates launches Amazon Prime-style subscription service

#27

Post by bastian »

sshumaker wrote: post #25

Between my wife and myself, I've ordered from Postmates over a hundred times. But we barely use the service anymore because it has gotten so unreliable. Even aside from the frequent "No Postmates are available", a large number of orders have issues, from excessive delays to missing items to even orders that don't show up. And while they eventually get taken care of by customer support, after waiting for two hours for…

I 100% agree. We faced some pretty crazy challenges in scaling our support team. Placing orders from over 50K merchants (per month) is not a simple task BUT i'm not trying to find excuses here. We're doing the right things and they will hopefully move the needle. If you order from our Plus merchants, the order is placed electronically and this reduces the error rate drastically. Email me at: bastian@postmates.com and i will mark your account with a free subscription so you can try it out.

Re: Postmates launches Amazon Prime-style subscription service

#28

Post by pbarnes_1 »

bastian wrote: post #27
sshumaker wrote: post #25

Between my wife and myself, I've ordered from Postmates over a hundred times. But we barely use the service anymore because it has gotten so unreliable. Even aside from the frequent "No Postmates are available", a large number of orders have issues, from excessive delays to missing items to even orders that don't show up. And while they eventually get taken care of by customer support, after waiting for two hours for…

I 100% agree. We faced some pretty crazy challenges in scaling our support team. Placing orders from over 50K merchants (per month) is not a simple task BUT i'm not trying to find excuses here. We're doing the right things and they will hopefully move the needle. If you order from our Plus merchants, the order is placed electronically and this reduces the error rate drastically. Email me at: bastian@postmates.com and…

I say this having ordered probably 1000+ times through Postmates: It's not about the merchant. It's about the delivery.

Your dispatch system needs an overhaul. It has improved again lately but there was a period of several months when not a single Postmates delivery went right for me, and I'm in SOMA, and only order from restaurants around here.

I used to be 100% Postmates, spending maybe $2k/m but now I'm this:

  IF HOT FOOD REQUIRED:
    IS AVAILABLE ON UBER EATS:
      UBER EATS
    ELSE
      POSTMATES
  ELSE
    DOORDASH
UberEats is unfortunately a much better experience than Postmates now. :/

Re: Postmates launches Amazon Prime-style subscription service

#29

Post by Artistry121 »

bluetidepro wrote: post #17

> "Postmates is limiting the free deliveries to orders over $30, which make up about 50% of the orders" 1. I guess as a single person, I don't fall in this 50%. I never have orders that large, which makes this service something I'm obviously not that interested in. They should have made it appeal to all 100% of their users, like Amazon Prime. They could have made it so it was free delivery based on just select places…

I think the move by Postmates is better than you give it credit for.

1. For single people with roommates or friends who come over (or even who just order multiple meals at a time) or aren't price sensitive this will work. It's only those who can't or won't afford it that it won't appeal to. (Their old service will still work fine) The higher price may allow for scaling the customer service side up before being overrun by orders - thus keeping high-margin customers on the service early - and slowly dipping down into the lower-margin side of the market. (This kind of goes to point 2 - resources are not unlimited for postmates - for Amazon they are).

2. They can then sell the Plus plan to restaurants as a way of getting more customers - this benefit will diminish to each restaurant that joins but will provide an incentive in the short term to restaurant owners to join Plus. They can develop a good process for dealing with the restaurants and review restaurants to ensure good service before adding them to Plus - improving the experience for all.

2.b. This shouldn't mislead customers as long as the catalog of Plus and non-Plus customers is available before signing up for the plan. In fact it will lead them to see which restaurants they should work with most to add to Plus as customers complain if they don't sign up.

Postmates plan looks shrewd, calculated and smart for all parties involved.

(bluetidepro's response to Postmates's worker seems match with some of these views)

Re: Postmates launches Amazon Prime-style subscription service

#30

Post by pfarnsworth »

bluetidepro wrote: post #17

> "Postmates is limiting the free deliveries to orders over $30, which make up about 50% of the orders" 1. I guess as a single person, I don't fall in this 50%. I never have orders that large, which makes this service something I'm obviously not that interested in. They should have made it appeal to all 100% of their users, like Amazon Prime. They could have made it so it was free delivery based on just select places…

Their customer service is really terrible. On my very first attempt to use them, I ended up being charged more for less food because Postmates had the wrong prices on their menu. I order something like 20 pieces for $25 and instead got charged $35 for 10 pieces.

Instead of taking ownership of their error and giving me a refund for the difference (I just wanted to pay the amount they advertised for 10 pieces on their website, I didn't ask for a full refund), they stonewalled me and kept responding with the same message over and over again. I ended up charging back the difference, and I tell everyone that they suck.

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