Right, this is text-message-only Zirtual, at $100/hour. They also include the standard Magic physical services as well, but I don't see why you'd pay for physical at $100/hour plus the Magic surcharge, when you can use Magic alone or Zirtual alone.
I really am not a fan of the hyperminimalistic "we can do anything trust us!" landing pages that every text-for-personal-assistant seems to think is brilliant marketing copy.
There are examples of Magic+ requests, but no real-world examples of outcomes and whether the request was filled successfully to the customer's satisfaction.
Relatedly, the $100/hr is suspicious because it's impossible to audit the time spent by the assistant. (Contrast with flat fees stated upfront from the normal service.)
Given unlimited funds, anything possible is easy for the guy writing the cheque.
If I was willing to foot the bill, you could probably do any of the example magics listed (assuming you had my details/logins to email/calendar) in an hour or two.
Yeah, pretty hyperbolic. There are a lot of cases where they will have to say no or "sorry, we'll have to set that up for another time". Some requests are simply not always possible.
To pick one of their examples:
"I need to rent out the Exploratorium this weekend."
What if someone already rented it out? Or it's under construction? Or there's a special event? Or *?
I wonder whether one could use Magic to hire a prostitute in Nevada, given that they're a California company presumably incorporated in Delaware.
Which is a more localized version of the question I really want to ask: if Magic ever expands outside of the US, could I use it to order Cuban cigars to be shipped to Canada from Cuba? The US would never have to import them—so no illegal/trade-sanctioned act is occurring—but an American company is still profiting from the exchange.
Thanks for the feedback. Magic has been in an interesting position as a startup ever since our website went viral in Feb. 2015. Starting then, we've had more demand than supply for our product every single day. That's why we never iterated our original landing page -- marketing was never our biggest problem, in fact it was our smallest. That said, I completely agree with you, that there would be much more powerful ways of communicating that you can trust us. Most of our signups come from word of mouth from real users at this point though, so it's not as much of an issue.
For our $100/hr Magic+ product, we display detailed reports daily to users that show exactly how time was used down to the second. I agree that communicating this correctly is key. If you're interested in trying it, I'd love to hear your feedback on how we display this information.
Even if the time is broken down, what's the incentive to be as efficient/cost-effective as possible? I get that cost is not the primary driver here but surely it is not open-ended.
Also, invariably with a complex task, there's going to be a lot of dead time spent waiting while coordinating.
Maybe in that scenario, "time spent waiting", they don't charge? Seems like they wouldn't want to waste those cycles, but I see your point with regards to incentivisation.
Isn't that effectively a problem for any hourly based service? What's the incentive for a lawyer, accountant, developer, anyone to be as cost effective as possible? Surely the answer to that (happy customers, repeat business, referrals) would apply here as well. Even if hypothetically it wasn't as efficient as possible yet they still managed to deliver quality results, whats the problem? You're paying for results not effort, no?
If we aren't efficient and cost-effective, we won't be able to retain users and our product experience will be severely harmed. Whether we are charging hourly or not, it must be the case that the value we offer the user is greater than or equal to the cost that the user is paying.
Needless to say, at Magic we hold ourselves to a very high standard when it comes to product quality and value. And, we use the product ourselves and we pay hourly.
It's probably not that difficult to actually facilitate meeting Tina Fey. There are agencies that handle celebrity appearances, and many celebrities will do appearances for a fee.
It's expensive, but not particularly outlandishly difficult.
How is this that different that Google Now? Except there are actually people (at least some of the time) at the other end, rather than massive amounts of logged data and code?
...because you are paying them? Quite a bit? If you are paying $100/hr for something, it is probably pretty important. I really don't see the comparison to Google Now at all.
Thanks for the feedback. You're right, you bring up a good point that isn't explained as much on the website as it could be. We actually track time down to the second and display really detailed reports to users every day about how the time was utilized. Quite often a simple request can end up being $3-$4.
I know why detailed reporting is important, I just have to assume that anyone paying for this is not price sensitive.
Transparency and trust, one would imagine, are the core pieces of the business maybe even in front of task execution so it makes sense, but still, if I bought a 1200 ipad via SMS because I was too lazy to drive to walmart I probably don't need the reciept.
Is there a way to set a maximum price or time you're willing to pay for each request? My biggest hesitation about using something like this would be that it would end up costing way more than I anticipated - something I expect to take 30 minutes could take 4 hours cost $400 instead of $50.
> Q: What about the purchases that I make through Magic+?
> There is no markup on the purchases you make through Magic+. We find you the best deals that we can on every purchase, and we negotiate strongly with vendors. Often you will save more money using Magic+ than if you had done things yourself.
Granted, but they're also making $100/hr to fulfill your request. Sure, people are greedy, but I feel like you could staff some pretty honest, capable, and reliable dispatchers at $33/hr (using a standard 3x billing vs salary multiplier).
I'm a fairly highly-paid web dev and I don't have a curated personal website. Shocking, I know. I'd just rather spend time on other things, like paying work
Your personal site is irrelevant. A business that is public facing should have a good website, and theirs simply is not designed well. If you can spend $x building this service you can spend .01x on your website.
I'm genuinely curious: what's wrong with their website?
There's a logo, one-sentence explanation (with further details beneath), examples, FAQ, and footer. So the content is all there. Furthermore, it's minimal-looking, and minimally coded, and all on a single responsive page.
Isn't this the ideal for a modern website that's also expected to work on mobile devices?
Good morning,
I read all your email while you slept. Your wife is very pretty. I wrote a message to your son telling him you loved him. He responded "you're not my real dad". I also hired that Visual Basic expert who emailed you yesterday. Don't worry, I already charged your AMEX $230 for the trouble.
This would be a real risk if you hired an ordinary personal assistant. This is actually exactly the sort of challenge that traditional assistants pose and that Magic+ is designed to fix.
Magic+ is actually not just one person, but it's a software-driven service with a highly trained team of professional assistants that are held to a very high bar. They are managed, supervised, and trained by us so that you don't have to worry about it.
And, on top of that, every task and request is managed from beginning to end using custom software that is designed specifically to monitor the execution strategy and enhance both the quality and the reliability of the output. It's difficult for me to say more right now about how this works without disclosing IP that we cannot disclose at this time, but I hope to be able to say more about how this works in the future.
A good way to think about Magic+ is that it's a natural-language command-line interface for complex tasks that require some human interaction. A component of how we handle your email is more like a ~/.procmailrc file that can pipe things to a highly-supervised human assistant than it is like having a random person somewhere in the US logged in to your Gmail. You tell us how you need things done, using natural language, and it gets done, assuming it's possible.
Again, I recognize that this explanation is not as detailed as it could be, but I hope that it helps. I will think about how we can explain this better before we are able to disclose the inner-workings of our software.
I have a real assistant. I've known her for years and trust her. I don't know who you guys are hiring, who will see my info, whether your internal systems are secure, etc. I've used magic before and liked it but clearly there is a signicant loss of privacy cost that is paid in addition to the hourly rate.
