Where are VAs at these days?

June 12, 2012 5:40 AM

Do you have any recent experience with virtual assistant companies like GetFriday and Fancy Hands?

I need someone to call companies for me occasionally to check on some contact details, and getting a VA to do it seems like the easiest option. I don't have much time to spend on this (otherwise I would just do it myself!) The reviews I can find online are mostly pretty terrible, but they're also outdated. Are places like GetFriday and AskSunday still as unreliable as they were five years ago? I need this done right the first time (and I really can't afford to have someone send me made up or outdated information. That's the whole point in calling to check on the details.)

Fancy Hands is getting good reviews, but they count every individual phone call as a 'task', which works out to $5 a call. Nice work if you can get it!

Or am I missing something? What is the best way to outsource this, without having to do anything other than send the list of names and numbers through?

Just to make it absolutely clear: I'm definitely not doing anything dodgy or annoying here by calling these people, nor am I trying to sell them anything. I have a legitimate reason for getting in touch and for wanting my written communications to reach the right person the first time. Hence the need for a phone call first.

posted by rubbish bin night to Grab Bag (1 answer total)

I've used Fancy Hands recently, and while it's not cheap they were reliable and remarkably thorough. Maybe you can email them and work out a deal so every single call isn't a separate task? One of the tasks I gave them was something like "Find a professional in my area that specializes in this thing and what it would cost for a consult" and they made almost 30 calls for me. And that was one task. So maybe there's some way to phrase it so it's not so expensive?

I would really love it if you could pay on a per-task basis instead of a whole month at a time, personally.
posted by TallulahBankhead at 7:35 AM on June 13, 2012