WASHINGTON: One woman outsourced the breaking off a relationship. A man sought bidders to clean his ears, and found someone highly qualified.
Both turned to a new breed of US company that harnesses the worldwide web to get someone else to take on the difficult and tedious tasks in life or the little things that never seem to get done during a packed working day.
“One woman called and had us break up with someone for her. I assume it was a break-up because we cancelled a date on her behalf and sent the guy her regards,” Steve Ludmer of AskSunday.com, one of the new life-facilitator service companies, said.
AskSunday was founded around one year ago by Ludmer and a partner, both of whom were “time-starved professionals” with a fantasy.
“We thought: wouldn’t it be great if we had a personal assistant ... but not the one at work, who you’re often reluctant to ask to do personal tasks for you,” Ludmer said.
Friends also liked the idea, but pulled back because they anticipated the cost of hiring an assistant would be in the thousands of dollars, Ludmer said. “So we came up with the idea of offering a pool of assistants in India who people could call or email to ask for help. With that model we can offer a very affordable rate,” Ludmer said.
When you call an AskSunday number that appears to be in Washington, New York, London or Sydney, you get patched through to Hyderabad, India. A competitor company to AskSunday — oddly called Get Friday — operates out of Bangalore, India.
Another company, Do My Stuff, operates differently: users wishing to outsource an onerous or unpalatable task post it on the site and invite bids for it. Do My Stuff has 50,000 users.
Requests include making an appointment with the doctor, a reservation at a restaurant, travel arrangements -- tasks that generally can be accomplished in around 20 minutes, over the phone or by email.
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