6 ms·

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 custo

by ajju 14y ago

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.

chollida1 14y ago
> 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. Or it indicates that they knew about it before hand and were working on it. Either way, I agree with you. Good customer service.
- angryasian 14y ago
  good customer service would have been to notify their customers every time they are going to charge against their card vs having to have the customer monitor explicitly what charges instacart is making.
  - tptacek 14y ago
    They made a mistake. They admitted it. Your argument is an appeal either to time travel or omniscience. It is hard to understand what you expect from them at this point.
    - angryasian 14y ago
      so when companies knowingly hide credit card charges, and doesn't notify users of term changes that may affect customers especially when it comes to hidden charges.. I don't expect anything, other than to bring to public what kind of company this is. Is it really a mistake to charge people's credit cards without notification ?
      - tptacek 14y ago
        You're right. You get the stake, I'll get the kindling.
      - jpxxx 14y ago
        Yes it really is a mistake, and you're being obnoxious. Please stop.
        ownagefool 14y ago
        I disagree, he's not being obnoxious, the apology isn't super clear so he could be mistaken. It reads like they've decided to take $99 from previously free customers on the basis of them not complaining when they were sent an email. If thats the case, I personally think it's a pretty crappy practice and any customer that claims to have not recieved the email should be entitled to a refund. If thats not the case, they should probably take a look at the message because it's confusing. p.s. Please don't come back with a selective quote. The "what happens" seems to conflict with the "Next steps" which is why I'm confused.
        jpxxx 14y ago
        Hrm, I agree with what you said. I overreacted. Wiping my comment.
    - wilfra 14y ago
      They admitted (claimed?) they had a bug and apologized for the bug. They didn't acknowledge the real mistake: converting people from free to paid without their explicit approval (not just emailing them altered terms). That needed to be opt-in, not opt-out. It appears as though they haven't even rectified that. It's still opt out. They're going to email 71 customers asking if they want a refund. What if they don't respond? No refund, right? What about the people who got the first email but didn't cancel, they still get charged, right? I would find it difficult to trust any company with my credit card info if I knew the only thing standing between me and new charges for things I don't want was reading every email they send me.
      - tptacek 14y ago
        They acknowledged exactly that, reversed the charges, and offered a full refund. I am again left wondering what you actually expected them to do.
        gus_massa 14y ago
        I don't understand the situation of the other n-71 users. Instacart send an email to them, but apparently the users didn't have to confirm the upgrade. What happened with the mails that got lost, went to the spam folder, where ignored because it looks like standard press release, went to the secondary mail account?
        calebio 14y ago
        There was a post by someone who seems to have worked there claiming the mistake was when they were querying for the users to send the email to. Basically 71 of us were not included in the results of that query so the email was never actually sent to us.
        wilfra 14y ago
        Read the post again. They did not reverse the charges. They gave 71 people the opportunity to claim a refund. What they should have done was automatically issued a refund to everybody they charged - not just the 71 who didn't receive the email - because they never should have charged anybody who didn't opt-in.
    - obviouslygreen 14y ago
      I don't buy the application of "mistake" that companies like to use. No, changing your pricing model and (by many accounts) simply not telling your customers, or not ensuring -- however difficult -- that all of your customers were told, is not a mistake. It's professional negligence, or whatever you call that when a company does it. As many have pointed out, it's not acceptable to just continue running with a broken business model. That benefits no one. But changing your model and either not making absolutely sure to tell your customers or neglecting the attempt is just plain dishonest.
      - tptacek 14y ago
        You feel comfortable calling these people "plain dishonest"? Would you say that to their faces? Maybe reconsider; your point might be better cast as "it is a mistake not to be careful to ensure your customers are aware of business model changes".
        obviouslygreen 14y ago
        I did not say that. What they did was "plain dishonest." I don't call myself a stupid person, but I have done (and will in the future do) stupid things. That does not make me stupid, and it does not make stupid things I do intelligent. You are pushing to soften the insistence that customers should have regarding how they are charged. I don't see how that's a better approach than actually holding a company accountable for its actions, without necessarily judging the character of their employees or management. Edit: Yes, I would say that to their faces. Exactly as I said it here, without personal judgment, but with a judgment regarding their conduct.
        fpgeek 14y ago
        Hold on. Let's not forget where this started. They did try to tell their customers - via email. Your objection is that the form of notice they used was inadequate. That's a fair objection, but choosing an inadequate form of notice, by itself, isn't dishonesty. Knowingly choosing inadequate notice would be the problem. To me it seems equally (if not more) plausible that someone, mistakenly, didn't realize that email notice wasn't good enough. I'll also add that it isn't clear that email notice was inadequate. Are there cases of people outside the 71 who were unhappy learning about the change from another channel (like this one)?
    - deleted 14y ago
      [deleted]
    - ig1 14y ago
      As far as I can tell they only offered to refund the $99 subscription fee, and not the excess delivery charges that the subscribers have been being charged for <$35 deliveries without their consent. They should make good their customers entire financial loss.
      - tptacek 14y ago
        "First, we’re going to refund all delivery fees paid by the people affected by this bug."
        ig1 14y ago
        Ah must have missed that on initial reading (also judging by the number of upvotes I wasn't the only one).
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
- ajju 14y ago
  I take InstaCart at their word when they say that it was their intention to do the right thing from the beginning and only a small subset of their users were not informed about this change because of a bug. Since I take them at their word, this means that the "outcry" and the blog post were when they discovered the problem and it's scale. They fixed it in 4 hours. As a user, that works for me.
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
dylanhassinger 14y ago
yes. nicely handled

by ajju 14y ago

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.

