Postmates Debuts ‘Get It Now’ On-Demand Courier Service To The Public | Hacker News Reader

Postmates Debuts ‘Get It Now’ On-Demand Courier Service To The Public

techcrunch.com

44 pointsashbrown17 comments

I've used the beta for several months and it's been great. I just ordered lunch with it, minutes ago actually. You can track my order live https://postmat.es/97MJQ6Is

It makes great use of smartphone gps technology and the estimates have been pretty accurate. I like things that are organized and predictable, very much like Uber.

Matt, thanks so much for being a part of the beta. We incorporated a ton of feedback from those orders into the product that is live today. Definitely let us know if there's anything we can do to improve the experience; we're paying super close attention to these early orders.

I'm looking at the tracking page for askedrelic's order, and the only thing that would make this the best tracking page in the world, is for Alex, the courier, to be able to add notes on the page - for example, "Ordered and paid for", and then "Next in line", or "5 minutes more due to a problem with the grill" when relevant.

Also, the page doesn't say when the courier arrived at the location, so while we know he accepted the delivery 50 minutes ago, I can't tell whether the food has been ordered 10, 20 or 45 minutes ago. (I do see "pick up in 0 minutes" though, but it doesn't mean anything at this point).

I think the idea of letting the courier add notes is amazing. And yes, there are a few things we can do better in regards to the actual status of the delivery. I personally don't like the pickup in 0 minutes either. Give us a few days :)

Kozmo is back! [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kozmo.com]

I like to think of it as Kozmo with a business model but then again, i'm also one of the founders and i guess we all know to well that being overly optimistic about your own startup is one the biggest weaknesses (strengths) of founders. But seriously, we do charge for deliveries, we worked hard on an algorithm that helps us determine the costs of a delivery based on historic data and most of us are engineers who are in love with the idea of solving big problems. ;)

This brings back to mind http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3971212 (Somebody please, for the love of god, fix shipping/couriers)

This seems like exactly the sort of thing George Spencer is talking about - doing courier right. Kudos to you guys, I hope you'll be able to expand internationally to your neighbors up north and across the pond once you've conquered the US.

I used the beta to get a last-minute gift for my mom that I wouldn't have otherwise had time for. The app let me find and call the store to confirm that they had the item I wanted before having it delivered.

Amazon Prime for everything. Can't wait till the NYC launch.

I'm confused about the 20-40% commission on purchases though. That seems like it would severely limit my use of the service. Why should buying a 200$ pair of jeans cost me that much more to deliver than a 50$ pair?

It's a typo. What TC describes is our commission of the delivery fee. ;) Otherwise i would agree with you that this would make very little sense!

Oh good! That's much better. Hopefully they've corrected it, because it honestly made me mentally file away the service as "won't use".

We've asked them to change it, so hopefully it'll get edited soon! Thanks for pointing it out.

Having been in the beta for the past several months, I've been very impressed with the service. Super useful!

This looks really awesome. I can't wait until it's available in Los Angeles.

Looks pretty cool! Can't wait till it starts rolling out over here in chicago.

BTW @bastian, might want to talk to TechCrunch and have them fix the link to your site at the beginning of the article.

Congrats on the launch. Please bring this to Seattle!

When will you be available in Oakland/Berkeley?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com