Have you thought about having a separate privacy policy for your Magic+ customers? Specifically regarding the potential for you to sell data to "Other companies whose products or services may be of interest to you" which is a pretty broad spectrum.
I do understand how the software layer plus having multiple assistants working on a single person makes it "safer" than the SPOF of a traditional assistant (and I'm sure you've already thought of ways to have the software handle all PII while the assistants just support with the bits that require manual labor)
However, I feel like the killer feature of this kind of product should be Trust. That's worth paying for.
That plus the minimalist website copy and secrecy around operations makes it seem a bit niche for the startup crowd. And that sucks, because I want the AI assistant winner to be a newcomer, and not the usual suspects :)
Many of our users give us access to various aspects of their personal and work lives in order to gain the benefit of efficiency and saved time. We also set up users who don't want to share their primary email with email addresses at our domain.
Yea, I gave Magic access to setup recurring donations to two charities I support.
Unfortunately they closed my account and stopped the donations. They provided no information on when the last donations went out so I could resume them.
I really loved the $3,750 helicopter ride to the airport, like your average joe has that much money to blow so they don't have to sit in traffic. I guess I'm just not in their target demographic?
There's also business use cases to think of. I've often had to spend what on a personal level would be an obsene amount of money but in a work context was justified. Most common examples for me have been very long taxi journeys, last minute and therefore way overpriced flights, and same day international shipments. I've never needed a helicopter, but for example if there had been some screw-up that meant I badly needed to get an unreleased product to a press event in the next few hours then sure I'd have spent a few thousand on a helicopter rather than waste the hundred thousand spent on the event. (Side note: sounds like a "should've been better prepared" situation, but I've seen this happen with so many companies in the tech industry. Normally solvable by expensive taxis or couriers rather than helicopters, though.)
Looks like the reception isn't doing too well. I remember when Magic launched here on HN and it BLEW up. I was one of the people who tried it out. I live in NYC and actually had a poor experience.
The first two times, I said "hey I want a sandwich with [x]" and I got it but it took a lot longer than if I just clicked the necessary buttons on Seamless. Then I kept getting random calls from time to time from pizza delivery men saying they were downstairs.
They were very apologetic and nice about it, but really it just wasn't worth it for me. The CTO (I think) reached out to me some months later asking why I stopped and well it's the same answer: very little utility for someone like myself. If I were rich, hey sure why not boss someone around for random things (though I don't know why I wouldn't just hire someone I can trust). However, if you're middle income or even a little higher, what's the point really? Everything else is basically on-demand in this new uber-fied world.
> If I were rich, hey sure why not boss someone around for random things (though I don't know why I wouldn't just hire someone I can trust). However, if you're middle income or even a little higher, what's the point really? Everything else is basically on-demand in this new uber-fied world.
Judging by the price and the copy in the page, I wouldn't be surprised if it's actually targeted at rich people.
Yes - plus appears to be targeted at rich people ("I need to have 6 convertibles by tomorrow"). But remove that trailing `/plus` at the end of the URL and you have their base product Magic, which isn't.
I'm really sorry that your initial experience with Magic last year wasn't ideal. We have come a long way since those initial days. Believe it or not, we actually did not plan that original launch -- rather, we released the website and number to a few people and it went viral practically overnight. We set up a waitlist as quickly as we could, but there definitely were some people in the beginning who did not have a good user experience. I hope that if you asked for a refund back then because you were dissatisfied, that you got one. If you didn't, please feel free to text in now and claim it.
Some of the themes you're bringing up here actually point to why we created Magic+ in the first place. Magic+ was developed as a response to the needs of the most active and demanding users of our standard Magic service. In particular, a common demand was to hold a very high bar for quality and seamlessness of experience.
Right now, some of these user-requested experiences are more expensive to deliver than the original Magic pricing model accounted for. Our plan is to offer Magic+ at this price now, because there is good demand for it at this price, and drop the price over time to reach a larger and larger market. $100 dollars an hour is a lot, but our most active users tell us that for this level of elite service, it's a bargain.
I just noticed something strange in the screenshot. It seems to imply that Magic will work over iMessage. As far as I know, there is no publicly available API for iMessage so I'd be curious to know how this works.
Setting up a Mac to programmatically send iMessages is trivial. I have a custom solution running that receives data over HTTPS and runs an AppleScript to send the specified text to the desired number or address via the Messages app using an iCloud account not tied to any mobile phone number.
Hey it's no worries -- just sharing my experience and conclusion upon the product. Poor experiences aside, the product isn't for me because I think it's equally as easy to just use the specialized service (e.g., food delivery website for food delivery). Nevertheless, I can see a use-case for the wealthy and hope the best for you guys.
Yes, you can use the service from other countries. Magic+ is actually really convenient when you're traveling. We have phone numbers that work internationally.
I had a very similar outcome with Magic after trying really hard to rely on it. One of their suggested usages is to order flowers for someone, so I tried that on two different occasions.
The first time around, I asked for flowers, and got a picture of some flowers that they could send to my recipient. I didn't like the flowers in the picture, and so they picked another set of flowers per some feedback from me. The flowers arrived, and the recipient was touched, but my lingering feeling was that I would have spent the same amount of time ordering online, and it would have been easier to find the right kind of flowers if I had done so.
The second time I tried to order flowers was a complete disaster. I was ordering them for a special occasion, and Magic had told me they would be delivered within an acceptable time frame. However, the flowers never showed up. I was not notified that they had not showed up - instead I learned that they had not showed up after one of the more embarasing birthday calls of my life. Magic was very nice about it, refunded me and delivered the flowers late for free. The error may not even have been their fault. However, the extra layer of abstraction between me and the flower delivery person in this case seemed to make the whole situation worse.
I use a lot of different do-things-for-you services these days. In theory Magic is a service I should be totally hooked on, but these bad experiences killed it for me. What's the point of a service that does everything for you if it makes things more complicated or harder to get done?
Thanks for bringing this up. I've addressed similar comments elsewhere in this thread so I'll try not to repeat myself much.
- We really feel terrible that some early Magic users had a less-than-magical experience after our initial, spontaneous launch. I'm really sorry about that. I'm glad that you got your refund. If you're interested, reach out to us and we can probably track down exactly what happened and what broke down in the chain of operations.
- This is part of the reason that we created Magic+. We wanted to be able to hold a very high bar for top-tier service and guarantee that you would have it at all times, no matter what.
- We'd love for you to give Magic+ a try and compare it to your experiences with Magic. I'm highly confident that you will feel a major difference, however I understand if you don't feel inclined to do so after your past experience.
> - This is part of the reason that we created Magic+. We wanted to be able to hold a very high bar for top-tier service and guarantee that you would have it at all times, no matter what.
This is really not addressing the issue in my opinion, it would go a long way if you offered more details on what steps has been taken to improve the service, the process, the monitoring and the reliability of the service.
Saying "Well we know we dropped the ball so we are going to make it more expensive in hopes less people use it is really not an strategy that inspires confidence"
This doesn't sound right: You are suggesting to use your more expensive service when even your basic service wasn't working well for him. Why aren't you saying him to try the basic Magic service again, is it because it's still not "fixed"?
