Postmates launches Amazon Prime-style subscription service
techcrunch.com
techcrunch.com
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 where it made sense. Why cut off 50% of your user base for the subscription service?
> "..free delivery on all orders from over 3,000 Plus merchants..."
2. This is incredibly misleading. "over 3,000" has to refer to their entire market because here in Chicago, I've only ever seen about 10-15 places that show up in the "Plus" section. That's a pretty limited amount of restaurants in the "Plus". That list has also only changed maybe once or twice in the months they have had "Plus". And it's a very small variety (of honestly, not that amazing places). I wonder with the addition of this service they actually end up beefing that number up in their various markets because right now, that stat is just marketing fluff.
As you can see on my two points above, I'm not sold this is going to play out anywhere as well as Amazon Prime did. I bet they see a pretty slow adoption rate on this until they make it much more compelling. Or I also assume a lot of people are going to sign up for this only to be disappointed by the lack of options I mentioned in my 2nd note above. They are definitely marketing it in a misleading way.
Also, it's worth mentioning that Postmates has one of the worst custom support teams I've ever seen. On two separate occasions I have sent an order issues support ticket to never get a response back. Which was even more frustrating when it said they always get back to you within 24 hours after I submitted the issues. I had to eventually complain about it on Twitter before I finally got a reply from them. Quite the bummer.
EDIT: I do want to add a quick note to this. While I'm very critical above, I do indeed think Postmates has the best UX and app of the similar services available. Once they can just iron out some of the kinks I mentioned above, I think the potential of the service is indeed high.
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 working with the team and we're doing many things to improve this. I hope we can move the needle here soon.
This is a really tough industry to solve - particularly at the scale you are trying to solve it at - and managing growth concerns and the right markets to be in at the right time is really hard. Good job right now!
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)
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.
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.
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
I used to work for a large courier company writing dispatch algos so... pet peeve. :)
A lot of times your worst critics can become your biggest fans this way.
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.
So, like...ummm... a real business?
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 business, coupled with a labor-scarce market and big players that have more money to spend on their side project than your entire market cap.
Don't get me wrong, I love Postmates, but won't use it for a while because UberEATS is providing free delivery to me for the next 3 months - and that's the problem!
Maintaining strong unit economics ensures that we are building the right products and operating the platform effectively. It is easy to subsidize if you have the capital but beyond just being expensive you also lose an important signal to running your platform.
Our requirement for strong unit economics has made our work harder but I do believe that it has made us make better decisions and force us to innovate instead of spend.
EDIT: This comment was made before it was edited. I would like to follow up to the edits. Specifically the Bezos mention on about margins.
There is a difference between seeking strong unit economics and profits and having them. Postmates has always had them by choice. We can choose do whatever we wish with those margins. We have regularly reduced our pricing because we have made our platform more efficient. If you were subsidizing your growth you wouldn't have the motivation or signals to identify the efficiencies.
If you are subsidizing your unit economics and your competition drops prices they are forcing you to lose more money. We prefer seek efficiencies and pass those savings on instead of just spending more money.
Unless by subsidizing, this company takes more market share and causes the non-subsidizer to dip into their own margin, and the race to the bottom continues.
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.
Now stop making me subsidize your employees by encouraging me to tip.
Edit: thanks for the replies below. Restaurants are the vendors where I most often find myself wanting something very specific delivered in a timely manner and been willing to pay a small premium - Postmates serves this use case better than any other service - glad to hear you will continue to support it even as you invest in other markets as well!
We haven't shifted focus away from restaurants. We have about 3000 Plus partners today of which a majority are restaurants. We've always done more than restaurants. Food is most of what we do but there are also grocery, apparel, electronics, essentials retailers on Postmates.
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).