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I'm glad I ended up going with a paid e-mail service. They have to keep improving and maintaining quality of service because if they don't, customers will simpl

I'm glad I ended up going with a paid e-mail service. They have to keep improving and maintaining quality of service because if they don't, customers will simply go elsewhere. And I know they won't suddenly disappear as long as they have a solid number of users. If they gathered and sold info, people would immediately leave them as well. All of those make their interests and mine line up, so I don't need to have faith in them to entrust them with my email. As a sidenote: Reminds me of the situation with UberEats and DoorDash, though they're not free services. People like these services. In terms of raw users, they're enormous. DoorDash has something like 25 million users. But they're absolutely burning money. An average of $250 million a year for DoorDash, and sometimes as high as $400 million. But investors keep dumping money into it, because clearly there is enormous demand. And if there's demand, there must be some way to make it profitable. But none of them have noticed that the unit economics don't work. No customer is willing to pay the true price of the food, the delivery and even very minimal overhead. If they charged enough to break even, the demand would completely fall out.

marcus_holmes 4y ago
I use a paid email service too. But in the account identity settings I have to give them a backup email address that they can use to verify my identity in case of issues. That backup email address never gets any email, definitely isn't worth paying for, and is obviously a gmail address.
gruez 4y ago
>But none of them have noticed that the unit economics don't work. No customer is willing to pay the true price of the food, the delivery and even very minimal overhead. If they charged enough to break even, the demand would completely fall out. I thought food delivery services were profitable on a per unit basis, it was just the marketing/development spend that was causing them to go into the red?
mattmanser 4y ago
But we've had paid delivery services for decades before the internet even existed, so it's not that customers don't want to pay. What doesn't seem to work, which is a bit surprising, is centralizing the deliveries to reduce costs. The delivery services should be making their money out of those centralized cost savings, but can't. So instead it's coming out of the food, which means the restaurants rise their prices, etc. My local chippy has four different prices depending on which platform you order it through, which vary by up to 60%! The same item: Deliveroo - £11.99 (centralized search, centralized delivery) Uber Eats - £11.99 (centralized search, centralized delivery) Just Eat - £9.99 (centralized search, restaurant delivers) Preoday - £7.99 (restaurant website, restaurant delivery) Preoday- £7.49 (restaurant website, you collect) Why they can't make money out of the centralization is the real question. I know in the UK they seem to be spending huge amounts on prime-time advertising. Central office headcount could be another reason. Call me cynical but I would also bet a lot of takeaways would avoid a lot of tax on cash orders, which you just can't do when it's all recorded electronically.
- Night_Thastus 4y ago
  The difference is all in what is being delivered. The way customers value food is very different from if they're shipping say, a chair to their home. If a chair costs $100 and you're paying $10 to ship it, no big deal. That's 10% of the cost. If a customer orders $10 worth of food and sees another $10 of fees, their interest in it decreases significantly - and they have many alternative ways to get food with less overhead. You're right about restaurant-specific options though. The economics are somewhat different and may work out more favorably, though I still suspect they're taking losses for the sake of gaining customer interest. There's no way delivery costs them half a pound!

marcus_holmes 4y ago

I use a paid email service too. But in the account identity settings I have to give them a backup email address that they can use to verify my identity in case of issues. That backup email address never gets any email, definitely isn't worth paying for, and is obviously a gmail address.

gruez 4y ago

>But none of them have noticed that the unit economics don't work. No customer is willing to pay the true price of the food, the delivery and even very minimal overhead. If they charged enough to break even, the demand would completely fall out. I thought food delivery services were profitable on a per unit basis, it was just the marketing/development spend that was causing them to go into the red?

mattmanser 4y ago

But we've had paid delivery services for decades before the internet even existed, so it's not that customers don't want to pay. What doesn't seem to work, which is a bit surprising, is centralizing the deliveries to reduce costs. The delivery services should be making their money out of those centralized cost savings, but can't. So instead it's coming out of the food, which means the restaurants rise their prices, etc. My local chippy has four different prices depending on which platform you order it through, which vary by up to 60%! The same item: Deliveroo - £11.99 (centralized search, centralized delivery) Uber Eats - £11.99 (centralized search, centralized delivery) Just Eat - £9.99 (centralized search, restaurant delivers) Preoday - £7.99 (restaurant website, restaurant delivery) Preoday- £7.49 (restaurant website, you collect) Why they can't make money out of the centralization is the real question. I know in the UK they seem to be spending huge amounts on prime-time advertising. Central office headcount could be another reason. Call me cynical but I would also bet a lot of takeaways would avoid a lot of tax on cash orders, which you just can't do when it's all recorded electronically.

Night_Thastus 4y ago
The difference is all in what is being delivered. The way customers value food is very different from if they're shipping say, a chair to their home. If a chair costs $100 and you're paying $10 to ship it, no big deal. That's 10% of the cost. If a customer orders $10 worth of food and sees another $10 of fees, their interest in it decreases significantly - and they have many alternative ways to get food with less overhead. You're right about restaurant-specific options though. The economics are somewhat different and may work out more favorably, though I still suspect they're taking losses for the sake of gaining customer interest. There's no way delivery costs them half a pound!