They were caught having made a mistake: unilaterally changing the terms of a renewing contract without written notice.
The bare minimum they can do is to offer a refund.
Mistake or no mistake, if their goal is to "always try to go the extra mile," they are failing to do so here.
The fact that Instacart is a tiny startup has no bearing on whether they should honor their agreements.
The post specifically says it.
I don't think they should be on the hook for providing people with free service that costs them money if they need to change the terms, but it should be 100% manual opt-in (with people who don't opt-in having their service canceled) if it involves a price increase or wholly new charges where there were previously none.
Based on the fact that their apology seems centered around the email bug and not the initial premise of adding charges without users having to opt-in to them, I have to disagree with some of the comments here that this proves they "get" customer service.
No company deserves to have my credit card details tied to an account which may at some point arbitrarily charge me $$ which they notify my of via email on an opt-out basis. There are countless reasons why I might miss such an email not the least if which is simply email overload.
This is a terrible practice for your customers.
IMO, the best thing is to grandfather people in. The next best thing is to just let people know what's going on, move them over and offer a refund if they are dissatisfied with the new plan.
I've had it up to here with companies pulling shit like making joining one click on the web and cancelling a multi-hour phone call. So yeah I may be a bit sensitive and reactionary about billing matters but I believe it is justified given how poorly most companies handle these issues these days.
When I saw this on HN this morning, my reaction was that it's easy for things to get missed in the chaos of startups.
Remember, these guys run a startup. They're juggling a million things, including a company that's growing fast due to high demand. These things will happen. It's how the team deals with issues like this that will make them a great company.
Instacart makes a mistake and writes an apology on its company blog. I wish I lived in a world where there were more Instacarts and less Sprints.
People are fallible. Companies are fallible. The real indication of character is what they do to fix things when they go wrong.
If I had the service I'm not sure I'd be ready to quit over a $99 unless my inquiries met with bad customer service.
From a customer standpoint, their actions are appalling and the apology is obviously unfulfilling and fails to recognize or rectify the true issue. But, from a business standpoint, this post is very strategic and effective at mitigating public outrage. Although I'm still upset by the choices that Instacart made, I can't help but appreciate the effectiveness of their response tactics.
Or it indicates that they knew about it before hand and were working on it. Either way, I agree with you. Good customer service.
Seriously, automatic refund should be their first and default action AND THEN offering some kind of compensation for the inconvenience.
71 people got no notification that the charges were coming. That's terrible.
As far as I can tell, everyone else got an email saying "we're about to charge you $99 unless you ask us not to". Not responding != authorizing
If I had any charges from Instacart relating to this mess I'd be claiming them back (but I might be nice and give IC the chance to refund it first)
NEVER.
I wonder what it is like to be really upset and then email an alias called happycustomers when you really aren't happy.
"Did not receive an email about this change of policy. Not only did I not receive this email, neither did my wife nor a colleague, who also is a Instacart Express user."
+ in this thread "A few days ago, my gf started complaining about some sort of $3 extra charges she noticed."
This makes the 71 user remark looking suspicious, except the 71 were based on some geographical selection error.
Another possibility would be that the selection was based on when the orders were placed, and that the three of them all bought it at the same time because they decided together to buy it.
Reneging on their promises is not.
P.C. Hodgell - "That which can be destroyed by the truth should be."
In these cases I doubt that faithfully keeping the promises they made would destroy either company. They just feel they can get away with it, and so they break their promises to save some money.
IMO, I think it depends on when they made these plans. If this was their path from the beginning and the service was free for a specific reason, I think it should be clearly pointed out on the website that the service is free for only a specific period of time.
If the plan of charging customers was added later on (after customers stared using the service), the solution would be to: definitely don't charge customers without them opting in, even if you send them an email, even if you wait for some days after to start charging. Changing customers to a temporary "trial" phase would be a good idea I think. This way, customers will know that they need to pay when they use the service the next time.
There will still be a lot of people with a bad taste in their mouth. Public perception to a service like this is key.
That's what Apple does on the iOS devices and I find it acceptable.