Where No Shopper Has Gone Before

Harry McCracken

Contact PC World Executive Editor Harry McCracken at websavvy@pcworld.com.

WIlliam Shatner was wound up--really wound up. The starship-captain-turned-dot-com-salesman was on my TV, pitching a new Priceline.com service: Name-your-own-price groceries. With the weird urgency familiar from a gazillion Star Trek reruns, he declared that Priceline's WebHouse Club could save me up to 50 percent at the supermarket. Happy consumers confirmed his claims.

The ad could have been more convincing. For one thing, I had trouble picturing the actor best known as James T. Kirk fretting over his grocery bill. ( "Must save...19 cents on...canned...pears!") And a brief disclaimer revealed that the ecstatic shoppers were actors, re-creating testimonials from real customers.

Still, Priceline has delivered when I've used it to reserve hotel rooms on the cheap. But does the name-your-own-price system designed for lodging, plane tickets, and home loans make sense for chicken parts and baby wipes? Or for gasoline, another new Priceline offering?

For the truly bargain-obsessed, maybe. The price breaks are indeed real--but what Mr. Shatner fails to mention are the hoops you must jump through to get them. As I angled for discounts, WebHouse Club's hitches and glitches began multiplying like Tribbles.

Bidding for Bran Flakes

As with all of Priceline's services, "name your own price" tells only a sliver of the story. Sure, you can make offers for the foodstuffs and household items that WebHouse Club carries. But whether the service will accept your price is another matter. And until you agree to buy something, you don't know the brand you'll get. Or whether your local grocery store has it in stock. Or even how much dough (if any) you'll save.

I got my feet wet by haggling for yogurt. Priceline presented me with three brands (Breyers, Colombo, and Dannon) and told me to select at least two that I'd be willing to buy. It also showed me the different prices I could bid and the odds that each would be accepted. According to the site, the typical store price was 79 to 83 cents a cup; I offered 65 cents, which gave me a 90 percent chance of success.

Yogurt, as it happens, is among the most popular items offered via the WebHouse Club. An extensive but incomplete range of staples is available: ketchup, orange juice, and shampoo, for instance, but not mustard, grapefruit juice, or conditioner. With certain perishables such as meat, produce, and milk, you must bid using a form of online currency called Half-Price Tokens. According to Priceline, these tokens guarantee you a large discount (50 percent of an item's typical store price). But you can use them only if you have them. You get six tokens to start with, and you can accrue more through such acts of e-commerce as subscribing to Hickory Farms' e-mail newsletter.

Once you've filled your virtual shopping cart, Priceline takes about a minute to consider each of your bids individually. If any or all of them are successful, the site tells you the brands you've bought and bills your credit card then and there. You can pick up your purchases at any store that participates in the WebHouse Club program. (It's not available everywhere, but a growing number of major supermarket chains are on board.)

For all the intricacies of the bidding process, the rubber doesn't really hit the road until you reach your local supermarket. And as I wheeled my cart around, I discovered that some of my discounts were indeed steep. A bottle of Finesse shampoo that normally went for $3.99 cost me just $1.70; Swiss Miss cocoa mix fell from $3.99 to $2.25. A gallon of milk that I bought with a Half-Price Token dropped from $2.59 to $1.47--not half-price according to my math, but still a sizable price break.

On the other hand, my yogurt markdown sounded like a rounding error: I saved 1.6 cents per cup. (The supermarket's standard price was three cups for $2, well below Priceline's estimate of three for $2.37 to $2.49.) Worse, the store's standard price for Glad trash bags was $2.99; I'd already paid Priceline $3.19. In such cases, Priceline offers to make up the difference--but only in the form of credit against future purchases.

The store was out of the last item on my Priceline list, a half-gallon of Breyers frozen yogurt. So when I checked out--dutifully sorting Priceline purchases from the rest of my groceries, since they must be rung up separately--I asked Debbie, the cashier, what to do about out-of-stock groceries. She didn't know.

Turns out that Priceline does not issue refunds for out-of-stock items. Instead, you have to try again--and again and again, if the product happens to prove particularly elusive. I made a mental note to look for the frozen yogurt next time I descended on the grocery store.

