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Postmates earned 400% more on a delivery than the delivery guy

15 points by aaronchriscohen ↗ HN
I used Postmates to buy and deliver a $199 Chromebook for me from Best Buy. The delivery fee was $5, 80% of which went to the delivery guy. Postmates added a 10% "purchase fee" which they do NOT split with the delivery guy. So they made $21 while the guy who actually did the work made $4 (not counting the tip I gave him).

I realize that developing the app that facilitated this transaction is work but for the purposes of a single transaction is it truly 400% as much work?

Does anyone else have a problem with this?

Receipt image: http://goo.gl/z4HBdv

13 comments

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spyglass
Anything is worth what they can convince people to pay for it.

See: the diamond industry.

aaronchriscohen
actually they don't disclose this fee when you arrange for the original transaction. They list everything as "TBD"
_random_
There are bigger problems in the world. As long as engineers at Postmates are compensated properly, I am OK.
vijayr
Can you explain this? Why would you be okay with the delivery guy underpaid, but not the engineers? Doesn't make sense, unless I am missing something.
mattgibson
"Does anyone else have a problem with this?"

I imagine the delivery guy does.

It's a free market though, so if that $21 turns out to be far more than is necessary for making the SAAS site, then a competitor will see it as an opportunity and undercut them eventually. Shouldn't take long if the business model is viable.

aaronchriscohen
ive sinced learned that ebay now would have brought me my chromebook for no additional fee. wun wun also apparently caps the transaction fee at $2.
mindslight
"Meet the new boss - same as the old boss"

These CRUD-on-a-service companies (Postmates, Uber, etc) aren't "disruption" but just an investment land rush to be the new rent-extracting middlemen. Let's just hope they're easily dislodged when an actual p2p economy finally develops.

sprite
No why would anyone have a problem with it? If you want to charge less or pay the delivery guy more you have the opportunity to start your own competitor. No one is forcing the delivery guy to work there either, if he is qualified for a better paying job he can find other work.
aaronchriscohen
because a startup has structured its business model to keep the vast majority of the profit it extracts from a virtual work force of independently contracted peons
Alex-Galapagos
how do you know that he only got $5?Maybe part of $19 goes to him as well
aaronchriscohen
i called and asked. they keep 100% of the purchase fee.
grzaks
Typical mistake. Service price is never based on the costs of development but on a value it creates. You might have extremely expensive IT solution that creates no value to anybody and is worth $0. You might have email-based manually operated business that provides service worth thousands USD.

Postmates creates value both for you and the delivery guy. After all - you used their service for some reason and paid for it right? You get the quality service, delivery guy gets the demand for his services.

Alternatively the delivery guy could develop an app for himself only, put it on the appstore and wait for you to download it. But he would never earn anything this way.

Someone1234
People tip delivery guys? Aside from food deliveries I've never heard of that before.