Blew $400 on a project management tool that promised "ai magic"

Signed up for this flashy new pm software that claimed it would auto-prioritize tasks and predict deadlines. Three weeks in and it kept flagging my completed tickets as "high risk" and suggesting I assign them to myself again. Has anyone else gotten burned by these overhyped tools with all the buzzwords?

4 comments

4 Comments

casey26812d ago

People keep saying AI is just if/then rules but that's not really accurate. Machine learning models are way more complex than that, they actually do find patterns in data. The problem is these companies slap "AI" on basic automation scripts that aren't learning anything. Real AI needs tons of good data to work right and most small businesses don't have that kind of history to feed it. You're not wrong that most of these tools are overhyped though, the marketing is way ahead of what the actual tech can do.

sandragrant16d ago

Feel your pain SO much right now. I threw good money at a "smart" CRM that was supposed to handle all my follow ups but it just kept marking my most important clients as "cold leads" and sending them automated emails that made me look like a robot. The whole "AI" thing is just a fancy word for a bunch of if/then rules that don't actually understand context. These companies slap "intelligent" on everything and charge triple because they know people are desperate for help. Wasted three months trying to "train" the system before I just went back to my old spreadsheet and a notebook. Seriously, never again with the buzzword tools unless I see REAL demos from actual users first.

aliceharris16d ago

My buddy runs a landscaping crew and bought one of those scheduling apps. It kept sending his clients texts about snow removal in July. Took him a week to realize the system couldn't tell seasons apart.

keith16416d ago

Honestly, did he check if the app had any kind of seasonal settings or manual override? I learned the hard way that most of these tools don't "learn" anything unless you babysit them constantly. My advice is to look for apps that let you set up separate schedules for each client or service type, not just a blanket calendar. It's a pain upfront but way less embarrassing than your customers getting snow removal texts in July.