Instacart: We're Sorry

https://www.instacart.com/blog/2013/04/02/we-are-sorry

by apoorvamehta • 13 years ago

159 117 13 years ago

m2mapps• 13 years ago

Kudos for the apology, unfortunately it took for this to go to the top of Hacker News before an apology arrived.

ajju• 13 years ago

Less than 4 hours after finding out about the issue here's a complete explanation of what happened, a public apology, and an appropriate fix. This is good customer service.

chollida1• 13 years ago

> Less than 4 hours after finding out about the issue here's a complete explanation of what happened, a public apology, and an appropriate fix.

Or it indicates that they knew about it before hand and were working on it. Either way, I agree with you. Good customer service.

angryasian2• 13 years ago

good customer service would have been to notify their customers every time they are going to charge against their card vs having to have the customer monitor explicitly what charges instacart is making.

dylanhassinger• 13 years ago

yes. nicely handled

Diamons• 13 years ago

Wait, so you knew about the 71 emails not being sent and did nothing? Also, I find it hard to believe it was only 71 emails because of the number of complaints I saw in the original thread, unless the majority of your customers are HN members.

ryderm• 13 years ago

They probably just found out.

3am2• 13 years ago

I was in QA at a retail company. It's hard to do targeted notifications and updates. You miss one condition in a WHERE clause when defining your target and something like this happens. It is also fairly easy to figure out the size of the group you missed from a single example.

Uchikoma2• 13 years ago

But it seems they had no problem with the WHERE clause when making those pay.

mmmmax• 13 years ago

What happened is that we made a mistake querying for the email addresses, causing us to miss a group of the first people to sign up for Instacart Express. This skewed heavily towards HN members. We knew a few people had been missed (because they emailed us after seeing the charge, and said they didn't get an email) but not why or how many.

random42• 13 years ago

I am checking out instacart, and a popup is being thrown on my face to register/login without the option to dismiss it! Seriously, WTH? This is beyond bad design, when your design is to extort the emails registration out the users. Not impressed.

speedyrev• 13 years ago

Somebody at Instacart read Hacker News?

jacalata2• 13 years ago

and responded in the thread, yes.

magicseth3• 13 years ago

This fix seems a little lackluster. It would seem more upstanding to honor the agreement they had made, and collected money for: i.e. let the 71 users continue the delivery-fee-free plan (with no minimum) for the end of the term.

tptacek14• 13 years ago

It does not seem reasonable for a tiny startup to accept an unbounded downside risk just for PR purposes. The refund they're offering is fine.

magicseth3• 13 years ago

I don't think it's just for PR purposes, but I understand your concern of an unbounded downside. Even a few free deliveries would be something.

They were caught having made a mistake: unilaterally changing the terms of a renewing contract without written notice.

The bare minimum they can do is to offer a refund.

Mistake or no mistake, if their goal is to "always try to go the extra mile," they are failing to do so here.

fnordfnordfnord5• 13 years ago

No, Instacart made an agreement which they need to honor more faithfully. If the 71 customers had decided to change the terms of a business agreement similarly, their accounts would probably be closed and referred for debt-collection.

The fact that Instacart is a tiny startup has no bearing on whether they should honor their agreements.

anoopelias• 13 years ago

What about one of them 71, whose credit card got overcharged because they weren't expecting another $99 on their statement?

ryanglasgow• 13 years ago

They're a startup that's experimenting with different pricing models. If a plan they introduce isn't financially viable, it's unrealistic to expect them to continue to honor it otherwise they would drive themselves out of business b/c of failed experiments.

fnordfnordfnord5• 13 years ago

At the least, the 71 need to be refunded the delivery charges, without question or hesitation.

parfe• 13 years ago

First, we’re going to refund all delivery fees paid by the people affected by this bug.

The post specifically says it.

aeon10• 13 years ago

I think this is a really good response from Instacart. Heroku could learn a few things from them I suppose. But again, good response from the Instacart team. well done.

Systemic33• 13 years ago

Relevant: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9u0EL_u4nvw

guiseppecalzone2• 13 years ago

Instacart is one of my favorite services. I use them every week. I want them to build a sustainable business and last forever, since I never want to visit a grocery store again.

When I saw this on HN this morning, my reaction was that it's easy for things to get missed in the chaos of startups.

Remember, these guys run a startup. They're juggling a million things, including a company that's growing fast due to high demand. These things will happen. It's how the team deals with issues like this that will make them a great company.

jacalata2• 13 years ago

"They're a startup, things will go wrong" is a valid argument to use for anyone not charging things to my credit card.

guiseppecalzone2• 13 years ago

Sprint makes credit card errors all the time. It's business as usual.

Instacart makes a mistake and writes an apology on its company blog. I wish I lived in a world where there were more Instacarts and less Sprints.

People are fallible. Companies are fallible. The real indication of character is what they do to fix things when they go wrong.

r00fus• 13 years ago

The 71 people affected were early adopters and had been enjoying Instacart's service for quite some time. I live just outside the area, and with 3 kids and both me and my spouse working, it'd be a godsend to get this service (right now we subsist on the occasional foray to TJs, Sprouts + Safeway deliveries when my parents are around to receive them). Safeway is costly and limited in choice. Our supermarket weekly spend is well over $100, so a single $99 charge might go unnoticed for a while.

