I Was A Postmates Courier For A Day | Hacker News Reader

I Was A Postmates Courier For A Day

techcrunch.com

35 pointsseanplaice19 comments

> To be honest, $8.00 in tips isn’t a lot for three hours of biking around town. But I got stiffed on my last delivery, it was pointed out… And I was told by Postmates HQ that couriers typically do multiple jobs simultaneously, which increase the amount they receive. I was just unlucky in that I had to wait in line for ridiculous amounts of time at two of the locations, otherwise my tips would have been higher.

So what exactly is going to prevent couriers from taking multiple jobs they know they can't do in a fast time but can do in an okay time? Doesn't this encourage couriers to take on more jobs than they can do to make more money? A mediocre experience for consumers.

> I probably won’t be quitting my day job and becoming a courier anytime soon. I do, however, have a lot more respect for those guys, and will be sure to tip well whenever I order something from them in the future. (You should, too.)

A very American thing. Here in England we tip people when they do a great job (or not at all) tipping just because they delivered something is rare. It seems Postmates is copying the normal (American) delivery model: pay your couriers the minimum allowed and expect the customer to pick up the slack, even when they're already paying you a premium for the service. Pretty shameful really.

> So what exactly is going to prevent couriers from taking multiple jobs they know they can't do in a fast time but can do in an okay time? Doesn't this encourage couriers to take on more jobs than they can do to make more money? A mediocre experience for consumers.

One the one hand, couriers are doing more jobs in the same amount of time. On the other hand, customers have to wait longer. Something doesn't add up here.

The answer is technology and a very clever dispatch Jules ;)

I should start by pointing out that the article does not make it very clear that all Postmates also receive a commission for every delivery they are doing. Currently this commission is between 60%-80% of the delivery fee.

To answer your question about what would prevent Postmates from taking on too many jobs i would need to explain our dispatch in all details but the answer lies in great software.

Finally, the tip is not required on our platform and all Postmates get compensated very, very fair, even without any tip.

It's definitely a cultural thing, but England doesn't sound that different from America. From what I've read, a Japanese person would likely find it 'shameful' that you tip at all, even for a great job, because it implies they don't take pride in their work and only did a great job for the money.

This seems very much like a prearranged PR event. He says:

"... but to be honest, I’m not sure what I would have made for the deliveries themselves. Postmates recently changed its pricing policy to charge users based on the difficulty of the job, and it declined to disclose how much it pays its couriers for those jobs."

So it is pretty clear that the company is not treating him as an employee, but is giving him special treatment as a journalist.

If he really wanted to show how it feels to be a psotmates employee, he should just get the job as an ordinary joe schnoe, like the lady that wrote "nickel and dimed".

Hristov,

the only thing we didn't disclose is how much commission Ryan would receive per job - but if you look around a little you will see that our Postmates receive between 60%-80% of the delivery fee as commission. A Postmate makes money even if a customer does not tip. The tipping is just a bonus.

I believe you. I am just saying that it would have been a better article if he did not let you know he was doing this and applied as a regular person to get the real experience.

It's a pretty bad PR event that ends up with an article that makes it sound like a courier nets about a quarter of the minimum wage...

Again, i have no idea where this is coming from. Our Postmates actually earn way more than other couriers. Ryan is just talking about his additional tip!

> Based on my limited experience, delivering for Postmates means you spend more time waiting in line than doing anything else.

Isn't that why people hire someone else for errands? So they don't have to wait in line?

Postmates is really interesting - especially the get it now service. The people I know definitely earn more than $2 & change per hour. I've seen upwards of $30 in a given hour delivering food, with an average of about $12-14.

I miss kozmo.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kozmo.com

Maybe these guys will do better by underpaying couriers rather than paying the cost of automobiles.

Postmates has a lot of similarity with Uber: they are both moving toward the grail of an on-demand logistics platform.

Where I am really excited is to see these companies figure out all the logistic hurdles and then provide an API on top of it. By doing this they will abstract away all the crazy complexities of having to move a real world object to real world destination.

You could build entire companies off these platforms.

At the risk of being Mr. Obvious, Postmates badly needs three things:

1. An Android app (I saw only the iOS app listed), with a direct download link, just for giggles.

2. A page on their website which replicates the app's functionality. I mean, it's HTML5/CSS/JS, right?

3. Smarter vendors, which accept and acknowledge orders by text, web, or (a different) app, to help the couriers earn, and to deliver the goods faster.

It would be nice if the website contained more information about the providers, service area, fees, you know... anything that might actually help me decide whether I want to use the app or not.

Currently it's just a very slick ad for "download the app! trust us, it will fulfill all your wildest fantasies!"

I don't want to download the app just to find out "Sorry, the world stops existing outside of Market Street/The Embarcadero/Church Street".

So no pay for wait time. I know from being a bike messenger you usually got paid for wait time, I guess this isn't the traditional messenger job.

Since we call in most of the orders there is very limited wait time. Ryan got extremely unlucky. Our dynamic pricing however, models the costs and the fee to be paid by the customer, by keeping all these things in mind.

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