7 ms·
Uber Is Testing a Massive Merchant Delivery Program
- JohnLen 11y agoThis will be an ideal service that many are looking forward to. Fast and convenient.
- jacquesm 11y agoCould I borrow your crystal ball?
- leaveyou 11y agoJaquesm, let me firmly remind you that this is not reddit ! :)
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- jacquesm 11y agoRemind me all you want but forward looking statements made with certitude about brand new services require at a minimum something that allows you to look into the future. Either that or they are premature at best and possibly quite wrong.
- leaveyou 11y agoFirst, I wasn't the one who downvoted you (I was only having fun that you were being downvoted for what appeared to be a sarcastic remark). Second, I think JohnLen expressed a reasonable opinion and you should have made more effort (arguments) if you wanted to question it. But that's just me.
- pjc50 11y agoOr it could be the new Yodel: unreliable, poor customer service, cheap, badly paid workers on piecerate. The funny think is that local merchants used to offer delivery a lot more ("butcher's basket" bicycles, fish vans, electric milk floats, etc). I guess we're coming back to that mode of business.
- sschueller 11y agoOn the backs of 1099 workers. Uber needs to be work on some social responsibility. Do we really want a country where the majority are struggling to serve the few?
- RyanMcGreal 11y agoThe ingenious twist of American ideology is that so many of the many perceive themselves as aspiring members of the few, and hence oppose the kinds of policy that would improve conditions for the many.
- minthd 11y agoDefinetly ingenious. How did it got to that, pure coincidence ? or something more ?
- technofiend 11y ago"Socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires." John Steinbeck
- dylanjermiah 11y agoThey're free to work for whoever they want. No one is forcing anyone to drive for Uber, they're doing it voluntarily. Why forcibly stop consensual behaviour?
- codecamper 11y agowhat is your point? you are saying that they are not forced into it and so therefore everything is A OK?
- dylanjermiah 11y agoIf people are consensually engaging in an activity and it is not harmful in anyway to others, it is perfectly fine.
- netcan 11y agoUber is in a inherently interesting space, directing large numbers of people using software for stuff that happens outside of the computer. That means that instead of solving problems that are sticky enough in the lab never-mind in the world, they can solve them with a market. For problems like who should deliver what package and how to optimize that, they can offload a lot of the intelligence to drivers. This might have interesting implications for other products.
- amelius 11y agoIt's nice that, with this approach, individuals can make some money besides a regular job. But what's not so nice, is that the level of the work is quite low. And what's also not nice, is that Uber is a regulator of that market (having strong financial interests themselves).
- imaginenore 11y agohttps://www.uship.com/ https://www.uship.com/
- tempodox 11y agoAfter appearing in TC & on HN, the “quietly” attribute may be removed from the testing. It has become quite loud now.
- marvel_boy 11y agoRight now Uber is trying a food delivery scheme in Barcelona https://hbr.org/2015/02/ubers-food-delivery-experiment-in-barcelona https://hbr.org/2015/02/ubers-food-delivery-experiment-in-ba...
- ams6110 11y agoThe taxi companies in my town have always offered package delivery (though I've never seen it used much). The idea isn't new, though the technology could help out with the practicality of it.
- jsackmann 11y agoYep. I drove a cab for about a year (2003ish, college town of ~200,000 people), and the company I drove for did this. It wasn't a big business, but there were a few substantial accounts, notably the local university hospital system, which sent around a lot of specimens in very serious-looking containers. Pre-ubiquitous GPS, shared taxi dispatching and routing involved a lot of yelling and guessing.
- pbreit 11y agoNo one said the idea is new. Uber's not new. AirBnB's not new. Instacart's not new. There's pretty much no reason to point that out.
- ghaff 11y agoIt's probably worth noting that--primarily in denser locations--the rapid delivery of goods is already a thing. Delivery of papers by bicycle messenger (although that has declined), takeout delivery, grocery delivery (which has been around for a long time in many cities but has been getting more systematic with services like Instacart). Of course, there have also been massive failures trying this in the past like Kozmo. I suspect there's a complicated relationship between density, profit margins and overall cart value of what's being delivered, price sensitivity, and other factors. It obviously does work in some domains and those who already have established something that could form the basis of a delivery infrastructure may be in the best position to experiment further. It won't work for everything or everyone but if fast delivery works for food for example, there's no inherent reason it shouldn't work for a lot of other goods that people can't get easily delivered today.
