Delegating Tasks on the Cheap While Traveling (Review of Fancy Hands)

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A review of Fancy Hands

My April travel calendar was crazy.  I spent twice as many nights in a Hyatt than I spent in my own home.  And that wasn’t the only hotel property stayed at this month.

While rushing from place to place, it gets hard to keep up with random small tasks that need to be done.  Especially ones that involve sitting on hold for a while.

I’d been thinking about the whole virtual assistant thing.  I did a lot of research and confirmed that I don’t need a virtual assistant.  I just needed help with random tasks that I wasn’t able to get done.

Then I came across Fancy Hands, a task-based “assistant” that you can delegate simple tasks to.

I started out by giving Fancy Hands a task that I’d been having trouble accomplishing in order to test the limits.

I moved in January and I keep sending my cancellation notice to my parking garage and they kept continuing to charge me.  Even though I was responding to the same e-mail chain, they were insisting I never cancelled each month and I was worried they were going to send me to collections (since I refused to pay).

I delegated this to Fancy Hands.

A half-hour later….

 

Whoa!  The first task they completed for me relieved a ton of stress.

I also learned you can name your “assistant” since you have multiple people working on your tasks.

I chose…. Babs Callahan.

Then I started assigning tasks like crazy:

1. Find out my Wall Street Journal subscription numbers and call them to adjust it

2. Call US Airways and add the FF numbers and trusted traveler numbers for people I’m traveling with in the future.

3. Figure out what this random charge on my credit card is

4. Make a few appointments I’d been meaning to make

5. Figure out when my coworker would be in town next and could have drinks or breakfast (even though  could do that by asking her out loud.)

They were all done within an hour.  Sweet!

My co-worker got a kick out of getting an email from Babs:

I started out with the top tier plan because I had so many tasks that had added up.  Now that I ran through all of them, I don’t know if I would need the top tier service.  (But at the end of them month, their tasks roll over).

25 tasks are $65, 15 tasks for $45 and 5 tasks for $25

Being able to immediately delegate a task I can’t handle as I’m running from flight-to-flight has been priceless.

Some other common requests Fancy Hands lists:

• Call Allen Car Service and have them pick me up at home tomorrow at 7am in an SUV and take me to Laguardia. We’ll need a car seat for an infant. There will be 3 of us, and 4 bags.
• Can you call around and find a place close to zip 10009 that has the new iPad in stock? I need one by this weekend!
• Can you call the post office and find my package? Here’s the tracking number. When I look it up online, it says there’s a delivery problem. Please see if you can have it located and re-delivered.
• Find me a a few different dog walker options in SE Portland. I’m looking to have my two dachshunds walked 3 times a week. What are their prices and schedule flexibilities?
• Can you email my friend Amanda and tell her that we can go on that tour any Saturday at 3pm, and ask her what Saturday works best for her? Then book the tour for the two of us and add it to my calendar.
• I need to find five boxes of Andrea #45 hair color. They sell them at Ricky’s. Can you find a close one to my house that has them in stock and see if they’ll hold them for me to pick up tomorrow?
• Can you call Time Warner cable and cancel Showtime for me? Here’s my account number, but if you need to patch me in to verify my security details, please call me at home.
• I’m looking for Mirror Pond Beer, but they don’t sell it here in NYC. Can you find a place that will ship it, and have a case sent to my office?

Fancy Hands can purchase things for you and manage your calendar, but it is all done through a system where your assistants don’t have direct access to your account, see your passwords, or see your credit cards.

Unfortunately, I think asking them to go through a reward mall when sending your  mother flowers is out of the question 😉  (But I may try)  ((don’t worry, mom, I really sent those flowers to you))

Edit: Someone just let me know my affiliate link gives 50% off.  Sweet!

Disclaimer:  If you use my Fancy Hands link to sign up, I will get affiliate credit towards my subscription.  But I have not received anything for free from them, pay for my subscription, and they did not ask me nor do they know I am writing this review.