But today Scott fueled a new flame.
Group Ordering, he says, works as it was designed. My silly request for an individual participant to be able to add a tip, have their tax calculate correctly and for the administrator's food items ordered to not DISAPPEAR apparently all fall into the dreaded category of "Feature Requests."
"[The System] was not designed to have individuals add tips," he told me in an email this afternoon. He has explained to me, and I am trying to understand, that when he designed Group Ordering, despite that he allows for each individual to enter a credit card number, that it was never expected that each individual would be responsible for their own tip.
Run that past me again, brother?
Rather, I should see tipping as a "new" feature request. I need to evolve while he intelligently designs.
Right now, and Powerflash 5000 series users take notice, here is what a Group Order has got going on:
First, the ADMINISTRATOR (for lack of a better term -- this is the person that starts a group order and manages the invitation list) begins the order by logging in to their account and selecting a list to invite to the order or create a new list.
special note- the administrator must include themselves in the list or they will not see their name as a choice in the drop down list of "who is this for" when they are ordering their item. However the administrator should then ignore the email they get that invites them to their own order.
Then the Administrator selects a restaurant or restaurants, types any special message to send to the invitees, sets the delivery time and date and clicks "create group order invitation." This sends out emails to all their lunch buddies and advances the administrator to the menu area to select their item or items. Once the admin selects their items they will see a total with tax added in and can click "checkout" which sends them right to the confirmation page.
This confirmation page shows a summary of what they ordered, what it cost and how they paid as well as where it will be delivered to.
What this confirmation page DOES NOT tell them is that when the order closes out 55 minutes before delivery, the items they ordered will VANISH FROM THIS EARTH NEVER TO BE SEEN AGAIN. Yep, Powerflash will simply delete every item the admin ordered.
So, you'd think that at least the admin's card would not be charged for their order. Well, you'd be a little bit right and you'd be a little bit wrong. Read on and find out just what the admin gets to pay for...
Now, over in the cubicles, Layla, Chris, Debbie and Marcus have all gotten their group email invitations (if they remembered to put your domain on their safe senders list) or dug them out of their junk mailboxes. Each is placing their orders and each is entering their own credit cards.
But, what is this? Why is each total a couple of cents short of ITEM+TAX? It seems that each total is a couple of pennies short of a correctly calculated total after tax. In fact, for some reason powerflash seems to have simply shaved one to two cents off of everyone's tax.
Once all participants have ordered we can look at the parked order on our dispatch screen and see all the items and the affiliated names of the lunch buddies. However, now Powerflash has CHANGED their totals to the correctly calculated totals and.. at this point.. everything looks beautiful -- you've got a nice order pending and the sky is georgeous and blue --as blue as blood before before you get punctured and it gets exposed to air.
So, time expires and the order becomes a "placed order" on our dispatch screen. But things have changed. The admins items have gone away, the totals for the invitees have reverted to just shy of correct and the odd 12 cents or so that has been collectively undercharged to each individual is applied to the admins credit card.
Was it that time had passed? Was the ultimate insult to the administrator- the erasing of their lunch items and the charging of other peoples tax - a function of an evolving order over time that slowly morphs taxation and the existence of food or was it the result of a greater intelligent design?