chollida1 14y ago

> 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. Or it indicates that they knew about it before hand and were working on it. Either way, I agree with you. Good customer service.

angryasian 14y ago
good customer service would have been to notify their customers every time they are going to charge against their card vs having to have the customer monitor explicitly what charges instacart is making.
- tptacek 14y ago
  They made a mistake. They admitted it. Your argument is an appeal either to time travel or omniscience. It is hard to understand what you expect from them at this point.
  - angryasian 14y ago
    so when companies knowingly hide credit card charges, and doesn't notify users of term changes that may affect customers especially when it comes to hidden charges.. I don't expect anything, other than to bring to public what kind of company this is. Is it really a mistake to charge people's credit cards without notification ?
    - tptacek 14y ago
      You're right. You get the stake, I'll get the kindling.
    - jpxxx 14y ago
      Yes it really is a mistake, and you're being obnoxious. Please stop.
      - ownagefool 14y ago
        I disagree, he's not being obnoxious, the apology isn't super clear so he could be mistaken. It reads like they've decided to take $99 from previously free customers on the basis of them not complaining when they were sent an email. If thats the case, I personally think it's a pretty crappy practice and any customer that claims to have not recieved the email should be entitled to a refund. If thats not the case, they should probably take a look at the message because it's confusing. p.s. Please don't come back with a selective quote. The "what happens" seems to conflict with the "Next steps" which is why I'm confused.
        jpxxx 14y ago
        Hrm, I agree with what you said. I overreacted. Wiping my comment.
  - wilfra 14y ago
    They admitted (claimed?) they had a bug and apologized for the bug. They didn't acknowledge the real mistake: converting people from free to paid without their explicit approval (not just emailing them altered terms). That needed to be opt-in, not opt-out. It appears as though they haven't even rectified that. It's still opt out. They're going to email 71 customers asking if they want a refund. What if they don't respond? No refund, right? What about the people who got the first email but didn't cancel, they still get charged, right? I would find it difficult to trust any company with my credit card info if I knew the only thing standing between me and new charges for things I don't want was reading every email they send me.
    - tptacek 14y ago
      They acknowledged exactly that, reversed the charges, and offered a full refund. I am again left wondering what you actually expected them to do.
      - gus_massa 14y ago
        I don't understand the situation of the other n-71 users. Instacart send an email to them, but apparently the users didn't have to confirm the upgrade. What happened with the mails that got lost, went to the spam folder, where ignored because it looks like standard press release, went to the secondary mail account?
        calebio 14y ago
        There was a post by someone who seems to have worked there claiming the mistake was when they were querying for the users to send the email to. Basically 71 of us were not included in the results of that query so the email was never actually sent to us.
      - wilfra 14y ago
        Read the post again. They did not reverse the charges. They gave 71 people the opportunity to claim a refund. What they should have done was automatically issued a refund to everybody they charged - not just the 71 who didn't receive the email - because they never should have charged anybody who didn't opt-in.
  - obviouslygreen 14y ago
    I don't buy the application of "mistake" that companies like to use. No, changing your pricing model and (by many accounts) simply not telling your customers, or not ensuring -- however difficult -- that all of your customers were told, is not a mistake. It's professional negligence, or whatever you call that when a company does it. As many have pointed out, it's not acceptable to just continue running with a broken business model. That benefits no one. But changing your model and either not making absolutely sure to tell your customers or neglecting the attempt is just plain dishonest.
    - tptacek 14y ago
      You feel comfortable calling these people "plain dishonest"? Would you say that to their faces? Maybe reconsider; your point might be better cast as "it is a mistake not to be careful to ensure your customers are aware of business model changes".
      - obviouslygreen 14y ago
        I did not say that. What they did was "plain dishonest." I don't call myself a stupid person, but I have done (and will in the future do) stupid things. That does not make me stupid, and it does not make stupid things I do intelligent. You are pushing to soften the insistence that customers should have regarding how they are charged. I don't see how that's a better approach than actually holding a company accountable for its actions, without necessarily judging the character of their employees or management. Edit: Yes, I would say that to their faces. Exactly as I said it here, without personal judgment, but with a judgment regarding their conduct.
        fpgeek 14y ago
        Hold on. Let's not forget where this started. They did try to tell their customers - via email. Your objection is that the form of notice they used was inadequate. That's a fair objection, but choosing an inadequate form of notice, by itself, isn't dishonesty. Knowingly choosing inadequate notice would be the problem. To me it seems equally (if not more) plausible that someone, mistakenly, didn't realize that email notice wasn't good enough. I'll also add that it isn't clear that email notice was inadequate. Are there cases of people outside the 71 who were unhappy learning about the change from another channel (like this one)?
  - deleted 14y ago
    [deleted]
  - ig1 14y ago
    As far as I can tell they only offered to refund the $99 subscription fee, and not the excess delivery charges that the subscribers have been being charged for <$35 deliveries without their consent. They should make good their customers entire financial loss.
    - tptacek 14y ago
      "First, we’re going to refund all delivery fees paid by the people affected by this bug."
      - ig1 14y ago
        Ah must have missed that on initial reading (also judging by the number of upvotes I wasn't the only one).

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]

ajju 14y ago
I take InstaCart at their word when they say that it was their intention to do the right thing from the beginning and only a small subset of their users were not informed about this change because of a bug. Since I take them at their word, this means that the "outcry" and the blog post were when they discovered the problem and it's scale. They fixed it in 4 hours. As a user, that works for me.
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]

dylanhassinger 14y ago

yes. nicely handled