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Comment by Matt_Mickiewicz | Hacker News Reader

Sounds like they are re-living the lessons learned by Kozmo (anybody remember them?). Free, local delivery is a tough business, and people will absue it without minimums.

Kozmo learned that customers would order a pack of gum... expecting free delivery (which they did honor... until they went out of business).

Always really good to know what went before you: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kozmo.com

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I take issue with the term "abuse." The implication is that people are unfairly taking advantage of the service, and that the companies are justified in altering obfuscating their pricing structures in a way that is at best disingenuous and at worst illegal. If companies agree to provide a free service to their customers, said customers can only be expected to maximize their value from the service. The companies have an obligation to offer their services at the marketed or contractually-guaranteed price, and aren't justified in misleading customers. No "abuse" happened. These companies made poor choices and consumers acted in their best interest (as they are inclined to do). That doesn't justify that choices that Instacart made.

Oh Kozmo. My friend told me tales of ordering a Snickers bar at 3am while some dude on a bike would come and deliver it by 3:45am.

It would be nice if startups could learn lessons that don't directly affect their company, but the lesson probably wouldn't hold as much weight/carry as much significance if they didn't experience it firsthand.

I would love to believe that every startup within a vertical learns lessons from the pioneers that have failed, but sometimes the lessons are in the details that aren't readily available.

The former CTO of Kozmo gave a great speech at a Startup Funeral in NYC last year:

http://readwrite.com/2012/10/04/startup-funeral-honoring-the...

It was a fascinating story and a real cautionary tale for people replicating their mistakes.

Free local delivery without minimums sounds like suicide to me. Of course that doesn't release them from honoring any pledge they've made though.

Even if you have Instacart Express, they enforce a $10 minimum per store you want to order from on top of the delivery fee. Plus this wasn't a service offered to any except the earliest adopters. If they can't profit or deal with the volume from the early adopters buying at least the minimum for a store and picking the (formerly free, now only free for $35+) slower delivery option, they need to phase out the service altogether.

Honestly, the pricing structure of this company is so convoluted and their fees seem so usuriously high, I just can't see how this is preferable to simply walking to the nearest store in 99% of circumstances.

I'm Australian and when visiting LA about 10 years ago I decided I wanted to see some things. Every time I asked for directions, local people would say "Well you get on this motorway and then turn here" etc. I'd say "No, I want to walk" and people would look at me like I was a leper.

Maybe it's LA specific, but I was amazed at just what a "You don't WALK anywhere" culture there was, at least with all the people I spoke to.

Or maybe I'm the crazy one for wanting to walk everywhere!

Having grown up in LA, I think it is LA specific (and a few other cities too). Given how big and spread out the city is, it is pretty difficult to walk around unless you only want local attractions in a certain area (say, Hollywood). Taking public transit or a bike might work for some attractions too, but it's also incredibly time consuming. I do a good 50+ miles of driving when friends/family are visiting even for a couple of days. Just to get out of my former neighborhood and to a shopping center or whatever, in the city of LA so not like out in the boonies, takes a couple miles alone.

Compare to SF where I live now, and I'm pretty happy I can walk to a lot more places within a few blocks :)

Well then call the funny farm and have me committed, because I dont drive. My main mode of transportation is walking.

I'm actually known around town as the "guy who walks everywhere". It's like I'm the town freak.

More seriously though, in this culture, cars and driving are like a religion. I also think that driving instead of walking disconnects people from nature and from knowing their own neighborhood, both socially and ecologically.

Traveling at high speeds in an insulated metal cage can have that effect.

I think this idea that 'driving disconnects people from nature and from knowing their own neighborhood' is silly, and possibly harmful if it leads people down suboptimal urban planning designs. It sounds lovely and humanistic and all that, but I would love to see some evidence that it's actually, y'know, true.

I walk my neighborhood (2-3 times a week), and I can't say I am any more connected when walking than when driving. I see no more people when I walk than when I drive, and the ones I do see don't recognize me nor I them. It's not as if walking makes me suddenly introduce myself to people, or that doing so will induce me to somehow pick up (nonexistent) litter or the like, or somehow notice things I wouldn't otherwise.

It's not as if walking makes me suddenly introduce myself to people, or that doing so will induce me to somehow pick up... litter or the like, or somehow notice things I wouldn't otherwise.

Sorry to hear that.

This is what I don't get, that people think that walking somehow magically makes people somehow more social than they are. Maybe I'm wrong! But I'd like to see data that proves people are more social when walking than driving. I think the lack of social interaction is the controlling factor, not a particular mode of transportation people choose.

Fear wears many masks.

I don't think Instacart's fees are anywhere near "usuriously high", only unnecessarily complicated. I would be happier paying something like an upfront $25/delivery for 20 items within 3 hours or similar, no markups and no other cost structure involved. All I see is markups everywhere and delivery fees that go all over the place so it's impossible to estimate how much more I'm spending... if I even get the right things delivered. So I just take the little bit of extra time to stop by the market on my way home or make a small weekend day trip out of multiple stores instead.

Plus if anything I'd rather shop in person than go with any delivery service because I know I'll be getting what I want from any market I want and I know what kind of substitutions I want, instead of dealing with terrible shoppers and even worse UIs (like Instacart's). Adding shady change of terms without telling customers on top of that? Ugh. Want to love the convenience but...

Wow, that's pretty blinkered of you. Off the top of my head, it would probably be preferable to people with a physical disability, people with a sprained ankle/wrist, people with the flu, people with a hangover, people with two small kids taking a nap, people working from home with a deadline, busy people in general, people who live outside of a reasonable walking distance from a store (can include those who live close but in a difficult to walk neighbourhood), people who need to buy more things than they can easily carry...I'm pretty sure I'm well over 1% of cases already.

This is a really important point to make. Companies like these start out thinking that there is no way there will be a lot of users ordering small amounts, they'll all just order in bulk. They soon find out this isn't the case, but at that point changing looks bad to their customer base. If you don't start out with a model that charges for the smaller deliveries you're going to find yourself screwed.

That being said, the $99 fee should cover smaller deliveries. They asked for the money up front, without limitations, it is an awful idea to attempt to go back on that.

The documentary E-Dreams is a very interesting behind the scenes look at Kozmo's rise and (mostly) fall. Not a great documentary as a film, but definitely worth a watch if you're interested in the history of the dot com boom.

We are working on implementing it for setonia.com for all products man.. its not easy.

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