- killface 11y agoI regularly use BiteSquad -- they make any restaurant a delivery restaurant :)
- tracker1 11y agoIt's also about division of labor and specialization. Grocery stores don't have thousands of vendors showing up at stores, they have long delivery chains that consolidate and redistribute... On the last mile for home delivery it makes sense for one service to act as a delivery agent for multiple stores, when a pizza shop doesn't have many orders from 1pm-5pm, they are paying employee(s)... with a service based delivery, the throughput is more optimal. Not to mention the time this will save... I hate going to the store, which kills at least two hours a couple times a week. I'd pay $20-30 to have that time back. It won't reduce traffic either, but at least the uber drivers are more likely in economy/subcompact cars (a lot of prii) which would displace the SUV behemoths that would otherwise be used by those most likely to be ordering.
- ghaff 11y agoYou could presumably try something like TaskRabbit although I have no personal experience and it would presumably cost more than $20-30 for the length of time you cite.
- feefie 11y agoIn Canada, today only, Uber is delivering puppies for 15 minutes of playtime cuteness: http://www.ctvnews.ca/business/uber-to-offer-puppies-on-demand-thursday-in-four-canadian-cities-1.2350822 http://www.ctvnews.ca/business/uber-to-offer-puppies-on-dema...
- codecamper 11y agoAnd then what do they do with the puppies after the 15 minutes are up?
- a2tech 11y agohttp://www.willitblend.com http://www.willitblend.com
- hitekker 11y agoNormally, I would just upvote and go on but that was actually hilarious.
- dzlobin 11y agoThey are puppies from local shelters that they encourage people to adopt.
- wavefunction 11y agoThey should be carting around older dogs which are rarely adopted. Maybe it's wrong of me but I find Uber hiding behind puppies to be about as despicable as the rest of their actions.
- zo1 11y agoThat sounds like a nightmare waiting to happen. Imagine they have the "wrong" old-dog adopted by an innocent family, and something bad happens afterwards? Who is the family going to blame exactly? More importantly, who are you going to call out if that were to happen? Be honest.
- Billybauld 11y agoUber is becoming like Google but for the physical world. There are so many parallels -- the omnipresence for starters.
- wavefunction 11y agoYou registered 4 hours ago just to make this comment?
- Billybauld 11y agoOf course not, but everyone has to have a "first" comment on here, right? What a ludicrous reply for you to make, I mean really.
- microman 11y agoHow does insurance work with this? What if my driver is robbed, gets in a crash or decides to pocket my stuff? Do Uber insure the contents or the retailer (or neither)?
- carlmcqueen 11y agoQuietly is a funny way to put it since I've heard it in the news three or four times lately. Each time I hear about it I think of a hollywood heist movie that starts and finishes quickly when the robbers simply figure out how to manipulate things so they're the uber driver delivering the package they want.
- calinet6 11y agoI'm just thinking of SimCopter, where as a copter pilot you could get missions of all kinds popping up on the screen, and you could choose to take a delivery, passenger, fight a fire, and more stuff I can't remember. Not a bad model really. Uber is a distributed worker service.
- scrapcode 11y agoKind of the same thing, but in the opposite direction: This morning my girlfriend got a notification that some day next week Uber drivers will pick up donations and transport them to Goodwill.
- richwalinsky 11y agoThis company is in a inherently interesting space, directing large numbers of people using software for stuff that happens outside of the computer and also offer lots of jobs for people
- fanalog 11y agoDid you copy the other comment, or is there a bot writing pro-Uber comments in here?
- wavefunction 11y agoIt's interesting, netcan has been here "forever" and has a ton of karma but "richwalinsky" has been here for 171 days and has 1 karma.
- ams6110 11y agoI seem to recall WalMart looking into the idea of having customers deliver goods to others "on their way home." Don't know if that was successful anywhere.
- theophrastus 11y agoBezos was an early invester in Uber, (http://www.geekwire.com/2011/jeff-bezos-hops-uber-invests-private-car-service/ http://www.geekwire.com/2011/jeff-bezos-hops-uber-invests-pr...) so until the drones darken the sky hauling Amazon boxes this makes some sense.
- varunjuice 11y agoA major threat to Uber's profitability is its inability, thus far, to monopolize drivers. If it expands successfully in moving goods, it might be able to consolidate enough demand to make sure every available driver is always working for Uber. It'll be interesting to see if its able to drag Lyft, Instacart, Shyp under the water as it puts its very large oxygen tank to use.
- tiffanyricks 11y agoIt would be smart for Uber to acquire Instacart. Instacart has the knowhow and Uber has the network and technology. It seems like a smart business decision that will lead to world domination.
- aetherson 11y agoThe brands mentioned seem like an implicit admission that this will be an expensive service. Is there actually demand for same day delivery of Tiffany's? Who buys stuff from Tiffany's but can't be bothered to go to the store and also needs it for tonight?
- flycaliguy 11y agoI think they are trying to just punch up the status of the service, making those be the first brands people associate with it.
- Animats 11y agoUber's selection of businesses for delivery is strange. Hugo Boss? Louis Vuitton? Tiffany's? Those are all stores for which the shopping experience is paramount.