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Comment by GrumpySimon | Hacker News Reader

From their website: "Fancy Hands can purchase things for you. Yep, if you ask us to buy toner cartridges, lunch, or tickets, we can handle it.

First off, security is our number one priority with this feature and it's totally baked in from the start. At no point, does your assistant, or anybody else at Fancy Hands have access to your credit card number. Not bad, right? You don't have to worry about a rogue assistant using your credit card information, they'll never know it (plus, we don't have any rogue assistants)."

http://www.fancyhands.com/help/payments

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Although... "While we can make purchases for you, we cannot do certain things including reservations (at hotels, etc), and airplane tickets."

So fancyhands couldn't have helped the writer of the blogpost with his airplane ticket problem

They could set up the itinerary for him to purchase quickly.

I've had corporate travel services place tickets on a 24 hour hold for me before (i.e. the itinerary is reserved, but not yet paid for). I assume that's still possible, at least for the legacy carriers.

Continental used to have that, but dropped it shortly before the United merger. I think other companies did too. Instead, they let you cancel with no cancellation fee within 24 hours. (Although the funds may take up to two weeks to go back to your account).

So essentially, FancyHands can book it for you with their card, and cancel it if they can't charge you within 24 hours - but I wouldn't be surprised if they don't want to go that route.

American Airlines still has this feature (or at least it did last night when I was making a booking) Edit: By this feature, I mean the ability to place a hold without the credit card.

United still has this feature. Choose "pay at the airport" and then just go back and pay online within 24 hours.

But they can certainly help find the best options for your travel so that you can go there and buy yourself.

That's what takes the most time, once you have that, just go and buy. Sure, having someone that could do everything would be good.

But you could do that with a travel agent.

As a potential customer, I for one would be scared off by the sloppy writing in the very paragraph that is supposed to inspire confidence (stray comma after "At no point"; awkward comma between the two clauses "You don't have to worry..." and "they'll never know it").

Oh brother. This "they messed this one thing up so they must be idiots" is already a way for the simple minded to be able to feel superior about something useless, but in this case you're not even correct. Go read some Mark Twain. That guy must have been a moron, right?

Quod licet Iovi non licet bovi.

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