[tedroden]

Hi! This is Ted Roden, Founder of Fancy Hands.

So this can be confusing. We can definitely purchase things for you. Want us to order flowers? Have someone come install your air conditioner? No problem, we can even handle the payment for most things.

However, we do this by billing you securely (just like iTunes, etc), and then letting the assistants use "the company card." So the assistant won't actually handle your credit card information, but we can still make these purchases for you.

So users never have to expose their Credit Card information to their assistants. The assistant will never ask for it. If you need us to do something that actually requires knowing your entire credit card number for some reason, that's the type of thing we can't do. But making purchases doesn't fall under that umbrella.

[UnoriginalGuy]

May I ask: How large is the markup on that?

I mean if the flowers cost $60 (from the florist), how much would they cost the client via your service? I mean outside of the normal cost for using the service.

Essentially what I'm asking is if there is a "service fee" on purchases?

[tedroden]

Nope, at this point, we don't take any percentage or fee. We even pass along any discounts we receive (we get up to 15% off flower some purchases for example and we pass that along to you).

[tych0]

Hi, looks like an interesting service! I've already sent it to a bunch of my friends who I think can get a lot of value out of it.

Unfortunately, I don't think I could extract $25/mo out of the service myself. Do you have any plans for alternative pricing structures? I would definitely pay $100 for a block of 20 requests that I could use over the course of a year, say.

[tijs]

I was thinking along the same lines. I'd much rather 'pre pay' for tasks than have a monthly limit. Else i'll have to think if a task is worthwhile enough to use up one of my 5 tasks. And i would hate to run out of task slots some months but just not often enough to warrant an upgrade.

[Wintamute]

I doubt they would implement something like this. Their business model is likely built on a) having regular income and b) many users not using all their tasks per month (i.e. paying for something they aren't using). It's the same reason services like Dropbox don't offer a pay-for-what-you-use plan - the majority of their income comes from people paying the set monthly fees but not using anywhere near the maximum storage/bandwidth.

[tych0]

Sure, but there's no reason you can't offer a non-monthly plan at the true operating cost * 1.(your markup). It might be slightly (or vastly) more expensive per request than the monthly plan, but guys like me would still buy 20 or 30, instead of having no revenue from us at all...

[intended]

Its actually very funny, to me, that you suggested this.

In my previous job, this was precisely the structure the firm evolved to give to certain customers who were on the fence about the service. (B2B - financial Services)

We had one tweak to it, and once people used it, they never got out.

[nikhilalmeida]

+1 ted. A feature request right here.

[justin0469]

I'd like something like that too

[joonix]

Aren't you losing 2-3% of the transaction every time this occurs (because of your CC fees billing me)?

[samstave]

You attach some markup to the cost of something? If so, what %?

[michaelkscott]

It looks like the HN bot killed tedroden's comment because it might have looked like a spammy promotion (e.g. we get up to 15% off flower purchases), though clearly it wasn't.

Here's the whole comment:

    Nope, at this point, we don't take any percentage or fee. We even pass along any discounts we receive (we get up to 15% off flower some purchases for example and we pass that along to you).

[ZoFreX]

I would guess it was anti-dupe code, not anti-spam; the exact same comment is posted and visible further down.

[lazyfunctor]

I love the idea. Are the services available outside US/UK?

[ekianjo]

Interesting - one more question : If I do not live in the US, can I still purchase for some item and have it shipped where I live (international shipping?) provided I pay for the delivery costs? Is that something you do ?

[kiba]

Is there a limit to how much they can spend? Can someone set the limit?

[dstorrs]

From the site: limit is $100 per transaction

[Bootvis]

How is your support for users form continental Europe?

[tijs]

From the site it seems like they are setup reasonably well for international customers but since all the staff is in the US some things like calling them or having them call people will be less than ideal. Also i can imagine that they have some partners and go-to solutions setup for requests in the US which they simply would not have for european customers.