That's the problem with depending on companies like that. There's zero accountability, you can do absolutely NIL to hurt them, but if they fuck up, it can do big damage to your affairs.
I had a flower shop almost fail on the delivery - we agreed on the flowers, date and place, and then... they forgot. They simply forgot about the delivery. Luckily I called them in time and they managed to get their shit together and deliver the bouquet literally minutes before I was about to suffer a big embarrassment if the flowers were not there.
You don't even need to be that rich to have an assistant 24/7:
Personal Assistant™
Offers MasterCard® Black cardholders the convenience of a personal assistant, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Going beyond the service of a concierge, Personal Assistant is available to free up time for busy cardholders, with services such as:
Child care services (such as pick-up and drop-off at school).
Pet care.
Personal shopper (domestic and international).
Location and purchase of rare gifts.
The MasterCard® Black Personal Assistant service will answer virtually any request that money and ethics can buy.
Crap, this could have really saved me over the last month - what's the catch? Have you used something like this? I think my last card had it (calling it "Concierge") but my current bank doesn't mention it anywhere.
Typically cards with extra features either (at the low end) charge a monthly fee or (at the higher end) have minimum requirements such as a minimum net worth for the holder or a minimum monthly or annual spend through it. Lower end would normally be a small fee and fairly basic bonus features (travel insurance, gadget insurance, airport lounges) while I'd expect any half-decent concierge service to be aimed at attracting richer customers. The minimum worth/spend requirements basically mean the extra services offered are there to attract people who will give the card creators more % by spending more money, giving them enough profit to offer free services.
“Find someone to train me like Jason Bourne.”
“Get me a mobile dentist to my office ASAP.”
“I want to meet Tina Fey and Amy Poehler.”
“I need to rent out the Exploratorium this weekend.”
“I need 6 convertibles tomorrow for rent.”
“Organize my team for a town hall tomorrow.”
“My 1 pm ran over. Bump my meetings back 1 hour.”
“I’m out of the office today. Check my email and let me know if there’s anything urgent.”
They're going way over the top here to market it to busy douchebags. I thought about using it until I saw who they think I might be.
These are all real requests that our users have actually used Magic+ for. We obviously cant divulge their identities, or show photographs, etc. (since these are personal things), but it's important to convey how people really use the service. I'd love ideas on how we can communicate this point better. Part of what our users love about Magic+ is that you truly can do some pretty amazing things with it.
If there's a way to anonymize data (or even just flag requests as anonymous in content), it'd be nice to have a bit more of a randomly picked live feed.
I think some of the incredulity is that there's... an authenticity skepticism as to how much these represent average requests (and therefore responses). But like you said -- if you don't have a marketing problem, who cares what the HN peanut gallery says. ;)
These aren't supposed to be average requests, they are there to demonstrate how Magic+ can handle even really difficult tasks without easy solutions (order me a pizza).
As other people stated, if there isn't some kind of detail on the fulfillment then it's not demonstrating anything. Forgive my skepticism, but a chat log doesnt count for much in an age where CGI'ing uncompleted UIs on device screens in startup project videos is "acceptable".
So the choice is between exorbitant claims + no detail or some exorbitant claims + some average claims + no detail.
These aren't supposed to be average requests, they are there to demonstrate how Magic+ can handle even really difficult tasks without easy solutions (order me a pizza).
They wouldn't necessarily have to. I'm sure there are events they attend that a sufficiently wealthy person could get a ticket or invite to. Then it would just be a matter of introducing yourself.
If that conveys how people really use the service, then, to many people, it also conveys that the people who use the service are, on average, lazy rich douchebags. If that isn't what you want to portray about your brand, you might want to reconsider your examples.
It conveys that the users are rich, yes. What about it makes them lazy or douchebags? Assuming you're rich, is it a logical use of your time to, for instance, go through the process of tracking down and renting a bunch of cars for some event online? Or would it make more sense to pay someone else $100/hour (considerably less than the opportunity cost of doing it yourself) to do it for you?
Does wanting to meet a celebrity make you a lazy douchebag? Or is it the presumption that it might actually be possible? Renting a venue last minute? Perhaps they lazily left it until the last minute, but perhaps there's another explanation?
The Jason Bourne one is eccentric at least, but surely wanting to engage in that kind of extreme training is anything but lazy.
Most of those things would probably cost you a whole lot less if, unlike 80% of the examples, they weren't "extreme/extravagant request, NOW NOW NOW!".
I'm deeply skeptical of this. It would be worth $100/hr to hand off highly complex task like planning a wedding (from their copy), but it's impossible--there is way too much interaction and iteration necessary on tasks like that.
For things you can realistically text to have done, the task has be crystal clear, and basically atomic. If I've already done the work of making it crystal clear and atomic, then it's not worth $100/hr anymore, because it's just rote busy work at that point.
The number of interactions (over email) that I need to have with them to get even a simple request like a restaurant reservation done from Amex Platinum concierge has made me look around for alternatives.
FWIW, even Facebook's assistant 'M' is far better at handling tasks that Platinum concierge.
not sure what the amex platinum version is like, but I wasn't that impressed with the visa infinite version.
I asked them to go through the craigslist of another city and find a certain car for sale, then return a list sorted by mileage and price. They couldn't do that for whatever reason and just offered to give me the KBB value.
Took me 5+ minutes to navigate their phone menu, enter my card number and get to the service.
That's exactly the comparison I wanted to make as well. I thought of the original Magic service as "a Visa Black Card concierge-service automated and scaled enough to target the middle class"; this just returns it to the parent concept.
Presumably the people using Magic for that sort of thing were the upper-class "money left on the table" that's being picked up here. Most Magic requests, from what I take it, are more for the same lazy-person-making-100K things like to-your-door grocery delivery that other services provide.
I've used Visa Signature concierge a couple of times and have found it to be very 'meh'. The last time I called them they seemed to have limited the scope of what they'd do to making reservations and travel arrangements.
Visa Signature concierge is very meh in comparison to the amex platinum from my experience. (I've not used a centurion concierge, though reportedly it's the same service - I find it hard to believe that they're treated with the same service level considering the requirements and fees to be eligible for a centurion card, however)
The Amex concierge team has been able to find me items at local stores when I needed things ASAP that I was having trouble finding, and also managed to snag me a limited release item that was only available at the companies' location. (That was expensive, but still less than I saw them for being resold for online. I imagine a courier service could have been used if I was familiar with any in the area, since it was basically a 'drive there, pick up, drive to UPS store, ship' type request)
Text this number to get a regular human assistant for $50/hr: xxxxx
Using Magic-, you have a regular power - highly trained Magicians can ask regular people for help with minor tasks. Send our very normal people a text message 24/7, and you can get help doing your very magical things.
Out of my world, but I could see why the super-rich might like something like this. But I guess they have their own personal assistants for this stuff anyway.
To me, 1% is rich, but not "super rich". The 1% net worth cutoff in the US is somewhere in the single-digit millions. I'd say "super rich" starts around a 9 figure net worth (hundreds of millions). That's more like the 0.01%.
Why did you think it was satire? They're just trying to offer a personal assistant service over the air, nothing that beyond imagination. Likely costs less than actually employing someone.
