Dropped $200 on an AI scheduling tool that ruined my week

I paid for this fancy AI route optimizer for my pest control trucks last month and it kept sending two vans to the same house 40 miles apart. Wasted half a day on the phone with support getting nowhere before I just went back to my sticky notes. Anyone else get burned by automated crap that's supposed to make life easier?

2 comments

2 Comments

murray.spencer7d ago

...which is kind of why I'm not surprised anymore. My buddy runs a little landscaping crew and he bought one of those AI scheduling apps last summer. Three days later he had two crews show up at the same house in different towns because the system thought they were the same job. He spent more time fixing the mess than if he'd just used a whiteboard. Meanwhile the company kept saying "the algorithm is learning" like that was supposed to make up for losing a half day of work. He finally just had his wife color code some spreadsheets and never looked back.

reesemoore7d ago

@murray.spencer that "algorithm is learning" line drives me nuts lol. I had a similar thing with a "smart" inventory tracker for my small plumbing supply shop - it kept ordering triple the pipe fittings we needed and leaving us dry on the basic stuff. After two weeks of that nonsense I just went back to my notebook and highlighter too.