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Magic

getmagicnow.com

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Re: Magic

#431

Post by autoreleasepool »

scrollaway wrote: post #310
everyone wrote: post #307

Does no one else consider the idea of this horribly decadent? They give as an example, ordering a delivery pizza for you, which is already a decadent activity and something you can accomplish with a single phone call anyway. Maybe for the rich high-flying silicon valley types, your time and brain space is so valuable that this service makes sense. But if that is the case maybe you should re-examine your lives.

This isn't interesting because of pizzas. This is interesting because of the potential to centralize and offload all decisions of a certain type. It's like a pay-per-use secretary. What I do find.. "decadent"... is people like you, judging masses of other people on the basis of what they find interesting or useful. Especially when you can't see past the low hanging fruit and aren't able to grasp any potential a servi…

I don't think OP wasn't judging anyone, you took his comment a little too personally.

The majority people on this site may find this service to be useful, but I gurantee, outside of the SV bubble, this service would get laughed at by the actual majority of Americans.

The market here is exclusively the faux rich. If your time was actually this valueable you would have a real assistant. The service as useful as a upper middle class doggy spa. It's viable, but it fails to solve any _real_ problems.

Re: Magic

#432

Post by dikaiosune »

q2 wrote: post #252
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!

I have a concern: How do you plan to handle security related dangerous items? For example, an user may ask you to deliver a package taken from one place to another place and you may arrange that but that package may contain dangerous/destructive/harmful materials which may be against law of the land where you operate. You can ask user to confirm contents but he/she may lie and faithfully you may try to deliver and in…

From the landing page:

"We'll order what you need from the appropriate service (e.g. DoorDash, Instacart, Postmates, etc.), and deal with them"

All of these services handle the delivery when you order directly through them, so I don't think Magic is accepting a hand-off from them and then adding an extra leg to a trip. It sounds like Magic is just acting as a middle-man in these cases. I don't see anything on their site which suggests that they ever actually handle your stuff.

Re: Magic

#433

Post by bhayden »

nileshtrivedi wrote: post #119
joshmlewis wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They aren't paying with the products they buy online with their customers CC though. That's what I was getting at. Since they don't have access to their customers CC on the websites they're purchasing these services/items from they are having to pay with it and then get reimbursed essentially with their "convenience fee" on top.

The landing page mentions that they ask the credit card details the first time you request a service.

This data goes to Stripe, where Magic bills you. Magic doesn't use your card info to order the services for you. This is why this idea won't work - it's going to get overrun with chargeback fraud and totally ruin it.

Re: Magic

#434

Post by cturner »

avn2109 wrote: post #240
freehunter wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

There's potentially high value add in exactly these tasks. Dealing with the workflow in large companies is something that takes a lot of mental energy, and a company that could produce a strong workflow to stay on top of it and drive it could be far more efficient at it than most of us. And it's something you'd be glad to pay for.

Re: Magic

#435

Post by researcher88 »

jamesrcole wrote: post #317
everyone wrote: post #307

Does no one else consider the idea of this horribly decadent? They give as an example, ordering a delivery pizza for you, which is already a decadent activity and something you can accomplish with a single phone call anyway. Maybe for the rich high-flying silicon valley types, your time and brain space is so valuable that this service makes sense. But if that is the case maybe you should re-examine your lives.

I don't see it as horribly decadent. At least not in any obvious sense. Anything that is more convenient than things were previously can be seen as decadent. I suspect so much that everyone takes for granted today would have seemed decadent to people 50 or 100 years ago. Maybe there's a number of people that such a service would really help out? I don't know, but single parents are one group that comes to mind. For h…

Even married couples with kids who make $100,000 a year and live in the midwest couldn't intelligently afford to use this service regularly. This is just my experience with a family that is able to cover expenses and put $500 in savings each month.

Re: Magic

#436

Post by jmilloy »

jsmeaton wrote: post #148
aaronem wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is what used to be called "concierge service". You can still get it with, for example, high-end American Express cards, or from firms which specialize in providing it. Judging by the examples on your site, you've succeeded in bringing concierge service to (sorry) the masses, by pricing it much lower than competing offerings. Congratulations! You have a highly viable MVP. Good luck scaling it out!

My Credit/Debit card offers concierge service but I've never used it. I'd have to find the number (or put it in my phone..), then speak to an operator, and then trust that they could deliver on what I expect. This service is based on SMS though, and I'd presume they hold all the pertinent info (address, credit card etc) so that I wouldn't have to keep repeating it. I'd still have to trust that I get what I want, but…

I don't follow you

> My Credit/Debit card offers concierge service but I've never used it. I'd have to find the number (or put it in my phone..), then an operator, and then trust that they could deliver on what I expect.

> This service is based on though, and I'd presume they hold all the pertinent info (address, credit card etc) so that I wouldn't have to keep repeating it. I'd still have to trust that I get what I want, but the crucial an operator component is reduced to a fire and forget . I'd use this if I was in the States.

Re: Magic

#437

Post by [deleted] »

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)

[deleted]

Re: Magic

#438

Post by pbreit »

alansammarone wrote: post #367
pbreit wrote: post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's quite conceivable that both examples would never happen. And then if it did, is it that big a problem?

I would think twice before using a service that makes no effort to protect me in case of thieves or wannabe hackers. Of course, degrading the service because of security is an old and very common problem, but maybe the sweet spot would be to degrade it minimally, so that everyone gets a lot more security for just a bit less of Magic®?

Well, with Magic there is almost always a geographic aspect to fulfillment which would ward off most/all theft attempts. The time to perform risk mitigation is when a strange, large request comes in.

Re: Magic

#439

Post by CamperBob2 »

avn2109 wrote: post #238
saraid216 wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It is an unbelievable pain (having just gone through the process myself) and unfortunately I don't think there's much you can do to delegate the pain, short of giving someone unlimited power of attorney. Even then, the worst part -- the day-to-day uncertainty -- won't go away.

A good buyer's agent can help to some extent, but the mortgage process is the real time sink. If you're a 1099 kind of person and you're not paying cash, your life will pretty much suck for a couple of months.

Re: Magic

#440

Post by gmisra »

Do you know what would really be magical? An on-demand service that provided a guarantee that all of the humans involved were beneficiaries of living wages, unemployment and workers comp protection, health insurance etc. I really enjoy the convenience these services provide, but ultimately that's all it is - convenience. To me, no convenience is worth watching an entire class of people get 1099-ed into poverty, at the expense of the social safety net that so many people struggled to establish.

When I discuss these issues with my peers (I live in the SF Bay Area), I find that many of them share my concerns, to varying degrees. Does anybody know if such a service exists?

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