Instacart: We're Sorry

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.<p>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.<p>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.

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.<p>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.

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.

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.<p>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.<p>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.

Never, never, never, NEVER, NEVER, NEVER EVER charge people when they didn't explicitly agree to the charge.<p><pre><code> NEVER. </code></pre> This is a huge NO-NO for any business. Big red flag. Stay away from Instacart.

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.

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.

&#62; If there is anything else we can do - please let us know: happycustomers@instacart.com or (910) 817-2278<p>I wonder what it is like to be really upset and then email an alias called happycustomers when you really aren't happy.

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

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

The also on HN Instacart post by a user says:<p>"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."<p>+ in this thread "A few days ago, my gf started complaining about some sort of $3 extra charges she noticed."<p>This makes the 71 user remark looking suspicious, except the 71 were based on some geographical selection error.

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.

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.<p>Reneging on their promises is not.<p>P.C. Hodgell - "That which can be destroyed by the truth should be."<p>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.

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.

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.<p>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.<p>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.

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

Good apology but I don't think its enough. Grandfathering the 71 people wouldn't cost Instacart more than 10-20k.<p>There will still be a lot of people with a bad taste in their mouth. Public perception to a service like this is key.

considering that this is coming as a <i>response</i> to the fact that they charged people without notice, it's not enough to <i>just</i> 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 <i>and</i> honor the terms of the arrangement their customers thought they were getting into.

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.

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

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.

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

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

My gf started using Instacart and <i>I</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 <i>hate</i> 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.

"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?

Relevant: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9u0EL_u4nvw" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9u0EL_u4nvw</a>

Somebody at Instacart read Hacker News?