I’ve recently been dabbling with a new service called Ask Sunday (recently written up on VentureBeat) which offers outsourced/offshored personal assistant services. Apparently they have a team of 35 people in India with computers and VOIP ready to perform tasks for folks who are willing to pay their reasonable rates. They currently have two packages: 30 tasks/month for $29 and 50 tasks/month for $49. 
Apparently they’ll do anything that can be done with a computer and/or phone: book tickets, make reservations, research dry cleaners, give wake-up calls, etc.
I very well may become regular user if I can figure out how to harness them for busy work I do throughout the day. Restaurant reservations and tee times seem like a great usages – save the time of finding the number and potentially waiting on hold yourself. Unfortunately I don’t go out to eat or play golf too often. I’m not sure how comfortable I will be with giving them discretion in tasks (e.g.: choosing a flight) so I’m going stick with research and non-discretionary tasks in the beginning…
Competitors are Pullhorse, Circles, VirCierge, GetFriday (run by Your Man in India (YMII)), Brickwork, DoMyStuff, as well as CraigsList, and ThemBid to some extent, but it seems like Ask Sunday beats them all on price/flexibility right now. Their prices do seem quite low. Hopefully they aren’t planning on getting people hooked on the services and raising the rates…
Anyone know of any similar services? Anyone know which service the 4-hour work week guy used? (Edit 1: looks like he used Brickwork for work tasks and YMII for personal.)
Edit 2: Sounds like YMII/GetFriday is busy – from their website: “Due to the sudden increase in business, GetFriday is currently experiencing a shortage of resources, Until further notice, there will be a three-week waiting period between signing up and the start of service. We can’t take on clients instantly anymore without sacrificing our quality. We apologize for any inconvenience caused. Please bear with us while we ramp up.”
Edit 3: I linked to this above – hilarious and worth reading.
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October 19, 2007 at 3:34 pm
I was looking for a little help myself and found these guys too. I learned about them from reading the LA Times. While I like the idea of sending in my requests and having people do the work for me, I didn’t like the idea of outsourcing to India. I was with Quintessentially for a while and have now moved to Red Butler. Their extensive staff is located within the United States and they do a terrific job.
October 20, 2007 at 1:07 am
My girlfriend signed up for Quintessentially, she likes it but you have to pay the entire year in advance.
November 5, 2007 at 5:23 am
It seems like they have a good plan, most of the tasks are quite small ones that they offer as an introduction to outsourcing it might be a good starting point, for more serious outsourcing like th 4HWW, you need a more serious player to run your business for you.
Gavin Allinson
http://www.OutsourceSuccess.com
November 30, 2007 at 7:13 pm
i need the service in german language – can you help me ? eric
November 21, 2008 at 1:54 am
Read my complete story about this unethical company here: http://dontasksunday.blogspot.com/
May 20, 2009 at 7:05 am
Solid article.. hope to visit once again,,