You wanna know what's great about actually employing someone? They can actually devote their full attention to you. They'll also get the door for you; can Magic+ do that?
That person you hire can't split themselves into 10 people on demand, nor are they easily replaced if they go on vacation or get sick. This seems to me the PA equivalent of using AWS rather than owning and maintaining your own servers. There are some potential drawbacks, yes, but there are also a lot of potential upsides, depending on your needs.
I too thought it was satire. Two of their examples are "I need to buy $2500 worth of electronics tonight like it's nothing" and "get me a private helicopter tonight for $3500", all the while paying $100/hour for the privilege.
I understand some people spend money like that, but it seemed more likely that someone was making a joke about absurd wealth and the startup scene than a real business. If the Onion wrote an article about it, I wouldn't bat an eye.
Best of luck to the Magic+ team (honestly), but this product clearly isn't for people like me.
It's funny seeing half the commenters here saying "surely no one could afford that" and the other half saying "surely any middle class person could use this to splurge on a $200+ gift for a friend on occasion". It's as if people aren't aware of the wealth gap.
I'm currently living abroad and don't speak the language very well. So I hired a virtual assistant who speaks the language and English. He charges $7.50 USD an hour. I only pay him for time it takes to complete my tasks. I rarely even pay $100 for the whole month.
This is like people getting mad at Heroku or Github when some commodity host costs a tenth the price. Thankfully you have a choice and no-one is forcing you to use it.
I use Magic and they provide incredible service. They've been able to accomplish pretty much everything I've asked, including some requests that I thought were borderline outlandish, such as having food from a restaurant across the country sent to me via chilled overnight air mail for a friend's birthday as a big flashy surprise (friend's favorite restaurant).
If you value your time more than your money, then they're an excellent service that gives you a new suite of capabilities for making that tradeoff. They have been able to arrange everything I've asked them to do. What I like about them is that I can make a request without having any idea how to go about getting it fulfilled, and Magic will figure out how - they'll do the research and find a solution. They are familiar with service providers for all sorts of unusual tasks and will set them up for you: personal chefs, car servicing pickup, garbage pickup - for everything I've asked they've had an answer.
They are primarily limited however by their staff on the ground or lack thereof. Although they've been able to organize couriers in several cities to accomplish tasks, they have occasionally been unable to find couriers on the day of a request. Magic is a generalist service: they can do virtually anything, but not necessarily within the same hour you ask. They're worse than specialist services like Postmates at tasks like basic food pickup and delivery (mostly due to lower availability of couriers). Magic is most useful when your need is unusual and a typical service won't be able to get it done - or when you want a complex problem to be solved and don't want to have to think about or manage the solution. At such a task, they excel, and they've always come through for me in the end.
The Magic staff are very friendly and personable, as well. Their customer service is a tier above any other company I've interacted with. They handle requests with unusually high intellectual and emotional intelligence, and care. (Disclaimer: I haven't used Magic+, only the original Magic which has been surprisingly cheap for the value it adds.)
> such as having food from a restaurant across the country sent to me via chilled overnight air mail for a friend's birthday as a big flashy surprise
Maybe I'm missing something here, but this is making me seriously think about what Magic's target market is. What kind of income would a person need to fathom affording something like that? I know people who I would consider "wealthy" on a first-world scale but this seems like a service suited for millionaires only (not that there is anything wrong with that, of course).
What kind of income would a person need to fathom affording something like that?
What kind of income do you need to spend $200 on a Valentine's dinner? Probably not $1k a month. It's a stretch at $2k but not impossible. It does not feel "absurdly not socially normative" at $3k -- I did it when I was a young twenty-something.
To the extent that there is a real class-based difference here, it may be "degree of comfort with the notion that 'there is probably a way to spend money to achieve this without needing to do anything else.'" It's like, I don't know, a bureaucratic process which requires someone to go down to City Hall and stand in line for half a day. The middle class is capable of buying their way around that but it doesn't generally occur to them to try; the upper class don't even hear that that was a requirement because the very expensive person they use to handle legal issues already subcontracted it out.
Yeah, but wouldn't it be a lot more than $200? We're talking Magic's $100, however much the meal cost, plus the cost chilled overnight mail would be insane.
They don't chill the whole logistics chain, they just put the food in an insulated box with some dry ice and send it with the rest of the overnight packages.
Yep -- see http://orderboxesnow.com/ for FedEx's first-party options, which are the upper bound on expense (for the chilling, not the overnight delivery).
This is what I appreciate about Magic, by the way. I simply asked for food from the restaurant, specifying that leftovers were fine. Chilled overnight didn't even occur to me; I did not have any idea at the time how they might accomplish it, and I was prepared to be told it was impossible (or insanely expensive).
They figured out that chilled overnight delivery was possible, and got a local service to handle the logistics of picking it up from the restaurant, packing it into the box, and shipping it. It turned out rather nicely, and not nearly as expensive as I expected. It's not even really that much work and effort, when all is said and done.
I do somewhat extravagant things like this for my wife every anniversary divisible by 5 years; I've not used magic to do it, but most nice restaurants can make something like this happen if you call and ask.
It ends up being something a few times more expensive as a night out at the restaurant, so it's not cheap, and you don't get the ambiance, but my wife is very attached to memories, so the touch of "somewhere we visited on a romantic trip" is quite nice, and more appreciated than e.g. jewelry that might be as or more expensive.
You wouldn't need an extravagant income to do something like that. I just did a quick check and it costs less than $150 to overnight an 8lb package from NY to SF with 8am delivery. So the markup over just buying the meal at the restaurant is going to be less than $300 once you add refrigerated packaging and pay somebody to order it, pick it up, package it, and ship it. That's pricey if you're doing it every week, but for a special occasion that's not unimaginable for somebody even at the low end of middle class.
I think most middle class people would think $300+ for a meal is wildly extravagant. And would think a $300 gift for "a friend" is on high end of gifts.
Semantics, but if you're struggling, you're not middle class. At least not in the classical sense.
It's a shame the downward pressures that have made "struggling to get by" the middle class norm. The whole point of the thriving middle class (in the US at least) was that, with a willingness to work, you could live comfortably, with a house and two cars and 2 kids.
This isn't meant to be insulting or directed at you - it's just a new definition of middle class, that the struggle builds character or your struggling is an indicator of your value or lack of hard work, that I find almost infuriating.
Bullshit. I'm not "rich", but I'm a single guy making an great salary and my purchasing power is probably in the 95% of the the US. I don't even really think twice about purchases of anything that costs less than 3 digits if I have any desire for it. But $300 dollars for a meal as a gift to a friend? And not even that great of a meal? The fuck? That is absurd. I wouldn't even be above buying someone an xbox if I felt like it, but a $100/hr "convenience" charge is stupid money.
He used regular Magic, which is not Magic+. Magic is significantly cheaper. (Drop the plus from the URL). You submit a request, they give you the total, you confirm it, that's what you're charged.
I wouldn't consider myself rich either, but I do fairly well for myself as an unmarried guy in his 20s, and there are some friends that in some situations I wouldn't hesitate at all to spend a few hundred dollars on them. Some of them have done the same for me.
