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Magic

getmagicnow.com

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Re: Magic

#231

Post by raldi »

cmikec wrote: post #227
raldi wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How come you removed the part of the FAQ that mentioned your fee? I think everyone knows you have to charge one and we're totally cool about it. Did you just feel that subject was best saved for later in the signup process, or did you want to keep the door open for alternate means of revenue?

We noticed that people were more confused by the ambiguity of the nondescript fee, than us just saying that we'd tell you the total amount. You are right though, we do need to figure out a better way to explain this. If anyone has any ideas, please let me know.

"We quote you one simple price that includes everything: The goods, the delivery, any expected gratuity, all service charges including our own, and any applicable taxes and fees. What you see is what you pay."

Re: Magic

#232

Post by exogen »

mkagenius wrote: post #226
exogen wrote: post #137

I just decided to try this out in Seattle. Here's how it went! http://brianbeck.com/images/magic.png (the minimum was from the sushi place, not Magic)

Offtopic: your iPhone is pretty long :) or you used something like Stitch It! ?

did it manually, I'm afraid.

Re: Magic

#234

Post by vacri »

GunlogAlm wrote: post #198
notatoad wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That actually doesn't seem very good. If I'm craving sushi as 7pm, getting delivered at 9:15 isn't really going to do it for me.

Isn't that because he had no credit card attached to his account, and needed one before anything could progress? In addition to the high demand they're going through, right now, I'd say it's understandable.

It was 3 minutes from CC request to CC info done.

Re: Magic

#235

Post by Procrastes »

What a great way to boil business down to the essentials. Help people in a way they value, give them an easy way to pay for it, profit.

Re: Magic

#236

Post by LeoPanthera »

peteretep wrote: post #194
daxelrod wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you OK with people using Magic for things that don't result in a purchase? Something like "Is the 4:30 train from Greenwich to NYC late?" or "What hours are my local DMV office open?" "Anything you want" makes it sound like people can use it like they'd use Siri.

There was a UK service called AQA that would answer questions for £1 back in the mid 2000s. They started off super super useful, but quality degraded enough as they scaled that it was no longer worth it. Used to be able to say "which shops in a 20 mile radius have xus in stock", or "who should I complain to about the service in xyz bar" and get great answers, but as they automated it more and more you'd just get back…

I was briefly an AQA employee. You were paid per question, so all you really cared about was how quickly you could send an answer and move onto the next question. The quality of the answer didn't matter, unless the customer complained and got a refund, which virtually never happened.

Re: Magic

#237

Post by Procrastes »

api wrote: post #109
jonheller wrote: post #5

Besides questions about revenue and such, can I just say that I absolutely love the landing page. No gimmicks, no parallax, no videos, no fake testimonials, no hero images, no marquees. Just good copy. Not sure if this is because of how quickly this blew up, but well done.

But how can you disrupt without parallax? ... And thanks. I thought I was the only one who thought the video fad was dumb. Now it's just a toll booth for getting a product presented, and I never watch them. How about others? Do you find videos actually useful or are they just glitz?

I hardly ever watch product videos. I'm usually in locations where It would be rude and I don't want to put in earphones just to find out what's going on. But I'm a curmudgeon, and may be an outlier.

Re: Magic

#238

Post by avn2109 »

saraid216 wrote: post #132
avn2109 wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, if you can wrap shleps like this in a painless interface, it would be incredible. I would pay _a lot of money_ for that. Especially for stuff like "Dispatch someone credible-sounding to stand in line and negotiate as my agent with large shitty ossified organization X," where X might be a post office, utility company, embassy, real estate, etc, where their user experience disrepects my time. The dev who sits nex…

So you're saying that your coworker needs a real estate agent. Is there a reason, besides money, that he isn't using one? I say "besides money", because you said you would pay "a lot of money" for it, so you can clearly afford an agent.

No clue why he's doing it the way he is, and I know nothing about how to buy a house, but it sure sounds like a pain.

Re: Magic

#239

Post by vacri »

MichaelGG wrote: post #84
cmikec wrote: post #2

Hey everyone - this is insane. My friends and I created Magic a few days ago as a side project and it's completely blown up by accident since then. We're getting stormed with messages and orders. We thought we'd launch it ourselves later if it did well, and other people have been posting it on Product Hunt, Reddit, HN themselves... I'm here to answer any questions, although we've hardly slept!

So I used to use something like this with Amex's concierge service. Like getting a Wii on release day, or getting a gift somewhere. I stopped using them after this bad experience. I asked them to send about $100 of good chocolate as a gift, and they just sent a $10 bar, 10 times. Duh. Anyways, I felt a very good sensation looking over this. Probably because it's just such a PITA to do things like order pizza. Gotta t…

Probably because it's just such a PITA to do things like order pizza

Is this sarcasm? I can't see how wrangling an order through an intermediary is easier than just ordering from the local pizzeria's website.

Not to mention that it takes a non-trivial time to confirm - in exogen's example above, it was 69 minutes plus delivery time. Small questions about relatively trivial things really drag out that confirmation time.

Re: Magic

#240

Post by avn2109 »

freehunter wrote: post #217
zaroth wrote: post #85

I love the idea, and the execution, but just one nit -- you say "no hidden fees", but I think bundling the fee into the total price is the definition of a hidden fee . If your examples itemized the fee it would be a different story. Other comments here express a similar anxiety, e.g. how much [extra] am I actually paying for this? Also, I know you're busy, but FYI CA state law requires you have a Privacy Policy. I wo…

Well it's not hidden because they tell you up front, before the order is placed, how much it will cost. If they told you $20 and asked for $25 when they got there, that would be a hidden fee. Like AT&T saying you can get cable for $20/mo, but your cable bill always ends up being $32.88.

Getting someone to push back on ATT bill errors would be an amazing feature if Magic could make it work.
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