If I had the service I'm not sure I'd be ready to quit over a $99 unless my inquiries met with bad customer service.

socalnate1• 13 years ago

Agree completely. For a community of people at Hacker News who should "get" startups and business mistakes, I am surprised at how unforgiving everyone is.

magikbum• 13 years ago

> If there is anything else we can do - please let us know: happycustomers@instacart.com or (910) 817-2278

I wonder what it is like to be really upset and then email an alias called happycustomers when you really aren't happy.

trhtrsh• 13 years ago

It's incredibly annoying and offputting, much like when Tech/Billing Support at my phone company plays hold "music" filled with cross-sell/up-sell advertising.

rburhum• 13 years ago

My gf started using Instacart and I completely fell in love with it. A few days ago, my gf started complaining about some sort of $3 extra charges she noticed. Being a startup founder myself, I reminded her that they are trying to build a sustainable business model because I absolutely hate having to deal with parking after going out for groceries. The word "parking" made her switch her mind immediately. The truth is that changing pricing structure is hard for any company, but I sincerely applaud what these guys are doing and don't mind at all if I have to order more to make it a sustainable business. I don't want another thing I liked destroyed by the silly Kozmo.com business model.

tptacek14• 13 years ago

Yes, this: add to the fact that upward price moves will make your users revolt irrationally (that is, they'll revolt without considering whether any substitutable good or service would be less expensive), but that you have to execute the change perfectly to avoid transforming your customers into an angry aggrieved mob. Bumping up prices is the Triple Axel of startup moves.

tvladeck• 13 years ago

considering that this is coming as a response to the fact that they charged people without notice, it's not enough to just refund the money (as that option should have been available in the first place when they changed their terms). making up for something like this requires that you go above and beyond just "catching up" to where you should have been before. imo, since this is coming after the fact, they should refund the money and honor the terms of the arrangement their customers thought they were getting into.

tjbiddle• 13 years ago

Well done. Always good to see a startup take real responsibility for their actions.

kaoD3• 13 years ago

Never, never, never, NEVER, NEVER, NEVER EVER charge people when they didn't explicitly agree to the charge.

  NEVER.

This is a huge NO-NO for any business. Big red flag. Stay away from Instacart.

tomash2• 13 years ago

They'll probably learn it themselves after a first wave of chargebacks.

tomash2• 13 years ago

Offering a refund after asking? Awww, how cute. But since a customer needs to explicitly ask for returning money that she hasn't authorized taking, why not just start a chargeback process at the credit card issuer?

Seriously, automatic refund should be their first and default action AND THEN offering some kind of compensation for the inconvenience.

jlgaddis2• 13 years ago

Agreed. If I were one of the 71, I wouldn't bother requesting a refund. I'd just call up the number of the back of my card and say "I didn't authorize this charge."

timv• 13 years ago

Why only the 71?

71 people got no notification that the charges were coming. That's terrible.

As far as I can tell, everyone else got an email saying "we're about to charge you $99 unless you ask us not to". Not responding != authorizing

If I had any charges from Instacart relating to this mess I'd be claiming them back (but I might be nice and give IC the chance to refund it first)

georgemcbay2• 13 years ago

If any company I did business with changed the terms of the business such that I would be charged when I previously wasn't, and then they automatically charged me, I'd be absolutely livid, regardless of whether they sent me an email (that may or may not be sitting in the bottom of a spam folder) or not.

I don't think they should be on the hook for providing people with free service that costs them money if they need to change the terms, but it should be 100% manual opt-in (with people who don't opt-in having their service canceled) if it involves a price increase or wholly new charges where there were previously none.

Based on the fact that their apology seems centered around the email bug and not the initial premise of adding charges without users having to opt-in to them, I have to disagree with some of the comments here that this proves they "get" customer service.

chc3• 13 years ago

I see it the opposite way — I do not want my service arbitrarily canceled just because I didn't see an email sitting in the bottom of my spam folder. Unless we're talking about some exceptionally expensive service here, any plausible price increase is unlikely to be more upsetting than total loss of a service that I apparently considered worthwhile in the first place.

IMO, the best thing is to grandfather people in. The next best thing is to just let people know what's going on, move them over and offer a refund if they are dissatisfied with the new plan.

georgemcbay2• 13 years ago

We'll have to agree to disagree. I will always fall on the side of companies not charging me unless I explicitly agree to the terms. Partly because I'm just wired that way and partly because I'm sick of companies trying to get in on that "gym membership"/AOL billing where they have a huge percentage of customers that don't even use the service but have just forgot they are being charged.

I've had it up to here with companies pulling shit like making joining one click on the web and cancelling a multi-hour phone call. So yeah I may be a bit sensitive and reactionary about billing matters but I believe it is justified given how poorly most companies handle these issues these days.

kaoD3• 13 years ago

One does not simply change the conditions of a contract.

richardjordan• 13 years ago

I think you're dead on. The apology is interesting for what they don't apologize for and one could fairly presume they'd do again: raise prices/fees as they feel like it and on an opt-out rather than opt-on basis.