If you don't think twice about buying things under three digits, depending on frequency, just not doing that for frivolous things for a few weeks could afford you the ability to do something that might ultimately be a much more valuable memory. There's plenty of crap I've bought and barely used that would have been much better used taking a good friend out to an extravagant meal or event.
Well for one thing I did point out that I'd be fine dropping an xbox on a friend if I felt like it, just not a moderately expensive meal with a $100+ dollar markup on it. Especially considering there are countless delivery services easily accessible that do that sort of thing already; 30 seconds of googling isn't worth dropping an extra $100-200 because I couldn't be bothered to find the name of a cheaper service.
>If you don't think twice about buying things under three digits, depending on frequency, just not doing that for frivolous things for a few weeks could afford you the ability to do something that might ultimately be a much more valuable memory. There's plenty of crap I've bought and barely used that would have been much better used taking a good friend out to an extravagant meal or event.
I mean, that's what I'm talking about. I've never felt like my ability to splurge massively (e.g. buying a ticket at an airport to go on a suddenly planned trip) was impaired by my frivolous $50 purchases whenever I felt like it. I may not buy moderately expensive stuff without even considering whether I actually will use it (so maybe I'm not as rich as I think) but I don't have to even consider stuff like expensive taxi rides or bullshit novelty experiences when I'm bored.
Shipping rates are significantly reduced if you do high volume - if Magic does a lot of shipping (and it sounds like they would, with the services they offer), they could probably negotiate a far lower rate than you could.
Really - a $300 birthday gift to your friend? According to this website[1], the median American family has a combined income of 81k and spends about 1k of that on gifts. That's for the whole household, so more like $500/year for your friends. You're probably not going to blow half of that on one friend's birthday dinner.
Of course there are plenty of people for who this is reasonable, but please don't be so ignorant of what "middle class" means.
>According to this website[1], the median American family has a combined income of 81k and spends about 1k of that on gifts
And some people are a bit more generous than that. Or only have 1-2 friends that they go "all out" for. Small $20-40 gifts for a few friends/coworkers and 1-2 $200-300 gifts for the close friends lines up with your estimate just fine. Especially since they said could afford to and not will do so.
I'm middle class and spent three times the average you cited because I budgeted it accordingly for the last year. This year was atypical, but was very much possible.
You don't need to be upper middle class to afford a one off large purchase. Maybe if you're struggling in the lower ends of the working class - it could be difficult. I don't see where you're finding fault with their statement... if anything you're supporting it.
She's a very special friend, and I hadn't done much in the way of thoughtful gifts for her birthday in the last several years. She loves the restaurant and hadn't eaten there in about five years. The restaurant actually burned down shortly after we left the city to move to Seattle :-( We thought we'd never have it again. (I love the restaurant too, so it was kind of a gift for me as well.)
When I learned that the original business had been rebuilt and re-established, I thought I'd put together an extra special surprise for her birthday this year.
What was special about this birthday present was it seemed like an impossible feat, on first impression, and she had no idea how I did it. That's why what Magic did was so magical. Imagine having for your birthday dinner food from your favorite restaurant in the whole wide world, from a restaurant 2000 miles away, that you thought had burned down! Entirely unexpected and quite delicious!
> What kind of income would a person need to fathom affording something like that?
Depends heavily on how often they did it. A quick estimate suggests that a request like that would cost a few hundred dollars at most: the cost of the food itself, packing it in an insulated box with cold packs (some restaurants can do that themselves, and if not, a shipping service could most likely do that quite cheaply), and about $100 to ship a package weighing a few pounds overnight. Absolutely in the "luxury" category, but a few hundred dollars doesn't seem wildly outlandish for someone making an average tech salary to choose to spend on a meaningful birthday gift for a close friend.
(I say "meaningful" because I'd tend to assume that the reason for the restaurant across the country would involve some kind of shared memory with the place, rather than just a wild whim.)
I have no idea what sort of food you're ordering from across the continent or what sort of business its coming from, but unless its "generic slop/carton-packed stir fry", I would know anything I pack into an overnight express delivery thing is going to arrive the next day looking like generic slop/carton-packed stir fry regardless of whatever it originally was.
Hell, we were asked to take some pastries from our city roughly 700 kms home for family on Christmas, and although we carefully packed them, stored them with freezer-blocks in an insulated container, and carried them completely supervised on our lap in an aircraft cabin the entire way, they arrived worse for wear...but still kinda presentable and edible.
If I hired this out to an overnight courier for $100, + $100 for magic, + $100 for food, i wouldn't be half surprised to find it had been forcefully jammed into my letter box or met with handling/turbulence during transportation...
UPS rate calculator for overnight cross country shipping of a 7lb package is $285, not "about $100".
All this rounding down is the difference between "a few hundred" and likely "just shy of a thousand dollars". A few hundred in shipping, a couple of hundred for a meal that's not "cornershop Chinese", the time for the service. Etc.
> UPS rate calculator for overnight cross country shipping of a 7lb package is $285, not "about $100".
I used FedEx overnight for a 5lb package, which came to less than $100.
> a couple of hundred for a meal that's not "cornershop Chinese"
I'd assumed a meal for 2-4 people at most, thus roughly $50-100.
> the time for the service
Given foreknowledge of the services needed to put together such a request, that should take a small fraction of an hour; 15-30 minutes, so $25-$50.
Put all of that together, plus the chilled packaging, and $300-400 seems like a reasonable estimate. Both of us made many assumptions based on lack of data.
Not to nickel and dime, because I appreciate your response. I had a hard time getting FedEx's rate calculator to show up on my Mac...
Still, UPS at 5lb from NY to SF Next Day Air Early is still $150+.
If I'm overnighting a meal it's probably not going to be a $25/head dinner. I'll go out and enjoy that but it's not an 'across the country' experience. It's not even a steak from a non-steakhouse. Here, it's a chicken alfredo with no appetizer or sides.
2-4 people is going to be more than 5lb after you load up on dry ice.
Anyway - like you said, I'm also erring on the higher side of "what, to me, would make a meal worthwhile to ship like that". But hey, we had a civil discussion about it. Yay us.
> If I'm overnighting a meal it's probably not going to be a $25/head dinner. I'll go out and enjoy that but it's not an 'across the country' experience. It's not even a steak from a non-steakhouse. Here, it's a chicken alfredo with no appetizer or sides.
I think we've both relied on our own local price scales here. I don't live in San Francisco; here, $25 per person will generally get you any entrée and dessert on the menu, from anywhere other than a high-end steakhouse or similar.
And in any case, I was making the assumption that the selection of meal was driven more by some specific shared nostalgia than by five-star cuisine. If anything, I'd be less inclined to attempt to ship the latter, since quality would suffer more from transit than nostalgia would.
> 2-4 people is going to be more than 5lb after you load up on dry ice.
I don't think you can even ship dry ice via normal shipping processes; it falls under "hazardous substances". The couple of times I've had chilled items shipped (http://www.spokandy.com/product/murphys/ , highly recommended), they arrived packed in gel-like sealed "ice"packs, still cold to the touch.
