
Postmates laid off all its city managers yesterday - artsandsci
https://techcrunch.com/2017/08/31/postmates-laid-off-all-its-city-managers-yesterday/?ncid=rss
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SirensOfTitan
While it scratches my 'lazy don't want to move' itch pretty well, I find
Postmates pretty awful. Customer service is just dreadful.

I once ordered food from a place maybe 10-15 blocks away. It took ~hours~ for
the food to arrive because the delivery driver decided to take an hour phone
call right down the street, food in hand. We had to go find him, as support
was non-existent. A little while later they offered to credit $3 for the
issue: not even covering the delivery fee we paid to go hunt down our own
food. This is a typical experience: anytime anything goes wrong Postmates
support is worthless.

~~~
Macsenour
There are a lot of these types of services and if _I_ were at one, I would
make customer service my hallmark. This seems like a no brainer to me, and yet
it seems farther down the priority list for most of these delivery companies.

Is there a reason why they all seem to have the same blind spot?

~~~
icelancer
>>Is there a reason why they all seem to have the same blind spot?

I haven't figured this one out. I think they all buy into the myth that
customer service doesn't scale / is a cost center / doesn't have ROI, etc.

Except in my business we don't do anything even close to a Postmates (where I
agree, CS should be priority #1) but we ship items around the country and do
like 60-80 orders per day, and we made the decision a few years ago to
seriously care about email response time, always pick up the phone between
certain hours, return voicemails, ship things within a discrete timeline, and
more importantly, offer refunds and accept blame 99% of the time something
goes wrong.

The goodwill we get and social media cred from the customer service is worth a
lot (tough to measure), but we also _can_ measure ROI on the emails we reply
to and phone calls we take. We find that tons of people will email or call in
with an irrelevant question that has nothing to do with buying something,
we'll answer it well, and they are then _very likely to buy something
immediately after._ Customers like to know a human is there for them! Our CS
department nearly has positive ROI from measurable tasks, to say nothing of
the untrackable rewards mentioned above (and the feeling that we aren't
scumbags, which is really the main reason we decided to do it).

In an era where everyone runs customer service like Comcast, standing out can
be worth a ton. We also ship product slightly worse than Amazon Prime, which
is pretty damn good - in today's market everyone wants things as fast as
Amazon and don't want to buy things from random websites, and I understand! So
if we can come close to that shipping time (USPS Priority Mail flat rate boxes
are 2 days to most major metropolitan areas - even from the coast like we
are), then that picks up repeat business and people talking about how fast we
ship on Twitter/Instagram/etc.

It just doesn't seem that difficult to get right. But maybe it is.

EDIT: Well, "difficult" is subjective. It took us over 12 months to get our CS
pipeline working well. But that was more "hard" than "difficult" \- it just
required a lot of work to mold it into the shape we wanted. The overall design
was pretty simple: Just take care of customers at any cost.

~~~
lawnchair_larry
It's odd how few CEOs figure this out and bake it into the DNA of their
company.

There is one notable exception, and they seem to be destroying their
competition. Scaling doesn't appear to be a problem either. Amazon are doing
pretty well. Bezos is known to indoctrinate his employees with a few strong
principles, and customer obsession is #1.

~~~
icelancer
>>customer obsession is #1.

Their straight-up customer support is outsourced, but works well enough from a
scaling perspective. Given how large the company is, I also agree that they
get an A- at worst.

But more importantly, their domination of logistics is a truly impressive
feat. There is a constant flow of articles on HN, reddit, and everywhere else
about how Amazon's prices are no longer the cheapest and how they are a
monopoly and how you should shop around and JET.com and blah blah.

No one cares that it's not the cheapest. It's almost like people forgot that
10 years ago, buying things online and dealing with horrendous shipping was a
nightmare, complete pain in the ass, and took forever. Amazon decided to grab
USPS by the neck and make them work Sundays (how do you get a government
institution to do that?!) and develop their own logistics network to deliver
many items same-day, or even within an hour. It's truly an amazing feat that
puts customers' minds at ease; there is no wonder why there is such loyalty to
Amazon.

Solving that customer problem is like an act of God to the masses.

------
pmthrow2
Postmates is a disaster of immature management. I worked in engineering for a
while. I spent many Fridays at Hotel Utah Saloon listening to Bastian try to
argue his points like "Women couldn't possibly write code as well as men." I
also watched the company transition from a point where Bastian and Sean would
get into open fights in the middle of the office. Bastian would tell everyone
they were fired. Eventually the company got bigger, they moved into a new
office and Sean reasoned to keep Bastian away from the company. Bastian's hot
head and immoral demeanor makes Travis Kalanik look like a good person. The
only way to get ahead at Postmates is to be part of the "f-ck buddy" group in
the office. Go out drinking with Sean and you will get a raise and a
promotion. They brought on new managers and new middle-tier but as all of us
saw, it was more of the same like minded childish ways that ran wild.

~~~
arikr
> The only way to get ahead at Postmates is to be part of the "f-ck buddy"
> group in the office.

? What does that mean

~~~
jgh
I'm guessing they're referring to a group of people who go and get drinks? I
don't really understand it either, but that's my guess from the followup being
about going out for drinks with one of the founders.

