He had spent five months trying to get a refund from a Chinese peptide website, and his own reports to the seller never went through. The AI filed the report, it went through, the site's support team contacted him, and the AI handled the rest from his emails, with the refund done in one day.
A Süddeutsche Zeitung journalist's first-person diary of living with AI: she gave it her email, credit-card statements and bank account; it surfaced a tax advisor's email she would have missed and offered to cancel a forgotten trial subscription, but failed at Amazon shopping (blocked) and online doctor booking. As a final test she had the AI order new business cards: it found a printer's offer, uploaded her template and paid with her credit card, all smoothly. Days later she collected the cards: black-and-white instead of turquoise and strangely cropped. Not usable.
This one went wrong. See what happened before you try it.
A renter hit with an Enterprise damage claim had the AI dissect the claim and draft a dispute email built entirely on its evidence gaps - photos with no timestamps and no walkthrough record showing damage. Enterprise replied the next day saying the claim was closed.
A man runs agents called Pi on a VPS behind a small app he had them build. One listens to a WhatsApp group and spots bills, a second Pi with DeepSeek reads each bill, pulls out the amount, due date and reference, and updates the database, and a merge step clears duplicates.
A man looking for a new cooker has an AI running on a virtual machine keeping an eye on prices for him. The agent created its own scheduled job that runs the price checks and messages him if anything interesting has happened since the last check.
The AI watches Poshmark and Vinted every two hours for authentic vintage Olga nightgowns, negotiates with sellers and buys on the user's approval, landing pieces at $20, $50 and $65.
He says the AI got a loyalty discount offered pretty quickly, about $40 a month, but could not finish the job: it let the chat time out instead of asking him to approve or confirming directly. Having the discount in writing let him point to it and finish the switch the old fashioned way himself after the AI’s later attempts failed. He still counts the $40 a month as saved.
$40a month
This only partly worked. Worth knowing before you try it.
Creator Leslie Samuel has the AI manage his Facebook Marketplace selling. When a buyer asked the dresser's dimensions, the AI relayed the question to him, sent his answer to the buyer, and she bought it the next day. The AI also reports inquiries per listing and reminded him of two year-old listings he had forgotten, deleting them after his approval. He has listed three items this way in a week: one sold, one pending pickup.
The AI pursued a refund for a defective product by claiming on the extended warranty attached to the user's Amex card, rather than the retailer's return window.
Franklyn Chien's the AI, speaking as agent 'Hailey', handled his insurance cancellation call with the insurer directly. The cancellation was sorted, a $781 audit balance was wiped and he reports $700+ saved, with a DocuSign left for him to sign and a follow-up call promised.