Fuel Me Once

Meanwhile, I tried Priceline's name-your-own-price gasoline service. In theory, the drill is this: You name the per-gallon price you're willing to pay and commit to buying gas (in 10-gallon increments) from any of at least three nearby participating stations. If Priceline accepts your offer, it directs you to a specific station and bills your credit card instantly. At the pump, you use a Priceline Gas Card to settle the transaction.

My experience, though, was a fiasco almost from the get-go. I snagged 10 gallons of regular-grade gas at $1.53 a gallon, a dime less per gallon than the prevailing price in my neighborhood. But Priceline sent me to a nonexistent address: It said the station was in Boston, but the zip code was in Arlington, Massachusetts, 8 miles into suburbia. And the site provided no maps, driving directions, or distance estimates to help me out. There wasn't even a phone number for the filling station.

Eventually, I found the station and tanked up. But when I handed the attendant my Priceline card, he stared at me as if I'd forked over a wad of Monopoly money, and asked, "What is this?" Once he figured out how to handle the sale, he told me that my card had been declined. I ended up paying full price for the gas out of my pocket. Back home, I e-mailed Priceline customer support, requesting a refund and an explanation. The former arrived quickly; the latter never did. Later, a Priceline WebHouse Club spokesperson told me that my experience was atypical. One can only hope.

Highly Illogical

Grocery shopping and gas station visits aren't exactly scintillating experiences in the first place; the WebHouse Club's Byzantine rules and unforgiving policies only add to the drudgery. What's more, little charges chip away at the big savings that supposedly make it all worthwhile. WebHouse Club membership, for instance, is free for the first 90 days only. After that, you pay $3 in any month in which you bid on groceries. With grocery purchases, a small but mysterious "other charges" fee tags you for such items as the sales tax that would have been due had you paid the average full retail price for your items. And so on.

Hey, I'll still use Priceline for cut-rate hotel rooms--and as long as William Shatner keeps making goofy TV ads, I'll keep guffawing. But unless WebHouse Club gets more shopper-friendly, chances are it won't be part of my store trek.

New on the Net...

Gift Guidance: So you need to purchase a present for a former Californian, or for a weight lifter or a conspiracy theorist--and you're stumped. Head to Surprise.com,and you'll find gift ideas for these and dozens of other folks. The recommendations, provided by site visitors, come from all over the Web. And with offbeat ideas like Krispy Kreme doughnut merchandise, desktop Zen rock gardens, and bungee-jumping lessons, they're fun just to browse through... More Free ISP Fallout: I'm still hearing from former users of now-defunct free Internet service providers Freewwweb and WorldSpy who aren't too pleased with Juno, the provider that acquired the failed services' customers. The most common gripes: slow connections and irksome on-screen ads. If you're in the market for a new free ISP, visit Freedomlist.com, a nifty guide to 500-plus contenders, with a features comparison, message boards, and lots of reviews by real people. The one thing it can't tell you are the chances that a given free provider will be around for the long haul... Point Program Redux: Also in my mailbox were letters from folks who read my take on Web shopping-incentive programs such as ClickMiles and Greenpoints (see "Web Shopper Points: Such a Deal?"). Many of the messages were from fans of FreeRide,a points program I didn't mention. So I checked FreeRide's site out--and if you're a freebie junkie, so should you. It lets you rack up points in more ways than most of its rivals do, including shopping, surfing, and even running Web searches at AltaVista and Go.com. And you can cash in the points you collect for discounts and free stuff at a bevy of merchants--everyone from Brooks Brothers to Toys "R" Usto Wine.com. Best of all, the site's cartoony look and feel are entertaining in themselves.

Gimme Five

Windows Information Sites

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1. About.com Focus on Windows: A comprehensive, authoritative, and well-organized guide to all things Windows, from Registry secrets to Microsoft's legal woes.
2. Wine.com. One man's cornucopia of tips and news, plus an invaluable (albeit occasionally outdated) driver search engine.
3. Frank Condron's World O' Windows: This directory of Windows resources from around the Web mimics the look and feel of the Win 98 desktop.
4. Absolute WinInfo: Just what its name says--a Yahoo-like search engine/portal that's all Windows 2000, all the time; lots of stuff for advanced users and technical types.
5. SearchWin2000.com: Beginners and old pros alike will appreciate Bob's no-nonsense, step-by-step tips and tutorials on dozens of topics.