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ericabiz
FTA: "and other things to and from stores (eg, getting your broken iPhone to a
Postmates-using repair shop)."

Yeah, about that. We run repair shops, and were approached by Favor (Postmates
competitor) about doing this. We love Favor; they are local to us in Austin
and we'd like to do more business with them.

The problem was insurance. Our insurance refused to cover it as the phone
wouldn't be in our possession. And (at least at the time) Favor's insurance
also was not covering if a phone was lost or stolen during a "run."

When it's a small food order (most of the food orders they run are around
$20-$30, or even less), it's not the end of the world if something gets lost
or stolen. It's a lot bigger deal if it's a $969 iPhone 7+. Even with a broken
screen and iCloud locked, they're still (unfortunately) worth significant
money on the black market.

As far as I know, no delivery company has overcome this hurdle.

~~~
sitepodmatt
Yes unfortunately. People often forget this. A friend had his latest iPhone
stolen by a prostitute one night walking home from a bar. He wasn't too
concerned, and eventually his insurance paid out and he didnt care about being
robbed as his thinking was it was locked and then disabled by an Apple store
so 'she got nowt'. But I'd wager that it was sold immediately for parts for
say $100 at a local independent repair store who probably made another $200
out of it for parts, I daren't tell him as the issue has pasted given his
thinking.

~~~
rak00n
What insurance covers robbing?

~~~
sitepodmatt
Most holiday insurance. Most direct mobile phone insurance too from UK. I
think many decent UK house insurance does for personal possessions away from
home too. Id hazard a guess he was triple covered but that would complicate
things on sub $1000 item. Is US really different?

~~~
rconti
I doubt most folks take out holiday insurance. Typically it's sold in a fairly
scammy way similar to how ski pass insurance is sold -- "protect your trip!!"
all for a ripoff fee with tons of exclusions. Mobile phone carrier insurance
you would also have to elect to pay for and also has a negative expected
value.

Homeowner's insurance/renter's insurance would likely cover it. I'm not sure
I'd want to make a claim against my homeowner's policy for such a small amount
though. I've fortunately never had to rely on it but i've heard rumor of not
using it on small ticket items.

~~~
ghaff
IMO, trip insurance mostly makes sense if you have a large non-refundable pre-
pay in which case the insurance is also covering you if you have some injury
or other covered reason for not being able to go. There are also some trips
that have a greater probability of injury and expensive evacuation, e.g. treks
in remote areas.

Some argue that you should always buy it because there's always the
possibility of bad things happening that could be very expensive. But
personally I (like I assume most people) am very selective.

~~~
rconti
Right, I tend to avoid any non-required warranty or insurance due to expected
value of the coverage being negative.

That said, if you've been planning an African Safari for a decade, and
everything is pre-paid to the tune of $20k, the $100 on trip insurance is
probably money well-spent! For example, I did a long motorcycle trip where I
paid $250 for a year's worth of medical evacuation coverage, which was nice
peace of mind.

Of course, the more "stuff" a policy covers, the more expensive it is, but you
bring up a good point about pre-paid expenses. My last trip was on airline
miles, with $25/night AirBnBs that could be cancelled the day before.. train
tickets weren't bought until I was in-country, and naturally no
food/drink/museum entry/subway passes were prepurchased.

------
whoisjuan
I find Postmates pricing and user experience very irritating. No transparency
in fees and final price. Their fee waiving plan is ridiculous. I never pay
over 25 dollars for delivered food.

Also, their app user experience is simply terrible. Just the fact that they
are constantly and aggressively pushing their referral program and
subscription plan, makes the app feel like a cheap adware.

~~~
torranceyang
And their customer service is nonexistent. I was charged way more than I
should have been, and tried filing a ticket that never got answered or
responded too so I just had to pay up. There's a right way to approach these
delivery services, but Postmates doesn't seem to be close enough.

~~~
nradov
Why didn't you dispute the charge with your financial institution?

------
tylermenezes
Shortly after I signed up for Postmates earlier this year, they locked my
account and asked me to send a scan of my passport and a recent utility bill.
Not to _work_ on Postmates -- to order food. I'm not sure if that's a sign of
a huge fraud problem or something else, but I'm not totally convinced that
company is as successful as they claim.

------
jmartens
I've noticed that even in San Francisco's Mission District, I can almost never
get a Postmate to accept my order. Could be high demand, or could be no
supply. My guess is the latter.

~~~
snowmaker
I've noticed the same. It's been striking in the last few months. There used
to be plenty of availability, but recently, the service is almost unusable due
to lack of supply. It makes me wonder if things are much more seriously wrong
than they are admitting.

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sageabilly
This seems incredibly short-sighted because the best way to build up a
business in a market is to have market experts. What does someone in San
Francisco know about the needs of people in DC who might use Postmates
delivery? How do you get a business to pick Postmates over any of half a dozen
competitors if you don't have boots on the ground building relationships?

------
vthallam
I have used postmates before, but don't understand how Uber Eats won't make
them go out of the business. They are adding ton of new places which were not
available on Seamless(NYC) and the delivery is going to be faster on UberEats.

------
27182818284
I've checked in on Postmates and Instacart both over the course of more than a
year and both were unavailable in my area then and now. At the same time, Lyft
and Uber have been here a while and now local businesses have been started to
fill the Postmates/Instacart void. It feels like a missed opportunity for
growth.

