By JIM BROOKS
Hearing my
childhood hero, Star Trek's William Shatner, hawking Priceline.com's
Web site in radio spots was quite a novelty in its early days. TV
stars often become pitchmen late in their careers, I figured, and
heck, even retired starship captains need to eat.
However,
Shatner and priceline.com's relationship has endured -- to the point
that Shatner has invested heavily in the company. And Shatner
continues to hawk its products -- and even sing about them in more
recent TV spots.
Priceline's
initial premise was simple -- name your own price for airline tickets
and save money. The company quickly applied the idea to other
products: car buying and leasing, home financing, and auto rentals.
Saving money
on these services is a great idea, but heck, I don't travel enough to
worry about saving money on airline tickets and hotels. Why can't
Priceline.com offer savings on products myu family can use?
Well now they have.
Priceline
recently unveiled its "name your own price" for groceries.
The idea is a
simple one.
Users sign up
for a Priceline card that is part of Priceline's WebHouse Club.
The card
arrives in the mail, and is activated by visiting the WebHouse Web
site. After activation, the user can go "shopping" at the
Priceline Web site for grocery items.
Priceline
doesn't carry an endless variety of items in their grocery section.
The selection is limited to about 800 items.
But you'll
find the more common things that you buy on a weekly trip to the
store: milk, bread, chips, cokes, meats, soap, etc.
For each item,
the user can suggest a price they are willing to pay. Priceline
offers four pricing levels for most items. Each price level is rated
by its chances of being accepted by the grocer. The highest rating is
``great chance of getting your price.''
Shoppers pick
two or more brands that Priceline.com displays, and then the price
they are willing to pay.
Once the
selections are complete, the shopper ``checks out.''
Prices that
were ``accepted'' are charged to the users' credit or debit card.
The user then
prints out a ``shopping list'' of the prepaid groceries and goes to
the nearest participating grocery and picks up the pre-paid items. A
card issued by Priceline helps keep the totals and accounting straight.
You can even
save additional money on top of the Priceline prices by using coupons
at the store. Since your priceline groceries were prepaid, coupons
show up as credits on your debit or credit card account.
And Priceline
gives shoppers a chance to enhance their savings by earning half-price
tokens.
These tokens
are earned by trying new products and takign part in product
promotions offered through Priceline. In turn, they're redeemable
during a visit to pick up Priceline-purchased groceries, giving you
half-off your purchase price.
Penny pinchers
will easily save more than the $3 fee the program charges
participants simply by making good use of Priceline's services each month.
Two area
stores already participate in the Priceline program.
Meijers stores
in Lousville and surrounding areas, and Winn-Dixie stores, including
those in central Kentucky.
Check your
local store for details, or visit Priceline's Web site at www.priceline.com.
GASOLINE, TOO.
Priceline is also promoting its newest venture, its ``name your own
price'' program for gasoline.
Set to debut
around Memorial Day, Priceline's gasline-purchase program will
operate much its grocery program does now.
After naming
three or more gas stations, the user names the price he or she is
willing to pay for their desired grade of self-service gasonline.
If accepted,
the price is locked in and charged to the users' credit or debit card.
Using
Priceline, users essentially prepay their gasoline purchases. A
Priceline-issued gas card allows users to ``pay'' for gas purchases
from their Priceline-priced prepaid gasoline.
Users have 30
days to pump the gas they prepay. If they don't use it, they are
refunded the amount not used.
What savings
can you expect? Priceline's Web site says users can expect 10 to 20
cents per gallon. Users can purchase as much as 50 gallons of gas per
household per visit (there's a nine gallon minimum.)
The Priceline
Gas Card keeps track of the gas you buy and how much you use.
Users will
receive an e-mail receipt of each gasoline ``purchase.'' The service
is free -- other than a $3 monthly service charge.
I've signed up
for my own Priceline Gas Card, so I'll hopefully will have a report
of the money I saved using Priceline.
And who knows,
maybe I'll agree that Priceline is ``big, really big.''
MAC NEWS. If
you're one of the Macintosh faithful, then you'll be interested in
hearing about the new AOL Instant Messenger 4.0 software that's now available.
AOL's Instant
Messenger (AIM) software allows computer users to chat in realtime,
much like AOL's Instant Message feature, but without the need to
subscribe to the AOL service.
Instant
Messenger users get the added bonus of being able to chat with other
Messenger users as well as anyone who is a member of AOL.
The software
has been available for a couple of years, and the latest Mac release
adds some new Mac-only features.
Mac users will
be able to use drag and drop to send files to their friends on their
Buddy Lists. Mac users also get a logging feature that can save the
text of a conversation as a file that can be reviewed at a later time.
Another cool
feature is that the AIM software will alert you if you have e-mail
waiting at your aol.com e-mail address.
The appearance
of the new AIM 4.0 software will also be more customizable to suit
users' tastes.
For more
details, visit their Web site and read more about the AOL Instant
Messenger for Macintosh at www.aol.com/aim/macbeta.html.
Comments
and questions about this column may be sent to jbrooks@myoldkentuckyhome.com,
or visit www.myoldkentuckyhome.com
on the World Wide Web.
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