[giggles_giggles]

Hi, my wife is on an immunosuppressant and so we have been trying to avoid going to the store at all, except curbside, because it could be extremely bad if she were to get COVID-19. Save for a single emergency, no one in our household has left home in about a month.

This service makes it harder for us to get curbside slots, until our local store is able to respond to peaking demand, because people with normal immune systems will use these slots out of fear, when they have a much better chance of either not contracting COVID-19 in the first place, or of lesser symptoms if they get it, and in the meantime should be the ones going into the store, so that those with immuno-compromised households do not have to.

Your service makes no acknowledgement of this ethical dilemma.

I do not disagree that our local grocery store should do its best to expand its curbside service. They do seem to be trying, but this product makes it harder for households like ours in the meantime.

[kelnos]

> people with normal immune systems will use these slots out of fear

I sympathize with your situation, and agree that people who are more at risk should get priority, but suggesting that someone with a normal immune system should not use curbside pickup and just suck it up and go in the store is just... not correct. Everyone should be availing themselves of options that reduce their interactions with other people.

I imagine you and people like you are already frustrated as to how difficult it is to get pickup slots. A website like this can perhaps make it easier on you, as well.

[in_cahoots]

There are a limited number of slots available for these sort of services. It would be great if everyone could utilize them, but since that’s not possible it seems the slots should go to people who can use them most. I’m guessing HN readers skew significantly younger and healthier than the average victim of coronavirus, so it would be a shame if a service like this prevented people who really need remote pickup options from using them.

[giggles_giggles]

Everything after your first "but" contradicts what comes before it. Should people who are at more risk get priority? Because if they should, then yes, people with regular immune systems SHOULD in fact just suck it up and go inside until there are enough curbside slots available for everyone. Then there won't be a use for a site like this and those healthy people can book their curbside slots on the grocery stores' websites like normal.

This site and others like it just guarantee that vulnerable people MUST use these sites to even have a chance to get curbside. I guarantee there are those who are not savvy enough, and young tech-savvy people who know how to use these services will use curbside while older, more vulnerable, and less tech-savvy people must go in. I feel bad using a site like this because even though my wife is in a vulnerable group, I know others are worse off and don't have the know-how to use this tool. I want them to have a chance.

You can't say that "people who are more at risk should get priority" AND say that _everyone_ should be doing the same thing as them. If everyone is a priority, nobody is. Yes, some healthy people with good immune systems DO need to take some risks in lieu of those who are more likely to die if they take the same risks.

And spare me the platitude at the beginning of your comment. If you did sympathize, you wouldn't've posted something so tone-deaf.

[mjwhansen]

It sounds like this crisis has been especially frustrating to you and my heart goes out to you.

One of the reasons we decided to release the app was so friends of ours who are immunocompromised could use it.

The ideal scenario would be for grocery stores to switch to curbside/delivery only. I wouldn't be surprised if we saw that happening 6 months from now. None of us know if we are asymptomatic carriers, so we all need to stay out of the public as much as possible.

Our thinking if that if people start using this app, they're staying out of the stores, keeping themselves and the workers safer. Hopefully they can do several weeks worth of shopping at a time, freeing up slots for others.

In the UK, Sainsbury's is limiting curbside and delivery to high risk people. But they're only able to do so because they're getting a list of high-risk people from the government and validating against that list. That isn't really possible for us. https://www.sainsburys.co.uk/shop/gb/groceries/working-to-fe...

Do we support grocery stores in your area? Hopefully this app can help your family, too.

[giggles_giggles]

> One of the reasons we decided to release the app was so friends of ours who are immunocompromised could use it.

Understandable, but it becomes a gold rush if people with normal immune systems use sites like yours to reserve slots. My only real suggestion is that your site call out the moral dilemma to users.

Basically our only choice now is to use a service like this (which I guess I will now do; yes you do cover our area) or book slots weeks in advance (this is what we have been doing with limited success).

Honestly we are very lucky; services like this make me more concerned for people in situations like my wife's, but who are not married to a programmer who is aware that you need a f*king web scraper to get groceries now.

Apologies if my frustration is visibly surfacing there; I know y'all are just trying to do your best to help with this situation and so I want to provide you with some honest feedback. I would also like to make clear that I'm not suggesting your service is a net negative. Thank you for your efforts.

[mjwhansen]

Thanks, I appreciate your honesty. We're all struggling through this and need to vent it.

We hope that since this doesn't require any real tech knowledge, even people who aren't super tech savvy can use it. I've shared it with my neighborhood, which has lots of elderly people, and they seem to be using it okay (only a handful of tech support requests). We think this is a service the grocery stores should be offering themselves -- hopefully it'll push them in that direction.

It would probably be ideal for the US to do something like the UK and force grocery stores to prioritize high risk households... but there's a lot our government's response leaves to be desired.

But even those of us who aren't high risk could still be carriers. I could go in a store and accidentally get everyone in it sick. We ALL need to be avoiding public places. :-/

[gorgoiler]

I don’t think you can claim we’re all in this together while providing an unofficial tool that prioritizes people you know and HN readers.

A good solution is to spread the word as far and wide as possible so that everyone can use your tool, and that at least seems to be what you are doing so good for you.

Have you had a shot at getting national press coverage for this, or even (long shot) having the vendors link to your service?

[mjwhansen]

The tool doesn't prioritize HN readers. We released this almost two weeks ago and have primarily posted it on local neighborhood listservs and our own social media so far.

We haven't tried to get national press coverage because we don't have national store coverage, but once we add some of the bigger regional chains people are requesting (like HyVee, Meijer and Giant/Stop and Shop) we probably will.

The only grocery store we've been in touch with wasn't too thrilled about it and did not want to work together :)