After our recent experience working with a virtual assistant at Sunday, we moved on to trying out GetFriday.

The experience didn’t start out well; my new assistant didn’t contact me until halfway through my first day of billing (after I wrote his supervisor asking if I would be able to get any work done since I was already paying for service). I received a call later from my assistant sounding quite annoyed about said email. Still, I tried to think positive…Similar to our test for Sunday, I started with three tasks for my new assistant.

The Tasks

1. Please find a local mover who is able to affordably move just one couch and one chair from our home in SE Portland to our business studio in SE Portland (this is a distance of 5 miles). We are hoping to spend $60 or less. Craigslist (http://www.craigslist.org) may be a good resource for this. We would like the mover to do this work Wednesday, Thursday or Friday of this week if possible. If you find a mover that fits this criteria, please set-up the appointment and let me know when I need to meet them at the house (morning from 8am to 10am would be best).

It appears that my assistant went to Craigslist and put 6 movers into a spreadsheet (many of them not meeting my basic criteria) and sent them to me with the following note:

Hope you are going well today.  I have found some of the movers from craigslist.  I was not able to contact them because our phone lines here are down.  I have attached all the findings on the spreadsheet please have a look at it and advice.

I wrote back and advised that, when the phone lines were up, my assistant should finish the assigned task. I also asked how often the phone lines went down there since this occurring often would put a major kink in my desire to have him call and transcribe my voicemail each day. No response to that inquiry. When I asked again about the phone lines, my assistant noted that this doesn’t happen often and the lines would be up in a matter of days. This was Monday. As of today, the task still hasn’t been finished.

2. Using Quickbooks Online, please run a profit and loss report for August, 2008 and the year 2008 to date. Also, I would like to see a list of customers who have overdue invoices or time that has not been billed yet.

Even after sending my assistant log-ins on two separate occasions, we had quite a bit of back and forth to get him to be able to log-in to our system. He did ultimately send the reports, but the time wasted in getting these from him was much more than running the reports myself. I don’t believe this would have happened with the Sunday service since they have a handy online account administration area where one is able to enter contacts, passwords, frequent flyer account information and a host of helpful information.

3. Please find a good cleaner, in Southeast Portland if possible, who uses natural and planet-friendly materials. Ideal candidate would be able to clean both work studio (monthly) and home (weekly or bi-weekly).

This was the one task that my Sunday assistant got right, so I wanted to see how it went with GetFriday (even though I am happy with the service Sunday found for us). As phone lines are down, my assistant sent me a spreadsheet of cleaners, many of which I know will not clean both my home and office because they had already told Sunday so. I am guessing the phone lines cleared up some time last night because I started getting calls from cleaners around dinner time. It appears that my assistant called each of them and gave them my name and number to call me.

The Skinny

Most of my time spent with GetFriday has been an absolute waste. I am in the extremely frustrating process of attempting to cancel my account with them as I am still in my 7-day trial period. Overall, GetFriday makes Sunday look like a godsend.