> Anyway - like you said, I'm also erring on the higher side of "what, to me, would make a meal worthwhile to ship like that". But hey, we had a civil discussion about it. Yay us.
Indeed!
Going back to the original point, the examples given on the homepage for this service certainly target people with seven-figure salaries. But I could imagine people using it for somewhat saner purposes while having "just" a high-five-figure/low-six-figure salary.
Ordinary people do this all the time. People have Chicago pizzas shipped to LA, and Lockhart barbecue shipped to Boston. When you go to touristy "destination" dining spots, they almost invariably have signs saying they ship food.
This being the case, all Magic is really doing here is helping you find out which restaurants will ship, and perhaps making some phone calls to arrange shipments that aren't advertised.
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[ 2.6 ms ] story [ 229 ms ] threadhttps://www.zirtual.com/plans-pricing
Check their competitors to compare pricing, these might be comparatively cheaper without compromising on quality
http://www.habiliss.com/indiv/virtual-assistant-services-pri... http://www.asksunday.com/dedicatedplanspricing https://www.redbutler.com/plans
There are examples of Magic+ requests, but no real-world examples of outcomes and whether the request was filled successfully to the customer's satisfaction.
Relatedly, the $100/hr is suspicious because it's impossible to audit the time spent by the assistant. (Contrast with flat fees stated upfront from the normal service.)
If I was willing to foot the bill, you could probably do any of the example magics listed (assuming you had my details/logins to email/calendar) in an hour or two.
To pick one of their examples:
"I need to rent out the Exploratorium this weekend."
What if someone already rented it out? Or it's under construction? Or there's a special event? Or *?
I think murder falls under the illegal category of exception.
Which is a more localized version of the question I really want to ask: if Magic ever expands outside of the US, could I use it to order Cuban cigars to be shipped to Canada from Cuba? The US would never have to import them—so no illegal/trade-sanctioned act is occurring—but an American company is still profiting from the exchange.
Ah, apparently only sort of: http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/can-you-buy-cuban-cigars-n...
For our $100/hr Magic+ product, we display detailed reports daily to users that show exactly how time was used down to the second. I agree that communicating this correctly is key. If you're interested in trying it, I'd love to hear your feedback on how we display this information.
Looks like you're dodging the question.
Also, invariably with a complex task, there's going to be a lot of dead time spent waiting while coordinating.
If we aren't efficient and cost-effective, we won't be able to retain users and our product experience will be severely harmed. Whether we are charging hourly or not, it must be the case that the value we offer the user is greater than or equal to the cost that the user is paying.
Needless to say, at Magic we hold ourselves to a very high standard when it comes to product quality and value. And, we use the product ourselves and we pay hourly.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9087819
It's expensive, but not particularly outlandishly difficult.
Well, other than as an inversely related quantity. I'd probably be more likely to trust someone I was paying $100/hr.
Transparency and trust, one would imagine, are the core pieces of the business maybe even in front of task execution so it makes sense, but still, if I bought a 1200 ipad via SMS because I was too lazy to drive to walmart I probably don't need the reciept.
Oh god, I can't stop laughing.
> There is no markup on the purchases you make through Magic+. We find you the best deals that we can on every purchase, and we negotiate strongly with vendors. Often you will save more money using Magic+ than if you had done things yourself.
... I see a conflict of interest there.
There's a logo, one-sentence explanation (with further details beneath), examples, FAQ, and footer. So the content is all there. Furthermore, it's minimal-looking, and minimally coded, and all on a single responsive page.
Isn't this the ideal for a modern website that's also expected to work on mobile devices?
Magic+ is actually not just one person, but it's a software-driven service with a highly trained team of professional assistants that are held to a very high bar. They are managed, supervised, and trained by us so that you don't have to worry about it.
And, on top of that, every task and request is managed from beginning to end using custom software that is designed specifically to monitor the execution strategy and enhance both the quality and the reliability of the output. It's difficult for me to say more right now about how this works without disclosing IP that we cannot disclose at this time, but I hope to be able to say more about how this works in the future.
A good way to think about Magic+ is that it's a natural-language command-line interface for complex tasks that require some human interaction. A component of how we handle your email is more like a ~/.procmailrc file that can pipe things to a highly-supervised human assistant than it is like having a random person somewhere in the US logged in to your Gmail. You tell us how you need things done, using natural language, and it gets done, assuming it's possible.
Again, I recognize that this explanation is not as detailed as it could be, but I hope that it helps. I will think about how we can explain this better before we are able to disclose the inner-workings of our software.
I do understand how the software layer plus having multiple assistants working on a single person makes it "safer" than the SPOF of a traditional assistant (and I'm sure you've already thought of ways to have the software handle all PII while the assistants just support with the bits that require manual labor)
However, I feel like the killer feature of this kind of product should be Trust. That's worth paying for.
That plus the minimalist website copy and secrecy around operations makes it seem a bit niche for the startup crowd. And that sucks, because I want the AI assistant winner to be a newcomer, and not the usual suspects :)
Are they proposing we should be ok with giving them our credentials?
Unfortunately they closed my account and stopped the donations. They provided no information on when the last donations went out so I could resume them.
They went completely dark.
“Find someone to train me like Jason Bourne.” Hahaha.
The first two times, I said "hey I want a sandwich with [x]" and I got it but it took a lot longer than if I just clicked the necessary buttons on Seamless. Then I kept getting random calls from time to time from pizza delivery men saying they were downstairs.
They were very apologetic and nice about it, but really it just wasn't worth it for me. The CTO (I think) reached out to me some months later asking why I stopped and well it's the same answer: very little utility for someone like myself. If I were rich, hey sure why not boss someone around for random things (though I don't know why I wouldn't just hire someone I can trust). However, if you're middle income or even a little higher, what's the point really? Everything else is basically on-demand in this new uber-fied world.
Judging by the price and the copy in the page, I wouldn't be surprised if it's actually targeted at rich people.
Some of the themes you're bringing up here actually point to why we created Magic+ in the first place. Magic+ was developed as a response to the needs of the most active and demanding users of our standard Magic service. In particular, a common demand was to hold a very high bar for quality and seamlessness of experience.
Right now, some of these user-requested experiences are more expensive to deliver than the original Magic pricing model accounted for. Our plan is to offer Magic+ at this price now, because there is good demand for it at this price, and drop the price over time to reach a larger and larger market. $100 dollars an hour is a lot, but our most active users tell us that for this level of elite service, it's a bargain.
When I was experimenting with Twilio that was the only aspect that was a little disappointing. I wanted blue messages. :)
Q: Where is Magic+ available?
Anywhere you need it. Magic+ is there to make your every desire and need happen, wherever you are.
# Does this mean that we can actually use it in other countries like the UK? Do we need to use an area code?
The first time around, I asked for flowers, and got a picture of some flowers that they could send to my recipient. I didn't like the flowers in the picture, and so they picked another set of flowers per some feedback from me. The flowers arrived, and the recipient was touched, but my lingering feeling was that I would have spent the same amount of time ordering online, and it would have been easier to find the right kind of flowers if I had done so.
