Priceline's move to gas, groceries making it bigger, really bigger

 

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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