robwebb2k

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.