I decided to try out the new AI assistant feature that costs $20 per month. The marketing said it could help with online shopping and making reservations. I wanted to see if it actually works.
What I Expected vs Reality
The ads made it sound like this AI helper could browse websites and buy things for you. But after testing it for hours, I found out it mostly just reads Wikipedia and gets blocked by real shopping sites.
Sites That Didn’t Work:
Amazon kept showing error pages
Best Buy, Walmart, and Target all blocked it
Couldn’t book any hotels or flights
Most modern websites just don’t work with it
What Actually Worked:
Reading Wikipedia articles
Looking at some basic government websites
Making slide presentations about why it failed
Technical Problems I Found
The system tries to use two different ways to browse the web, but both get stopped by security systems on shopping sites. There’s supposed to be an API connection feature but it’s turned off with no explanation.
The worst part is how much it costs to run. One task ran for almost 20 minutes just repeating the same failed attempts. You can’t even see how much you’re spending while it runs.
Bottom Line
For $20 a month, you get a system that can’t actually shop, book trips, or make reservations anywhere that matters. It just burns through your credits trying the same failed approaches over and over.
Oof, that’s rough but not surprising. These AI companies keep hyping features that don’t exist yet. $20/month for Wikipedia reading is basically a scam. Can’t handle basic timeouts or show spending? Major red flags - sounds like they shipped beta software and called it finished. Most shopping sites actively block this stuff anyway, so why even advertise it?
I’ve been testing AI tools for work and yeah, this matches what I’ve seen - tons of overpromised features. The gap between what they claim and what actually works is annoying, but expected when everything gets rushed out. Most e-commerce sites have solid bot detection because of scrapers, so any AI hitting those sites will get blocked instantly. That cost structure sounds sketchy too - no way to see what you’re spending in real time? I bailed on similar services once I realized I was paying premium for fancy Google searches. It’s telling that their presentation stuff works but the actual shopping doesn’t. They clearly built it for demos, not real use. Did customer support admit these issues exist, or are they still selling it as a shopping tool?
Same here with AI subscription services lately. The whole industry’s pushing half-baked features that aren’t ready for real use. Your discovery about dual browsing methods getting blocked makes total sense - major retailers beefed up security to stop automated browsing after last year’s scraping boom. I tested something similar with a different provider and hit the exact same walls on those sites. That 20-minute credit burn is especially annoying since it shows their timeout handling sucks. You’re basically paying for their system to fail repeatedly at the same task without learning anything. And disabling basic API connections without explanation? What are you even getting for that monthly fee? Have you tried getting a refund since the features don’t match what they advertised?