No company deserves to have my credit card details tied to an account which may at some point arbitrarily charge me $$ which they notify my of via email on an opt-out basis. There are countless reasons why I might miss such an email not the least if which is simply email overload.

This is a terrible practice for your customers.

saddino• 13 years ago

Anyone who remembers Kozmo should know that the original pricing model is doomed to failure. Grocery delivery doesn't scale well, and 14 years of technological advancement doesn't change this fact.

rocky1138• 13 years ago

Off-topic, but if you're in the Kitchener/Waterloo Canada area and are looking for an Instacart type service, try http://www.grocerygateway.com. I've been using it for months and am quite happy with it.

ruswick• 13 years ago

This is an excellent piece of strategic PR inasmuch as it refocuses the debate on the email issue (as is evidenced by the below posts), and obfuscates the real issue, which is that Instacart changed the terms of service and proceeded to charge people, something to which they never consented. Whether or not Instacart bothered to inform their customers about this fact is irrelevant; they shouldn't have done it.

From a customer standpoint, their actions are appalling and the apology is obviously unfulfilling and fails to recognize or rectify the true issue. But, from a business standpoint, this post is very strategic and effective at mitigating public outrage. Although I'm still upset by the choices that Instacart made, I can't help but appreciate the effectiveness of their response tactics.

SilentStump• 13 years ago

For some reason this strikes me as the rule "it's better to ask for forgiveness than ask for permission." If I'm being pessimistic, I would assume they decided to automatically opt users in, charge them, and create this hubbub and just apologize about it later. However, the good person in me decides to believe that they are sincerely apologizing for a bug.

smegel• 13 years ago

I don't think that rule applies to credit card thieves.

res0nat0r2• 13 years ago

Anyone commenting here actually know if there ever was a contract with the early adopters? It could have said for all anyone knows that "this is a beta service, it most likely won't remain free forever and we reserve the right to change the pricing model at any time."

kevingibbon• 13 years ago

Good apology but I don't think its enough. Grandfathering the 71 people wouldn't cost Instacart more than 10-20k.

There will still be a lot of people with a bad taste in their mouth. Public perception to a service like this is key.

thejosh• 13 years ago

Do you want to be charged $99? YES / NO

benatkin2• 13 years ago

As with Joyent and TextDrive's lifetime hosting, this company going out of business is a valid solution to what they claim is an unsustainable promise they made.

Reneging on their promises is not.

P.C. Hodgell - "That which can be destroyed by the truth should be."

In these cases I doubt that faithfully keeping the promises they made would destroy either company. They just feel they can get away with it, and so they break their promises to save some money.

Uchikoma2• 13 years ago

The also on HN Instacart post by a user says:

"Did not receive an email about this change of policy. Not only did I not receive this email, neither did my wife nor a colleague, who also is a Instacart Express user."

+ in this thread "A few days ago, my gf started complaining about some sort of $3 extra charges she noticed."

This makes the 71 user remark looking suspicious, except the 71 were based on some geographical selection error.

benatkin2• 13 years ago

That does sound suspicious. I thought there were 71 total who bought the deal, but it does say "71 of these emails" which seems to indicate that it's a proper subset of the total emails that were to go out. It seems like an unusual coincidence.

Another possibility would be that the selection was based on when the orders were placed, and that the three of them all bought it at the same time because they decided together to buy it.

dmak• 13 years ago

The right thing to do would be to grandfather those users and move them off the plan by trying to upsell them in someway. This is an okay solution, but I'm still tainted by the thought of arbitrarily changing terms instead of grandfathering everyone.

psionski• 13 years ago

Why don't they let people see their website? When you go to their homepage an ugly login box pops up in front of the content and you can't close it without removing its DOM element... Even if you do, the site becomes non-functional, you can browse the menus but they don't work... I'm not giving access to my Facebook account to someone I don't know and I'm definitely not registering just to check them out.

ritonlajoie• 13 years ago

IMHO Compagnies should not change their TOS just by sending an email. On logging in the site, users should be updated, on the screen, with the new TOS and should accept them.

That's what Apple does on the iOS devices and I find it acceptable.

beshrkayali• 13 years ago

I can see that there are many different opinions about this, but I think this raises an important question to startups that start free and plan to convert into a paid service on how it should be done the right way, without upsetting customers.

IMO, I think it depends on when they made these plans. If this was their path from the beginning and the service was free for a specific reason, I think it should be clearly pointed out on the website that the service is free for only a specific period of time.

If the plan of charging customers was added later on (after customers stared using the service), the solution would be to: definitely don't charge customers without them opting in, even if you send them an email, even if you wait for some days after to start charging. Changing customers to a temporary "trial" phase would be a good idea I think. This way, customers will know that they need to pay when they use the service the next time.

awayand• 13 years ago

"we charged your credit card without your permission so we will keep the money and continue charging you unless you tell us to stop" - lol WUT?

Instacart: We're Sorry

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