The second time I tried to order flowers was a complete disaster. I was ordering them for a special occasion, and Magic had told me they would be delivered within an acceptable time frame. However, the flowers never showed up. I was not notified that they had not showed up - instead I learned that they had not showed up after one of the more embarasing birthday calls of my life. Magic was very nice about it, refunded me and delivered the flowers late for free. The error may not even have been their fault. However, the extra layer of abstraction between me and the flower delivery person in this case seemed to make the whole situation worse.
I use a lot of different do-things-for-you services these days. In theory Magic is a service I should be totally hooked on, but these bad experiences killed it for me. What's the point of a service that does everything for you if it makes things more complicated or harder to get done?
- We really feel terrible that some early Magic users had a less-than-magical experience after our initial, spontaneous launch. I'm really sorry about that. I'm glad that you got your refund. If you're interested, reach out to us and we can probably track down exactly what happened and what broke down in the chain of operations.
- This is part of the reason that we created Magic+. We wanted to be able to hold a very high bar for top-tier service and guarantee that you would have it at all times, no matter what.
- We'd love for you to give Magic+ a try and compare it to your experiences with Magic. I'm highly confident that you will feel a major difference, however I understand if you don't feel inclined to do so after your past experience.
This is really not addressing the issue in my opinion, it would go a long way if you offered more details on what steps has been taken to improve the service, the process, the monitoring and the reliability of the service.
Saying "Well we know we dropped the ball so we are going to make it more expensive in hopes less people use it is really not an strategy that inspires confidence"
That sounds pretty funny: "For you, with love!" (empty box)
I had a flower shop almost fail on the delivery - we agreed on the flowers, date and place, and then... they forgot. They simply forgot about the delivery. Luckily I called them in time and they managed to get their shit together and deliver the bouquet literally minutes before I was about to suffer a big embarrassment if the flowers were not there.
That is the deal right? Pay us and we take care of it.
Not Pay us and make sure it gets done yourself.
For free.
They're going way over the top here to market it to busy douchebags. I thought about using it until I saw who they think I might be.
I think some of the incredulity is that there's... an authenticity skepticism as to how much these represent average requests (and therefore responses). But like you said -- if you don't have a marketing problem, who cares what the HN peanut gallery says. ;)
So the choice is between exorbitant claims + no detail or some exorbitant claims + some average claims + no detail.
Does wanting to meet a celebrity make you a lazy douchebag? Or is it the presumption that it might actually be possible? Renting a venue last minute? Perhaps they lazily left it until the last minute, but perhaps there's another explanation?
The Jason Bourne one is eccentric at least, but surely wanting to engage in that kind of extreme training is anything but lazy.
Envy, class warfare, and socialist propaganda.
http://www.stephenhicks.org/wp-content/uploads/2009/11/hicks...
For things you can realistically text to have done, the task has be crystal clear, and basically atomic. If I've already done the work of making it crystal clear and atomic, then it's not worth $100/hr anymore, because it's just rote busy work at that point.
I asked them to go through the craigslist of another city and find a certain car for sale, then return a list sorted by mileage and price. They couldn't do that for whatever reason and just offered to give me the KBB value.
Took me 5+ minutes to navigate their phone menu, enter my card number and get to the service.
The Amex concierge team has been able to find me items at local stores when I needed things ASAP that I was having trouble finding, and also managed to snag me a limited release item that was only available at the companies' location. (That was expensive, but still less than I saw them for being resold for online. I imagine a courier service could have been used if I was familiar with any in the area, since it was basically a 'drive there, pick up, drive to UPS store, ship' type request)
Text this number to get a regular human assistant for $50/hr: xxxxx
Using Magic-, you have a regular power - highly trained Magicians can ask regular people for help with minor tasks. Send our very normal people a text message 24/7, and you can get help doing your very magical things.
I understand some people spend money like that, but it seemed more likely that someone was making a joke about absurd wealth and the startup scene than a real business. If the Onion wrote an article about it, I wouldn't bat an eye.
Best of luck to the Magic+ team (honestly), but this product clearly isn't for people like me.
The $100/hr rate bugs me a little. Some people's time is worth more than that and other is less.
I'm currently living abroad and don't speak the language very well. So I hired a virtual assistant who speaks the language and English. He charges $7.50 USD an hour. I only pay him for time it takes to complete my tasks. I rarely even pay $100 for the whole month.
This is like people getting mad at Heroku or Github when some commodity host costs a tenth the price. Thankfully you have a choice and no-one is forcing you to use it.
If you value your time more than your money, then they're an excellent service that gives you a new suite of capabilities for making that tradeoff. They have been able to arrange everything I've asked them to do. What I like about them is that I can make a request without having any idea how to go about getting it fulfilled, and Magic will figure out how - they'll do the research and find a solution. They are familiar with service providers for all sorts of unusual tasks and will set them up for you: personal chefs, car servicing pickup, garbage pickup - for everything I've asked they've had an answer.
They are primarily limited however by their staff on the ground or lack thereof. Although they've been able to organize couriers in several cities to accomplish tasks, they have occasionally been unable to find couriers on the day of a request. Magic is a generalist service: they can do virtually anything, but not necessarily within the same hour you ask. They're worse than specialist services like Postmates at tasks like basic food pickup and delivery (mostly due to lower availability of couriers). Magic is most useful when your need is unusual and a typical service won't be able to get it done - or when you want a complex problem to be solved and don't want to have to think about or manage the solution. At such a task, they excel, and they've always come through for me in the end.
The Magic staff are very friendly and personable, as well. Their customer service is a tier above any other company I've interacted with. They handle requests with unusually high intellectual and emotional intelligence, and care. (Disclaimer: I haven't used Magic+, only the original Magic which has been surprisingly cheap for the value it adds.)
Maybe I'm missing something here, but this is making me seriously think about what Magic's target market is. What kind of income would a person need to fathom affording something like that? I know people who I would consider "wealthy" on a first-world scale but this seems like a service suited for millionaires only (not that there is anything wrong with that, of course).
What kind of income do you need to spend $200 on a Valentine's dinner? Probably not $1k a month. It's a stretch at $2k but not impossible. It does not feel "absurdly not socially normative" at $3k -- I did it when I was a young twenty-something.
To the extent that there is a real class-based difference here, it may be "degree of comfort with the notion that 'there is probably a way to spend money to achieve this without needing to do anything else.'" It's like, I don't know, a bureaucratic process which requires someone to go down to City Hall and stand in line for half a day. The middle class is capable of buying their way around that but it doesn't generally occur to them to try; the upper class don't even hear that that was a requirement because the very expensive person they use to handle legal issues already subcontracted it out.
This is what I appreciate about Magic, by the way. I simply asked for food from the restaurant, specifying that leftovers were fine. Chilled overnight didn't even occur to me; I did not have any idea at the time how they might accomplish it, and I was prepared to be told it was impossible (or insanely expensive).
They figured out that chilled overnight delivery was possible, and got a local service to handle the logistics of picking it up from the restaurant, packing it into the box, and shipping it. It turned out rather nicely, and not nearly as expensive as I expected. It's not even really that much work and effort, when all is said and done.
