Hacker News Reader

Comment by developer2 | Hacker News Reader

So Amazon Fresh has an optional tip. Instacart is adding a default 10% fee that goes into their pockets - it is not a tip. And they do not pass the 10% fee on to the employees in wages - it stays as part of their bottom line. Higher-ups realized just how much the tips are worth, are now stealing them by default behind a purposely confusing interface that their customers cannot understand, and pocketing the difference while affecting their employees' income.

This is 100% nefarious. There is no reason to have both an optional service fee and a separate optional tip. It's one or the other; combining both options makes absolutely no sense.

View on HN

I understand it's not the most conventional way of doing it, but why it's someone "higher up" and that's a bad thing? Instacart is not Mother Teresa, its sole purpose is to make profit and I want it to do that as much as it possibly can. I want this service to exist so I don't have to feel like a chimp in a grocery store with a basket going from aisle to aisle in fact why do I even need to justify why I want it to exist? I am willing to give them my money for the services they provide, period.

Again if someone thinks what they're doing is illegal or should be illegal one day then either take them to court or change the laws!

> I want this service to exist so I don't have to feel like a chimp in a grocery store with a basket going from aisle to aisle in fact why do I even need to justify why I want it to exist?

You're asking why you need to justify paying someone else to "feel like a chimp" so that you don't have to?

They may not feel like a chimp and also I like to be the kind of chimp best referred to as a code monkey, thank you! And what makes you think grocery stores with all their deceitful marketing will exist as we know them today? If everyone is a worker for Instacart shopping on behalf of someone else the stores will have to adapt and there won't be any point of distracting those workers with random product placements forcing them to move aisle to aisle since they're only allowed to buy whatever they're asked to buy and nothing more. It seems very shortsighted to think pain can only be transferred and not eliminated altogether with technology if that's what you're implying.

Grocery stores will be redesigned to accommodate personal shoppers just like cities were redesigned around the Segway. If the Segway or personal shoppers were free you might have an argument.

I think Amazon fulfillment centers maybe a better example.

Do you believe it is possible for something to be wrong yet legal?

Because it is deceptive to label something a 'service fee' which most people would assume to be charges for services rendered by the feet on the ground.

In other words, it is, by way of social conventions, implied that the money goes to the 'chimp in a grocery store' doing work on your behalf. There is nothing wrong with them adding fees all day every day as long as it is made clear to the customer that said fees are not actually benefiting the actual service provider and consumers opt-in to this transaction. The shady part here is where consumers THINK the services fees goes to the service provider when actually it goes to the broker.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com