With Fancy Hands, how do you deal with tasks (such as buying tickets) that require the use of your credit card, password, account info etc.
If there is a solution, they should mention it on their front page because I'm sure half the people who go there ask themselves: "Wouldn't I have to give my credit card info to complete strangers for this to be useful?"
This seems to be the weak link with these services.
From their website: "Fancy Hands can purchase things for you. Yep, if you ask us to buy toner cartridges, lunch, or tickets, we can handle it.
First off, security is our number one priority with this feature and it's totally baked in from the start. At no point, does your assistant, or anybody else at Fancy Hands have access to your credit card number. Not bad, right? You don't have to worry about a rogue assistant using your credit card information, they'll never know it (plus, we don't have any rogue assistants)."
I've had corporate travel services place tickets on a 24 hour hold for me before (i.e. the itinerary is reserved, but not yet paid for). I assume that's still possible, at least for the legacy carriers.
Continental used to have that, but dropped it shortly before the United merger. I think other companies did too. Instead, they let you cancel with no cancellation fee within 24 hours. (Although the funds may take up to two weeks to go back to your account).
So essentially, FancyHands can book it for you with their card, and cancel it if they can't charge you within 24 hours - but I wouldn't be surprised if they don't want to go that route.
American Airlines still has this feature (or at least it did last night when I was making a booking)
Edit: By this feature, I mean the ability to place a hold without the credit card.
As a potential customer, I for one would be scared off by the sloppy writing in the very paragraph that is supposed to inspire confidence (stray comma after "At no point"; awkward comma between the two clauses "You don't have to worry..." and "they'll never know it").
Oh brother. This "they messed this one thing up so they must be idiots" is already a way for the simple minded to be able to feel superior about something useless, but in this case you're not even correct. Go read some Mark Twain. That guy must have been a moron, right?
So this can be confusing. We can definitely purchase things for you. Want us to order flowers? Have someone come install your air conditioner? No problem, we can even handle the payment for most things.
However, we do this by billing you securely (just like iTunes, etc), and then letting the assistants use "the company card." So the assistant won't actually handle your credit card information, but we can still make these purchases for you.
So users never have to expose their Credit Card information to their assistants. The assistant will never ask for it. If you need us to do something that actually requires knowing your entire credit card number for some reason, that's the type of thing we can't do. But making purchases doesn't fall under that umbrella.
I mean if the flowers cost $60 (from the florist), how much would they cost the client via your service? I mean outside of the normal cost for using the service.
Essentially what I'm asking is if there is a "service fee" on purchases?
Nope, at this point, we don't take any percentage or fee. We even pass along any discounts we receive (we get up to 15% off flower some purchases for example and we pass that along to you).
Hi, looks like an interesting service! I've already sent it to a bunch of my friends who I think can get a lot of value out of it.
Unfortunately, I don't think I could extract $25/mo out of the service myself. Do you have any plans for alternative pricing structures? I would definitely pay $100 for a block of 20 requests that I could use over the course of a year, say.
I was thinking along the same lines. I'd much rather 'pre pay' for tasks than have a monthly limit. Else i'll have to think if a task is worthwhile enough to use up one of my 5 tasks. And i would hate to run out of task slots some months but just not often enough to warrant an upgrade.
I doubt they would implement something like this. Their business model is likely built on a) having regular income and b) many users not using all their tasks per month (i.e. paying for something they aren't using). It's the same reason services like Dropbox don't offer a pay-for-what-you-use plan - the majority of their income comes from people paying the set monthly fees but not using anywhere near the maximum storage/bandwidth.
Sure, but there's no reason you can't offer a non-monthly plan at the true operating cost * 1.(your markup). It might be slightly (or vastly) more expensive per request than the monthly plan, but guys like me would still buy 20 or 30, instead of having no revenue from us at all...
Its actually very funny, to me, that you suggested this.
In my previous job, this was precisely the structure the firm evolved to give to certain customers who were on the fence about the service. (B2B - financial Services)
We had one tweak to it, and once people used it, they never got out.
It looks like the HN bot killed tedroden's comment because it might have looked like a spammy promotion (e.g. we get up to 15% off flower purchases), though clearly it wasn't.
Here's the whole comment:
Nope, at this point, we don't take any percentage or fee. We even pass along any discounts we receive (we get up to 15% off flower some purchases for example and we pass that along to you).
Interesting - one more question : If I do not live in the US, can I still purchase for some item and have it shipped where I live (international shipping?) provided I pay for the delivery costs? Is that something you do ?
From the site it seems like they are setup reasonably well for international customers but since all the staff is in the US some things like calling them or having them call people will be less than ideal. Also i can imagine that they have some partners and go-to solutions setup for requests in the US which they simply would not have for european customers.
The website is confusing. They can buy things for you. I'm not sure how it works exactly (but I used it to signup for a $30 race).. I think they billed it to their own credit card and will charge me for it at the end of the month?
I am probably reacting too quickly, but I note about 3 other places (not including the sibling comment to this one) where people have asked you whether or not you charge a markup and purchases, and you've not answered.
Granted, it's only been an hour, but that silence doesn't make me feel good.
Nope, at this point, we don't take any percentage or fee. We even pass along any discounts we receive (we get up to 15% off flower some purchases for example and we pass that along to you).
If there is a solution, they should mention it on their front page because I'm sure half the people who go there ask themselves: "Wouldn't I have to give my credit card info to complete strangers for this to be useful?"
This seems to be the weak link with these services.