Life/Work - Issue 36

But just how useful is the service that the folks at Circles provide? They offered to let me test it for myself. Plainly, I was likely going to get VIP treatment, but I still figured that I'd learn something. At the very least, I would get some lingering To Do items off my plate -- all in the name of research, of course.

The truth is that I went overboard -- a bit like the way some people do at all-you-can-eat breakfast buffets. On the morning that I got my password, I signed onto the Circles Web site and entered nine separate requests in less than 90 minutes, which raised a few eyebrows at the Circles call center in Boston. But, within an hour, I'd received emails from three personal assistants, letting me know that each of them was hard at work on one or more of my requests. In each case, I was told that I could expect a response within 48 hours.

In fact, the answers began arriving later that afternoon. The first news was discouraging. My first personal assistant, Laura, had found tickets for a Bruce Springsteen concert, but they were going to cost me $450 each. I asked Laura if she could find better prices for one of the other nights that he was playing. Laura also found tickets for "True West," the hottest play on Broadway, for the dates that I wanted -- simply by calling Tele-charge. I felt slightly abashed. Finally, she reported that she could have my car picked up and serviced, and that, with the $10-per-hour copayment for errands, the cost would be $35. I told her to go ahead and do that.

On Tuesday afternoon, I heard from a second assistant, Jennifer, who had five gift ideas for my cousin's newborn baby -- all available on the Web -- as well as four gift ideas for our niece's wedding. The ideas were a bit predictable, but then, I hadn't provided much specific information about the baby or the newlyweds. I handed over the lists to my wife, who thought the wedding-gift ideas were somewhat dull. But she did find a present for the baby at one of the suggested Web sites. Jennifer also found three reasonably priced pet groomers for my Portuguese water dogs, but the only convenient one declined to provide us with references. Sadly, Jennifer couldn't get me a reservation at Rao's, a unique New York restaurant in East Harlem that operates like a private club. Instead, she suggested three relatively touristy alternatives.

On Wednesday, I heard from Laura again. She had found a way for me to subscribe to the trade magazine I had in mind, and she had come up with five birthday-gift ideas for my soon-to-be 15-year-old daughter. Two of those ideas seemed promising -- a day on the town in Manhattan, which included transportation by limousine, lunch, and access to a taping of the MTV show "Total Request Live"; or a week at a basketball camp run by players and coaches of the WNBA's New York Liberty. Laura also came back with nine new choices for Springsteen tickets, with most of them in a slightly more palatable $200-per-ticket price range. She'd also found front-row seats for one Springsteen performance at $350 per ticket.

The final assistant to weigh in was Andrew, who had two suggestions for family bike trips in France this summer, both of which fit our schedule and our budget.

I didn't get every single item on my wish list, but, for $35, I got a lot of information -- and the service certainly saved me several hours' worth of work. I also suspect that the quality of service would have improved as the company got to know me better. Circles's software allows it to learn more and more about customer preferences over time, and to use that information to make more customized and more proactive suggestions. Circles insists that it won't make customer information available to anyone outside of the company, but it's still a little unnerving to think that, merely by making the requests that I did, I've turned over a great deal of information about myself. However, when I thought more about it, I realized that I had thrown caution to the wind long before on that score. With all of the information that we now send and receive over the Internet, it's hard to imagine how we retain much privacy about our spending habits or our lifestyle choices.

Convenience, however, has its drawbacks. While working for Netscape, Lynn Corsiglia, now a vice president of human resources at DoveBid.com Inc., had access to LesConcierges. "I was working long hours, and, at one point, I had them plan my eldest daughter's birthday party," Corsiglia explains. "When my daughter found out, she was furious with me. She thought that I should have done the planning myself. Those services can be helpful, but, if you're not careful, using them can send a wrong message to people in your life."