Hark Pro, an AI personal assistant app, surged to the top of the App Store’s Lifestyle chart in October with an agentic ordering promotion that promised $1 million in free pizza but left a few hundred people with unexpected charges.
The October 16 promotion offered $30 in DoorDash credit to users who downloaded the app and asked Hark to order a free pizza. Less than nine hours after the start-up posted about the promotion on social media, the company posted on X that the pizza party had concluded, bringing with it “lots of learnings along the way.”
Hark provided nearly 20,000 free pizzas, according to a company spokesperson, who said an “incredible surge” in demand exposed a bottleneck in applying promotional gift cards.
The spokesperson attributed the unexpected charges to a payment workflow created specifically for the promotion, rather than the underlying AI technology. The promotional workflow used a checkout button showing a $0 payment, the spokesperson said.
Hark Pro, an AI personal assistant app, orchestrated the delivery of nearly 20,000 free pizzas following an October 16 agentic ordering promotion.
“When the gift cards didn’t apply in time, a few hundred people were initially charged,” the Hark spokesperson said. “We believe we’ve taken care of everyone. We’ve given $100 gift cards to anyone who was charged. We’ve also shared $30 gift cards with people who had any general issue redeeming the offer.”
While the Hark team worked to address the issue and compensate users who were unintentionally charged when ordering free pizzas, dozens of comments from disgruntled orderers accumulated beneath the promotion’s initial post, many of which included screenshots showing reported ordering problems.
One such comment came from the account of Naial Casanovas Mack, founder of e-commerce logistics startup DroppUp: “Gift card didn’t redeem and it just ordered it on my card. … I want my refund for this.”
Despite the technical difficulties, the Hark spokesperson described the promotion’s response as incredible.
“[Hark] saw a surge in new signups above our baseline,” the Hark spokesperson said. “A vast majority have remained active. Usage of Hark Pro continues to grow significantly because the platform works.”
In an October 17 post, Hark CEO Brett Adcock echoed that sentiment of optimism despite the unexpected challenges.
“Usage surged to unprecedented levels and many things broke on our end,” Adcock posted. … “We delivered thousands of Friday night pizzas fully end to end—logins, computer use, payment. Over 203,500 browser sessions were run via our model Handoff.”
Later that day, Adcock posted a screenshot showing Hark Pro at the top of the lifestyle apps chart on the Apple App Store.
Hark has updated its internal processes to handle dramatic spikes in demand, according to a company spokesperson.
“Obviously, we hate to have let anyone down and we’ve made updates on how we handle peak surge requests,” the spokesperson said, adding, “We’ll own up to our errors and make them right.”
