Why does startup after startup think they can make delivery a viable business? The numbers never work out.
Instacart is playing games with its workers’ pay
31–40 of 371 posts
Re: Instacart is playing games with its workers’ pay
#32I can understand wanting predictability in your business model, but if your supply chain shakes when you add consistency, your business model probably doesn't work.
Re: Instacart is playing games with its workers’ pay
#33What problem was Instacart trying to solve here? I use Amazon Prime Now and Google Express, but don't really factor in the tip when I think how much Prime costs me. I don't make that many orders though, so maybe people feel it as an additional cost over time.
The positive spin would be that it reduces friction involved in ordering and delivery payment. The original change didn't offer the ability to change the service fee. Under that model they offer one less decision point for their customers.
The negative spin is that they wanted to capture some percentage of the tip money.
Re: Instacart is playing games with its workers’ pay
#34I'm a customer of Instacart and a big fan of the service. It has saved me so many hours. The contract between a customer and Instacart is very simple: The customer picks out groceries and they show up at the door an hour or so later. Uber's decision to remove tipping was brilliant. Why impose additional uncertainty and friction into the work flow? Star ratings allow Uber to compensate top performers without creating…
> Star ratings allow Uber to compensate top performers without creating an inconvenient friction point for users.
Uber drivers with a high rating get paid more?
Re: Instacart is playing games with its workers’ pay
#35I'm a customer of Instacart and a big fan of the service. It has saved me so many hours. The contract between a customer and Instacart is very simple: The customer picks out groceries and they show up at the door an hour or so later. Uber's decision to remove tipping was brilliant. Why impose additional uncertainty and friction into the work flow? Star ratings allow Uber to compensate top performers without creating…
> Star ratings allow Uber to compensate top performers without creating an inconvenient friction point for users. Uber drivers with a high rating get paid more?
If they don't it's a big mistake by Uber. But at least the infrastructure is in place for collecting detailed ratings and feedback.
Re: Instacart is playing games with its workers’ pay
#36When are we as a society going to tire of company executives feigning stupidity and ignorance when it comes to these very deliberate actions? All these executives--and likely all the developers, too--know exactly why these business model and app changes were made. The reasons given in the article are completely accurate.
It can be boiled down to this: Money > People.
Re: Instacart is playing games with its workers’ pay
#37How is this legal? They've been lying to customers in print about a service charge being a tip (as well as lying about the cost of the service to begin with by adding the charge to begin with) and basically stealing these people's tips.
Re: Instacart is playing games with its workers’ pay
#38Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's basically Webvan 3.0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Webvan
I was thinking of Kozmo.com which funnily enough also went defunct in 2001. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kozmo.com Although they did more than just food.
Kozmo was more of a courier company, closer to today's Postmates.
Re: Instacart is playing games with its workers’ pay
#39Is it possible to have a value-added services company that doesn't exploit its labor? Is your answer going to be self-driving cars? What about alternatives that don't fundamentally replace the labor? In my opinion, it is impossible to achieve venture capital goals and pay service labor commensurate to the value it delivers.
Profit has to come from somewhere. You can't reimburse the workers the full value of their labour if you wish to make a profit. I'd say that counts as exploitation. Unfortunate, but thats the reality of capitalism.
Re: Instacart is playing games with its workers’ pay
#40This sounds extremely scummy, and if the story really is as simple as this article tells it I don't understand how the CEO of this company can look at himself in the mirror. I think a great example of an app that lets me give positive feedback to service people is Uber. They let you get a ride ASAP with as little decision making as possible, and then you can rate it after you get where you're going and you have some…
> They definitely don't make drivers have to hand out paper flyers in order to feed their family.
I don't know how Instacart works, but could it be that Lyft/Uber drivers have ratings they need to maintain, whereas Instacart delivery people don't? (Someone feel free to shine some light/correct me here.)