TaskRabbit. I kept expecting there to be something wrong with it. There just isn’t. You set up a suitably-customizable task (I’ve used it to get groceries delivered and IKEA furniture assembled) and people bid on it trying to hit under your hidden maximum. You pay through the site after they do the job. Lovely bit of economy-flattening.
My experience was meh at best. Taskrabbit wasn’t available in DC until pretty recently, so I only used it for research tasks. One of them gave me what I needed in a convenient way but was sloppy about it (looked up things in DC but not equally close ones in Maryland, and didn’t account for time zones when sending me calendar invitations, which I found out by showing up an hour late for an appointment).
Others seemed like they didn’t read the task description very closely, and looked for things satisfying their preferences, not my stated preferences (for example, I said I cared more about saving time than money, and they recommended a service done by students where the main draw is that it’s cheap and supervised by experienced professionals).
And one used Yelp to look stuff up and made phone calls that weren’t answered, and gave up instead of sending emails or trying again or trying a different search method.
So I spent some money, but didn’t save much time or effort. Probably it’s better for tasks like “Bring object X from point A to point B.”
UPDATE: “bring groceries to my house” is now a specialty of Instacart. “Assemble my furniture” turned out okay, though “put privacy film on my windows” didn’t, nor did “mail a bunch of books for me.” Oddly, “make me a Superintelligence costume” turned out well.
Thank you. I bookmarked this after this thread and just found occasion to use it (successfully); I was more inclined to try it on the recommendation of someone here.
I think a lot of the price of any task is the coming-and-going, so it’s better if you want a bunch of things grabbed/handled than if you just want one thing. We got our dining room table, eight chairs, sofa, bookshelf, and end table assembled for $88 (and that would have included the coffee table too if it hadn’t turned out to be damaged when the rabbit opened the box so we had to get it exchanged).
TaskRabbit. I kept expecting there to be something wrong with it. There just isn’t. You set up a suitably-customizable task (I’ve used it to get groceries delivered and IKEA furniture assembled) and people bid on it trying to hit under your hidden maximum. You pay through the site after they do the job. Lovely bit of economy-flattening.
Exec. It’s TaskRabbit on demand, no bidding, flat $25/hr plus expenses for whatever you need done. (Minimum 45 minutes)
My experience was meh at best. Taskrabbit wasn’t available in DC until pretty recently, so I only used it for research tasks. One of them gave me what I needed in a convenient way but was sloppy about it (looked up things in DC but not equally close ones in Maryland, and didn’t account for time zones when sending me calendar invitations, which I found out by showing up an hour late for an appointment).
Others seemed like they didn’t read the task description very closely, and looked for things satisfying their preferences, not my stated preferences (for example, I said I cared more about saving time than money, and they recommended a service done by students where the main draw is that it’s cheap and supervised by experienced professionals).
And one used Yelp to look stuff up and made phone calls that weren’t answered, and gave up instead of sending emails or trying again or trying a different search method.
So I spent some money, but didn’t save much time or effort. Probably it’s better for tasks like “Bring object X from point A to point B.”
Yeah, I’ve mostly used it for “bring groceries to my house” and “assemble my furniture”.
Those seem like they’d be harder to misunderstand, and less tempting to cut corners on.
UPDATE: “bring groceries to my house” is now a specialty of Instacart. “Assemble my furniture” turned out okay, though “put privacy film on my windows” didn’t, nor did “mail a bunch of books for me.” Oddly, “make me a Superintelligence costume” turned out well.
Thank you. I bookmarked this after this thread and just found occasion to use it (successfully); I was more inclined to try it on the recommendation of someone here.
Is is convenient, but it is too expensive for me. I wanted somebody to pick up cheeseboard for me and the cheapest anyone would do it for was $30-ish.
I think a lot of the price of any task is the coming-and-going, so it’s better if you want a bunch of things grabbed/handled than if you just want one thing. We got our dining room table, eight chairs, sofa, bookshelf, and end table assembled for $88 (and that would have included the coffee table too if it hadn’t turned out to be damaged when the rabbit opened the box so we had to get it exchanged).
See above recommendation of Exec