FORGET Get Friday!

After reading the 4-Hour Work Week by Timothy Ferriss, I signed up with GetFriday.

On their home page, they explained that excess demand meant they were running 3 weeks between signup and assignment of an assistant.

After waiting more than 4 weeks, I was finally assigned an assistant.

My first task was to have her create a simple 1-page website. I provided all the copy and the design template.

By the next day, I heard back from her, saying she could not complete this, but she would forward the task to the pool of in-house experts. She said she would get back to me, to let me know when I could expect to have the work completed. Fair enough.

The next communication I get from her is a bill for prorated hours for the month (since they didn't assign me an assistant until the last week of August). This email had a request for more work, specifically, "You didn't assign me any tasks yet."

Hmmm, that was a bit frustrating. Well, maybe it's just the language barrier, I thought. I replied back and asked when I could expect to have my website completed.

No answer.

A few more days passed, and I wrote again. I am STILL waiting to find out when I can expect to receive my completed task. No answer.

Today they charged my credit card for a full month's services.

Do you think I was pissed off? Not nearly as pissed as my husband.

I told him there was no problem -- the company has a 7-day trial period, and I can cancel for any reason. Seems I have reason enough, seeing as they haven't done squat except waste my time.

He decides to call them immediately. Now THAT was a waste of time!

It took him 10 minutes to get a supervisor on the phone, who turns out to be a team leader who is committed to "saving" our account (and didn't seem to have any authority whatsoever to process a refund). My husband explains in no uncertain terms (at least it seemed plain enough to me, even for a person who uses English as a second -- or third -- language) that we can not be saved, please refund our money now.

The conversation did not go well.

Apparently, it will take 3 hours to get a supervisor on the phone, which I am pretty much expecting to be another series of pleas to "give us a another chance Sir."

Bummer.

The whole thing turned out to be a colossal waste of time.

I'm not worried about my money -- I have copies of all the emails I've sent them asking for follow up, and I also have a record of all the times I called (during the 3-actually-4-week waiting period) and no one answered. If they refuse to refund my money today, I will contact my credit card to initiate a chargeback, so no worries about that.

But what's the lesson here?

For starters, it would be smart to get more than an author's recommendation before using any overseas service. I even have a friend in Alabama who tried the service -- but I didn't think to ASK HIM before I signed up. Big "duh" on my part.

Also, since I am definitely a "right now" kind of person, what on earth made me think I could stand to work with a company that could wait A MONTH to get me started?

Lessons learned.