~~~
ghaff
It may be difficult to compare directly. Instacart isn't available for me.
(It's available closer in to the nearest major urban center but I live too far
out.) Uber is ostensibly available but the couple of times I've looked out of
curiosity it's not clear that there are enough drivers to actually be
generally useful.

~~~
27182818284
I think the rideshares plus the local companies moving in to the space make
for an OK vehicle of comparison.

Yes, there was a time when there were so few drivers for Uber and Lyft here
that it was hit or miss. That went away though. At the same time, the little
local versions of Instacart and Postmates started showing up. Missed
opportunity for growth. Uber and Lyft got it done

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jv22222
I hate to say it but I've found the overall experience (and cost) doesn't
compete with DoorDash, who seem to be executing extremely well on both the app
and the business front.

~~~
aphextron
DoorDash actually pays a set hourly wage, trains their employees, and focuses
on customer service. What a mind blowing concept.

~~~
pbarnes_1
Hmmm... is this new? That's not what I heard from people who do DoorDash and
Postmates.

It used to be that you used Postmates if you wanted your food hot, and
DoorDash for other deliveries.

I've literally never had a DoorDash order arrive not stone cold. Maybe they've
changed?

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mathattack
Wow - that's not long after their last fundraise. 15 people is not a lot, but
it's a signal of a big pivot.

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EternalData
I've never been sure that Postmates has a model that can scale
internationally. FWIW, China basically runs Postmates equivalents all across
the board -- with low labour costs, you can get things delivered for pennies
on the dollar. It feels like a regional play at best in my opinion...

~~~
ghaff
That's the general issue with so many of these personal service gig things in
developed countries. There's a market for them. But a _lot_ of people don't
really have the spare cash to have a $10/hr. or so worker to do jobs for them
that they _could_ do but just don't feel like doing.

Full-time drivers and house-related help are very common in some countries. In
the US, you're pretty wealthy at that point.

------
the_economist
I'm surprised by the complaints about Postmates in this thread. I use it 1-2
times/week for various pickup tasks (food, items from walgreens, items from
safeway), and I'm always pleased with the service / speed.

~~~
pbarnes_1
Depends where you live.

------
hemantv
This is just part of growing pain trying to improve the efficiency. Yes it
sucks for people who lost the job but I am sure Postmates treated them really
well.

As a business, they have the strong brand among restaurants and customers
(maybe except few HN'ers). They can certainly use some help with couriers.

They will be fine all the people whining has the same reasons when Amazon got
started (this will never work, this is a bad business model, shipping cost
alone is bad etc). I have been hearing these arguments for past 20 years about
Amazon they have grown to be the powerhouse. It always seems impossible until
its done. I am pretty sure these same people still think Amazon is on verge of
collapsing next day.

There are people who point fingers and whine. If you listen to them they make
very good convincing arguments but in the end, accomplish nothing and then
there are people who go make things happen, who make impossible possible.

I applaud Postmates efforts to help little guys compete with big guys. We are
better off not living in Amazon monopoly.

~~~
devopsproject
you sound like a company shill

~~~
hemantv
really so every one defending Elon Musk is working for Tesla or SpaceX?

~~~
devopsproject
i just checked your github. you have postmates listed in your profile. nice
try though

------
baccredited
As an investor, I wouldn't touch any of these companies: Postmates, Seamless,
DoorDash, ChowNow. What a terrible category.

UberEATS and Amazon PrimeNow will probably survive, but their parent companies
can afford to run them at a loss pretty much forever.

~~~
notyourday
I'm curious why would you put Seamless into the same category as the rest?

~~~
baccredited
They've raised $51 million. Imagine how big they would need to get to give
their investors any return at all.

~~~
notyourday
But their business model is technology only - those that _work_ for the local
establishment do the deliveries?

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bkeroack
I can't prove it but I suspect Postmates was hacked last week. One morning I
got a login alert from Postmates (I haven't used them in at least a year,
don't even have the app installed anymore). I promptly reset the password. An
hour or two later I got a fraudulent charge on the credit card that was on
file with them. I've had this card for years and am extremely careful with it
(always use chip, etc). I suspect they are storing full numbers without the
requisite security controls (a big PCI violation).

~~~
bastian
We're using Stripe for all payment processing and we're obviously not storing
your CC number.

~~~
exogeny
I find it immensely telling that this point is the only one you've addressed
so far in this thread. Nothing about how your CS sucks, the flawed business
model, or the sexist comments..

~~~
pmthrowaway
He's probably too busy screaming at Customer Service over some perceived
problem with his dinner tonight.

I am not even kidding about that comment. I have heard him scream and seen him
physically throw things around the office over the tiniest things and threaten
to fire the entire Customer Service team because a VC's order was late.

