Comment by Pyxl101 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Pyxl101 | Hacker News Reader

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Are you responding to the same screenshot that tfehring is commenting on? https://imgur.com/a/j47ls It says:

> "A mark-up is added to item prices at this retailer to cover the cost of the Instacart service. Prices are based on data collected in store and are subject to delays and errors."

There is no good, ethical reason why a delivery service should show me an item price that's different from what's in the store. It's completely ethical if the company wants to say, "The service fee for this store is X% (as a percent of item prices)", or "This store has an additional $X service fee". That is honest and reasonable. I expect a delivery service to quote me the same item price as the retailer quotes in its store.

The reason I have this preference is because of a delivery service's value proposition: shopping in my store, on my behalf. I have access to the same products and can buy them directly. So I want to directly consider the service's value proposition, by considering the service fee I'll need to pay versus buying things myself. (EDIT: Simplify)

as i have noted elsewhere in the thread, that is a message -- from the retailer -- that the prices are different from in-store (and again, online pricing is their prerogative).

instacart is not marking anything up.

edit: it seems clear that we can do better in terms of communicating this, so i've passed that feedback on to the team.

Excellent - so it's not a lack of transparency, but bad copywriting/marketing.

The paragraph reads like IC is responsible for the increase, not the retailer itself.

some constructive feedback: i had no idea that the markups were from/by the retailer, as opposed to instacart.

consider changing the messaging there? until now, i was under the impression that the markups were just another way for y'all to make some money off of me.

That's in no way relevant. I want to know how much more it costs to use Instacart vs going to the store, and I don't care what their costs are just what mine are for using the service.

Why is it that grocery stores charge an Instacart shopper more than a regular customer? What extra work does the store have to do for the Instacart shopper that they wouldn't for a regular shopper?

Intuitively it seems like the store should be more incentivized to offer lower prices to Instacart since they provide a steady stream of business, reliable payment, etc.

Shh, its the cost of the kickback they are trying to talk past. Its just another fee.

Eh, their shoppers sound dumb from the anecdotes here, are likely tending to be picking up larger orders a lot, and generally plugging up the store at a higher rate than other shoppers.

Thanks for the clarification. I always assumed that this markup was from instacart and not the retailer. I guess I always found this very frustrating because instacart always says “we’re super transparent” but they never actually tell you what the mark up is. I guess instacart doesn’t even know what the markup is, which would explain why it isn’t communicated.

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