Ordering dinner from across the country overnight isn't spending $200 on a Valentine's dinner, though, it's spending $200 on leftovers.
It ends up being something a few times more expensive as a night out at the restaurant, so it's not cheap, and you don't get the ambiance, but my wife is very attached to memories, so the touch of "somewhere we visited on a romantic trip" is quite nice, and more appreciated than e.g. jewelry that might be as or more expensive.
It's a shame the downward pressures that have made "struggling to get by" the middle class norm. The whole point of the thriving middle class (in the US at least) was that, with a willingness to work, you could live comfortably, with a house and two cars and 2 kids.
This isn't meant to be insulting or directed at you - it's just a new definition of middle class, that the struggle builds character or your struggling is an indicator of your value or lack of hard work, that I find almost infuriating.
End rant, I suppose.
I wouldn't consider myself rich either, but I do fairly well for myself as an unmarried guy in his 20s, and there are some friends that in some situations I wouldn't hesitate at all to spend a few hundred dollars on them. Some of them have done the same for me.
If you don't think twice about buying things under three digits, depending on frequency, just not doing that for frivolous things for a few weeks could afford you the ability to do something that might ultimately be a much more valuable memory. There's plenty of crap I've bought and barely used that would have been much better used taking a good friend out to an extravagant meal or event.
>If you don't think twice about buying things under three digits, depending on frequency, just not doing that for frivolous things for a few weeks could afford you the ability to do something that might ultimately be a much more valuable memory. There's plenty of crap I've bought and barely used that would have been much better used taking a good friend out to an extravagant meal or event.
I mean, that's what I'm talking about. I've never felt like my ability to splurge massively (e.g. buying a ticket at an airport to go on a suddenly planned trip) was impaired by my frivolous $50 purchases whenever I felt like it. I may not buy moderately expensive stuff without even considering whether I actually will use it (so maybe I'm not as rich as I think) but I don't have to even consider stuff like expensive taxi rides or bullshit novelty experiences when I'm bored.
I don't know many lower-middle class people who'd buy what will likely end up being just shy of a thousand dollar present for their friends.
Shipping rates are significantly reduced if you do high volume - if Magic does a lot of shipping (and it sounds like they would, with the services they offer), they could probably negotiate a far lower rate than you could.
Of course there are plenty of people for who this is reasonable, but please don't be so ignorant of what "middle class" means.
[1] http://visual.ly/how-average-american-family-spends-money
And some people are a bit more generous than that. Or only have 1-2 friends that they go "all out" for. Small $20-40 gifts for a few friends/coworkers and 1-2 $200-300 gifts for the close friends lines up with your estimate just fine. Especially since they said could afford to and not will do so.
I'm middle class and spent three times the average you cited because I budgeted it accordingly for the last year. This year was atypical, but was very much possible.
You don't need to be upper middle class to afford a one off large purchase. Maybe if you're struggling in the lower ends of the working class - it could be difficult. I don't see where you're finding fault with their statement... if anything you're supporting it.
When I learned that the original business had been rebuilt and re-established, I thought I'd put together an extra special surprise for her birthday this year.
What was special about this birthday present was it seemed like an impossible feat, on first impression, and she had no idea how I did it. That's why what Magic did was so magical. Imagine having for your birthday dinner food from your favorite restaurant in the whole wide world, from a restaurant 2000 miles away, that you thought had burned down! Entirely unexpected and quite delicious!
Depends heavily on how often they did it. A quick estimate suggests that a request like that would cost a few hundred dollars at most: the cost of the food itself, packing it in an insulated box with cold packs (some restaurants can do that themselves, and if not, a shipping service could most likely do that quite cheaply), and about $100 to ship a package weighing a few pounds overnight. Absolutely in the "luxury" category, but a few hundred dollars doesn't seem wildly outlandish for someone making an average tech salary to choose to spend on a meaningful birthday gift for a close friend.
(I say "meaningful" because I'd tend to assume that the reason for the restaurant across the country would involve some kind of shared memory with the place, rather than just a wild whim.)
Hell, we were asked to take some pastries from our city roughly 700 kms home for family on Christmas, and although we carefully packed them, stored them with freezer-blocks in an insulated container, and carried them completely supervised on our lap in an aircraft cabin the entire way, they arrived worse for wear...but still kinda presentable and edible.
If I hired this out to an overnight courier for $100, + $100 for magic, + $100 for food, i wouldn't be half surprised to find it had been forcefully jammed into my letter box or met with handling/turbulence during transportation...
UPS rate calculator for overnight cross country shipping of a 7lb package is $285, not "about $100".
All this rounding down is the difference between "a few hundred" and likely "just shy of a thousand dollars". A few hundred in shipping, a couple of hundred for a meal that's not "cornershop Chinese", the time for the service. Etc.
I used FedEx overnight for a 5lb package, which came to less than $100.
> a couple of hundred for a meal that's not "cornershop Chinese"
I'd assumed a meal for 2-4 people at most, thus roughly $50-100.
> the time for the service
Given foreknowledge of the services needed to put together such a request, that should take a small fraction of an hour; 15-30 minutes, so $25-$50.
Put all of that together, plus the chilled packaging, and $300-400 seems like a reasonable estimate. Both of us made many assumptions based on lack of data.
Still, UPS at 5lb from NY to SF Next Day Air Early is still $150+.
If I'm overnighting a meal it's probably not going to be a $25/head dinner. I'll go out and enjoy that but it's not an 'across the country' experience. It's not even a steak from a non-steakhouse. Here, it's a chicken alfredo with no appetizer or sides.
2-4 people is going to be more than 5lb after you load up on dry ice.
Anyway - like you said, I'm also erring on the higher side of "what, to me, would make a meal worthwhile to ship like that". But hey, we had a civil discussion about it. Yay us.
I think we've both relied on our own local price scales here. I don't live in San Francisco; here, $25 per person will generally get you any entrée and dessert on the menu, from anywhere other than a high-end steakhouse or similar.
And in any case, I was making the assumption that the selection of meal was driven more by some specific shared nostalgia than by five-star cuisine. If anything, I'd be less inclined to attempt to ship the latter, since quality would suffer more from transit than nostalgia would.
> 2-4 people is going to be more than 5lb after you load up on dry ice.
I don't think you can even ship dry ice via normal shipping processes; it falls under "hazardous substances". The couple of times I've had chilled items shipped (http://www.spokandy.com/product/murphys/ , highly recommended), they arrived packed in gel-like sealed "ice"packs, still cold to the touch.
> Anyway - like you said, I'm also erring on the higher side of "what, to me, would make a meal worthwhile to ship like that". But hey, we had a civil discussion about it. Yay us.
Indeed!
Going back to the original point, the examples given on the homepage for this service certainly target people with seven-figure salaries. But I could imagine people using it for somewhat saner purposes while having "just" a high-five-figure/low-six-figure salary.
This being the case, all Magic is really doing here is helping you find out which restaurants will ship, and perhaps making some phone calls to arrange shipments that aren't advertised.