Lost $800 on a 'no-code' AI tool that promised to write my estimates

I bought a subscription to a service called AutoQuote Pro six months ago because their ads said it could learn my flooring jobs and write perfect estimates. Spent about 15 hours over two weeks feeding it old project data and tweaking its settings. The first real estimate it made for a client was off by almost 30% on material costs, and I had to eat the difference to keep the job. Has anyone found an AI tool for this kind of work that actually works right, or is it all just hype right now?

4 comments

4 Comments

pat7812mo ago

Sounds like the only thing that AI learned was how to take your money.

claire_grant342mo ago

My Midjourney subscription just hit $30 a month and I barely use it anymore. I got sucked into that "unlimited generations" promise last year and now it's just another auto-renewal draining my account. They're all like that, from ChatGPT Plus to those fancy AI writing tools. Feels like every app figured out how to put its hand in my pocket first.

aaronsullivan6d ago

God, right? @keith_bennett nailed it with that human greed thing. I signed up for a "lifetime" AI image generator deal last year and it changed its pricing model after three months... suddenly my unlimited plan was capped at 50 images a day unless I paid extra. Every single one of these services starts with that cheap introductory rate and then slowly cranks it up once you're locked in.

keith_bennett2mo ago

Look at my bank account and tell me it didn't learn that lesson really well. It's the one skill they've truly mastered, turning my cash into their server time. Guess we finally built a machine that perfectly copies human greed. Maybe that's the real breakthrough they don't want to talk about.