Show HN: Go Go Quincy - Tech Help for Older Adults
We started three years ago, after my grandfather clicked on a phishing link for what he thought was a fraudulent charge on his credit card statement and put in his card info. It cost my family ~$3,000.
This is surprisingly common — over 300,000 Americans were victims of phishing scams last year, and a huge amount of those victims are older adults.
To safely use technology and to avoid scams, older adults typically rely on their children and grandchildren to help support them, as I’m sure many here on HN are familiar with.
Older adults are way more comfortable calling a real person than sifting through help docs, or using fully automated software, but most companies steer their users away from real live phone support as much as possible. For people who aren’t as tech-savvy, it can be really hard to work through those site experiences and get help.
Our mission is to provide that live help for any website, email, or general tech help that older adults need. When a senior enters their phone number on our site, we call them in around 30 seconds to assist.
We’ve helped thousands of older adults already, and some of the most common reasons people call are to check if an email is trustworthy, for help navigating a website, or for assistance with setting up devices like printers. This even extends to shopping, ensuring a website is safe, and understanding telehealth options.
We’re starting to work on building more software here, to automatically address the most common reasons people come to us for help that I mentioned above and get people even faster help, but ultimately we’ll always have the phone support — and make it super easy to call us — to handle the more complex cases.
While I know this isn’t the typical Show HN with a huge focus on impressive software, I hope it still resonates, and I’d really love to hear any ideas, personal experiences, and feedback from the community.