Dropped $400 on an AI scheduling bot, my clients hated it

I run a small handyman crew in Portland, 6 guys on the books. Saw all the hype about AI booking tools, figured it would save me a headache. Paid $400 for a year sub, set it up to text clients and auto-fill my calendar. First week, three customers got double booked because it misread their replies. One guy showed up at a job site I wasn't even at, stood there for 20 minutes. I spent more time fixing the mistakes than I ever saved. Switched back to my old paper clipboard and a group text. Has anyone else had an AI tool make their work life worse, not better? I keep seeing ads for these things and I'm tempted to warn every small business owner I know.

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1 Comment

the_fiona22d ago

Gotta ask, is this really the AI's fault or just bad setup? I've seen people slap these tools together in an afternoon and expect magic. Six guys and a clipboard worked fine before, so what made you think a robot was gonna fix something that wasn't broken? The double booking thing sounds like it didn't have access to your actual calendar or you didn't set the timezone right. I'm not saying it's a scam, but a lot of these apps are just auto-reply templates with a pretty login page. You probably couldve got the same results with a shared Google Calendar and some common sense.