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Comment by therobot24 | Hacker News Reader

neat idea, but the website looks awful...like really bad. Even with an established professional service i'd have some uneasiness with just giving my keys to some random person, but there's no doubt that i wouldn't trust this based on the first glance.

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That first stock photo is a pretty poor choice too.

And their 100% satisfaction testimonials look 100% fake

Yeah. Gmail account on the contact page, random inconsistently sized stock photos, scrolling breaks in my OSX Chrome. I'd be pretty nervous about using this.

All of their "satisfied customers" look to be just random stock photos that appear on a bunch of different websites I am not sure I would be keen to hand my keys over to them

They actually are stock photos. Do a Google reverse image search. I see some 1,000+ results.

Hmm, interesting. So if it was a pretty landing page that instilled trust, you would consider using the service? We are considering a $1 million insurance policy too - that would be featured on the landing page.

A more professional landing page would make you seem more legitimate, yes. This looks very sketchy. I'm not saying you're running a scam; I can see this being a real and valid service, especially in Silicon Valley where startups are created to cater to other startups. But your site looks like a high school web design class mockup.

I'm not trying to be rude, just honest criticism. I wouldn't trust you based on that site. At a minimum, ditch the "sexy" stock photo of the woman pumping gas and the "time is money" graphic, find some real testimonials (you don't even have to have headshots; screenshot some positive Twitter feedback and use that, with permission of the authors of course). Definitely talk about the insurance policy, and give a little more detail about the service without being too wordy.

It's more that a bad landing page demolishes potential trust.

Especially fake testimonials. https://omnibox.tv/ has your same "Ben A." as "Gerald Perkins". http://www.shopkare.com/ has "Rachele B." as "Ana Lopez". All it takes is a right-click menu in Chrome to figure out it's a lie.

People respond to a lot of subtle signals.

* You don't have a shortcode to text to, so it feels like you are texting to some dude.

* For such a local service, you don't say what area the service works in.

* Not using your domain for email.

An interesting study in online reputation!

http://www.scamadviser.com/check-website/gasvalet.co

My work proxy doesn't like the contact page: "Your request was denied by SmartFilter while attempting to retrieve the URL: http://www.gasvalet.co/contact.html. The content category reported by SmartFilter is: Suspicious. The Corporate Internet Access Policy is configured to deny access to this category."

Yeah, I mean my first reaction to it is that this is a satire site mocking the startups that are trying to sell services around what most people would think of as routine errands.

This was my first impression too. It almost sounds like a joke, especially the testimonials. The third one seems completely tongue-in-cheek, as does the claim of "you spend 24 hours every year filling your tank". That's honestly not a whole lot of time in the grand scheme of things.

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