Errands and Everyday Bookings

The errands bot

You might give these to your scheduling bot from Chapter 2, since many of them end up on the calendar. Or you might make a separate errands bot.

Restaurant bookings

The bot checks reservation sites and restaurant pages, and comes back with options. Each with the time available, a line about the place, the price range and a link.

Rides

Getting a ride to the airport, a ride home after a night out, a ride for a relative. A bot can check prices and times on ride apps, or help you book a taxi.

Package tracking

When several orders are on the way, the bot keeps track. It reads the shipping emails, checks tracking and gives you a short list in your morning brief.

Returns

We covered returns in Chapter 4. The errands bot is where they live day to day.

Home services

Finding a plumber, an electrician, a cleaner or someone to fix the dishwasher takes a lot of searching, calling and comparing.

Car service

Car service is a classic forgotten errand. The bot can track when the car's due, based on the date or the mileage you tell it.

Kids and school

For families, school brings a constant stream of forms, events and deadlines. The bot can read school emails, pull out the dates and tasks and add them to the calendar.

Government errands

Renewing a passport, a driver's license or a health card. Updating your address.

Keeping errands from piling up

The trick with errands is catching them when they come up. Whenever you think of one, tell the bot.

Walkthrough: finding a plumber

• The Parks' kitchen tap was dripping and getting worse.
• They asked the errands bot for three licensed plumbers nearby, with good recent reviews, who could come this week.
• The bot listed four, with reviews, any listed rates and their contact pages.
• The Parks checked the license of the two they liked using their province's online lookup.

What went wrong: the unofficial site

When the Parks first asked about renewing a driver's license, the top search result was a site that charged a "processing fee" on top of the government fee. The bot had linked it.

A worked example: the birthday

The Parks' kid had a birthday coming up. The errands bot added a reminder three weeks ahead, found three party venues nearby with prices and open dates, drafted an invitation for the Parks to send to other parents and made a shopping list for the party bag.

A worked example: the car service

The Parks' car was due for service, though nobody remembered exactly when. The errands bot found the last service invoice in their email, read the mileage and date and worked out roughly when the next one was due from what the invoice said.

Questions people ask

Is it worth using a bot for tiny errands? Often, yes, because they add up.