Hacker News Reader

I had a very similar outcome with Magic after trying really hard to rely on it. One of their suggested usages is to order flowers for someone, so I tried that on two different occasions.

The first time around, I asked for flowers, and got a picture of some flowers that they could send to my recipient. I didn't like the flowers in the picture, and so they picked another set of flowers per some feedback from me. The flowers arrived, and the recipient was touched, but my lingering feeling was that I would have spent the same amount of time ordering online, and it would have been easier to find the right kind of flowers if I had done so.

The second time I tried to order flowers was a complete disaster. I was ordering them for a special occasion, and Magic had told me they would be delivered within an acceptable time frame. However, the flowers never showed up. I was not notified that they had not showed up - instead I learned that they had not showed up after one of the more embarasing birthday calls of my life. Magic was very nice about it, refunded me and delivered the flowers late for free. The error may not even have been their fault. However, the extra layer of abstraction between me and the flower delivery person in this case seemed to make the whole situation worse.

I use a lot of different do-things-for-you services these days. In theory Magic is a service I should be totally hooked on, but these bad experiences killed it for me. What's the point of a service that does everything for you if it makes things more complicated or harder to get done?

Thanks for bringing this up. I've addressed similar comments elsewhere in this thread so I'll try not to repeat myself much.

- We really feel terrible that some early Magic users had a less-than-magical experience after our initial, spontaneous launch. I'm really sorry about that. I'm glad that you got your refund. If you're interested, reach out to us and we can probably track down exactly what happened and what broke down in the chain of operations.

- This is part of the reason that we created Magic+. We wanted to be able to hold a very high bar for top-tier service and guarantee that you would have it at all times, no matter what.

- We'd love for you to give Magic+ a try and compare it to your experiences with Magic. I'm highly confident that you will feel a major difference, however I understand if you don't feel inclined to do so after your past experience.

> - This is part of the reason that we created Magic+. We wanted to be able to hold a very high bar for top-tier service and guarantee that you would have it at all times, no matter what.

This is really not addressing the issue in my opinion, it would go a long way if you offered more details on what steps has been taken to improve the service, the process, the monitoring and the reliability of the service.

Saying "Well we know we dropped the ball so we are going to make it more expensive in hopes less people use it is really not an strategy that inspires confidence"

This doesn't sound right: You are suggesting to use your more expensive service when even your basic service wasn't working well for him. Why aren't you saying him to try the basic Magic service again, is it because it's still not "fixed"?

If it's any consolation, I once had a flower company deliver an empty box to someone's office. That was pretty embarrassing!

Perhaps there is scope for a sitcom involving rubbish companies and startups?

That sounds pretty funny: "For you, with love!" (empty box)

That's the problem with depending on companies like that. There's zero accountability, you can do absolutely NIL to hurt them, but if they fuck up, it can do big damage to your affairs.

I had a flower shop almost fail on the delivery - we agreed on the flowers, date and place, and then... they forgot. They simply forgot about the delivery. Luckily I called them in time and they managed to get their shit together and deliver the bouquet literally minutes before I was about to suffer a big embarrassment if the flowers were not there.

What do you like most now then?

I think given the Magic business model that they are responsible if the flowers dont show up.

That is the deal right? Pay us and we take care of it.

Not Pay us and make sure it gets done yourself.

I'm really sorry that your initial experience with Magic last year wasn't ideal. We have come a long way since those initial days. Believe it or not, we actually did not plan that original launch -- rather, we released the website and number to a few people and it went viral practically overnight. We set up a waitlist as quickly as we could, but there definitely were some people in the beginning who did not have a good user experience. I hope that if you asked for a refund back then because you were dissatisfied, that you got one. If you didn't, please feel free to text in now and claim it.

Some of the themes you're bringing up here actually point to why we created Magic+ in the first place. Magic+ was developed as a response to the needs of the most active and demanding users of our standard Magic service. In particular, a common demand was to hold a very high bar for quality and seamlessness of experience.

Right now, some of these user-requested experiences are more expensive to deliver than the original Magic pricing model accounted for. Our plan is to offer Magic+ at this price now, because there is good demand for it at this price, and drop the price over time to reach a larger and larger market. $100 dollars an hour is a lot, but our most active users tell us that for this level of elite service, it's a bargain.

I just noticed something strange in the screenshot. It seems to imply that Magic will work over iMessage. As far as I know, there is no publicly available API for iMessage so I'd be curious to know how this works.

It's an SMS, not specific to iMessage.

the blue message bubble is iMessage specific.

It's evidently photoshopped, based on the message bubble padding. Definitely just an error.

Or on purpose since since the blue messages are meant to look better with the UI so that you prefer using iMessage when possible.

Then the messages would be green. I'm curious about this as well (unless they're just photoshopped).

When I was experimenting with Twilio that was the only aspect that was a little disappointing. I wanted blue messages. :)

Pretty sure they're just photoshopped and they don't use iMessage in reality. The font/kerning/size/alignment looks off from here.

Setting up a Mac to programmatically send iMessages is trivial. I have a custom solution running that receives data over HTTPS and runs an AppleScript to send the specified text to the desired number or address via the Messages app using an iCloud account not tied to any mobile phone number.

If they were using a regular phone number, they could achieve this by using the Messages app on iOS, and controlling it with AppleScript.

Hey it's no worries -- just sharing my experience and conclusion upon the product. Poor experiences aside, the product isn't for me because I think it's equally as easy to just use the specialized service (e.g., food delivery website for food delivery). Nevertheless, I can see a use-case for the wealthy and hope the best for you guys.

This looks really interesting. Just wondering, in your FAQ you have:

Q: Where is Magic+ available?

Anywhere you need it. Magic+ is there to make your every desire and need happen, wherever you are.

# Does this mean that we can actually use it in other countries like the UK? Do we need to use an area code?

Yes, you can use the service from other countries. Magic+ is actually really convenient when you're traveling. We have phone numbers that work internationally.

What about for people who don't live in the US?

So maybe putting the number that we can text from outside the US networks on the website might help.

You don't even need to be that rich to have an assistant 24/7: Personal Assistant™ Offers MasterCard® Black cardholders the convenience of a personal assistant, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Going beyond the service of a concierge, Personal Assistant is available to free up time for busy cardholders, with services such as: Child care services (such as pick-up and drop-off at school). Pet care. Personal shopper (domestic and international). Location and purchase of rare gifts. The MasterCard® Black Personal Assistant service will answer virtually any request that money and ethics can buy.

For free.

Crap, this could have really saved me over the last month - what's the catch? Have you used something like this? I think my last card had it (calling it "Concierge") but my current bank doesn't mention it anywhere.

Typically cards with extra features either (at the low end) charge a monthly fee or (at the higher end) have minimum requirements such as a minimum net worth for the holder or a minimum monthly or annual spend through it. Lower end would normally be a small fee and fairly basic bonus features (travel insurance, gadget insurance, airport lounges) while I'd expect any half-decent concierge service to be aimed at attracting richer customers. The minimum worth/spend requirements basically mean the extra services offered are there to attract people who will give the card creators more % by spending more money, giving them enough profit to offer free services.

> If I were rich, hey sure why not boss someone around for random things (though I don't know why I wouldn't just hire someone I can trust). However, if you're middle income or even a little higher, what's the point really? Everything else is basically on-demand in this new uber-fied world.

Judging by the price and the copy in the page, I wouldn't be surprised if it's actually targeted at rich people.

Yes - plus appears to be targeted at rich people ("I need to have 6 convertibles by tomorrow"). But remove that trailing `/plus` at the end of the URL and you have their base product Magic, which isn't.