[wpietri]

The thing that bugs me about Instacart is that they have a mysterious set of markups. I was all set to use them for Trader Joe's when I found that out. I don't mind paying more when it's in the form of a shopping/delivery fee, but I have no time for vendors that I can't trust.

[hpvic03]

Engineer from Instacart here.

As of earlier this year, marked up stores and non-marked up store are now very clearly listed on the site.

[wpietri]

I just went and looked again, but apparently I have to register to see anything. So it's definitely not transparent enough to suit me. Once logged in, are the markups clear and documented? Or is it still mysterious?

Regardless, I hope you can see how the secret markups left a bad taste in my mouth. The companies I give my business to are the ones I can trust.

[hpvic03]

How does having to register to see the storefront relate to the transparency of item prices?

I didn't say the markups were available on a per-item basis, I said you could see which stores were marked up and which ones weren't. Just click on the store dropdown, and you'll see this:

http://i.imgur.com/KElc00R.png

We'd rather not mark anything up at all, and if something is marked up, we'd prefer to tell you by how much, but we can't do this right now for structural reasons.

If you're worried about unknown markups, just shop at any one of the stores that says "Prices are same as in-store," and you're safe.

That being said, everyone at Instacart would agree with you -- secret markups suck, which is why we built this feature to tell you which stores are priced the same as in-store. The unknown markups don't exist because some guy in a smoky room twirling his mustache hatched a devious plot, it is just structural. The user interface should have reflected this reality earlier, and it didn't, but now it does. We really do want to be as transparent as possible with our prices.

If you have any specific feedback I can take it directly to the consumer products team, or you can email [e-mail]. They love feedback, positive or negative :)

[wpietri]

> How does having to register to see the storefront relate to the transparency of item prices?

At this point, you've lost my goodwill. It seems like you're trying to argue me into liking Instacart's manipulative opacity, which is not happening. But to answer the direct question:

Transparency is about the ease with which people can see relevant information. The more barriers you place between people and the information they want, the less transparent they are.

> for structural reasons

This might mean something to you, but it means nothing to me. Instacart made all of the structure. Instacart now admits that secret markups suck, but they nonetheless started with secret markups and maintain secret markups. If you really want to be transparent with your prices, publishing them on each page should be about a 5-line code change. That you don't is a choice.

> If you have any specific feedback I can take it directly to the consumer products team, or you can email [e-mail]. They love feedback, positive or negative :)

My feedback is that Instacart is a company that I don't trust and, given communications like yours, probably never will. Hope that helps.

[gergles]

No, the markups are still opaque and vary on an item-by-item basis.

Here's an example (from $5.99 to $7.39 plus a delivery fee. Still a really poor deal:) http://i.imgur.com/VwWk44h.png (To be clear, this picture is from their own site, because the item in question has a price label. Most things don't let you see the store price.)

[hpvic03]

See my above reply to wpietri :)