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Want to Join the Micron Club?

Are the prices right at direct vendor�s new membership shopping site?

By Dan Littman, PCWorld   

The $1.7 billion company, which manufactures desktop and portable computers as well as graphics boards and memory, thinks it can offer prices so low and services so useful that you will drop $50 on an annual membership.

The company has announced price targets for its two-tier e-Additions online shopping system. Club members--the $50 investors--get discounts of 5 percent to 7 percent on hardware and software. And customers who lease products from Micron can buy hardware and software for 4 percent above Micron's wholesale cost, up to the value of the lease.

Problematic Pricing

But so far, e-Additions pricing doesn't always make sense.

For example, Micron's regular sales site, MicronPC.com (also known as Micronadditions), lists Hewlett-Packard's LaserJet 4050 at $1103.99. But at the e-Additions Web site the same printer's "retail" price is $1162.54, and the price for members is $1110.64, or $7 more than you'd pay for it from MicronPC.com. Meanwhile, over at PC Connection you can pick up the 4050 for $1099.99.

I found a fairly similar story for Microsoft Office 2000 Standard. At MicronPC.com it costs $437.99, but at e-Additions.com the "retail" price is $455.89 and members pay $434.98--a savings of $3 against Micron's ordinary price, and $5 less than PC Connection's price.

Another element that doesn't add up: Wholesale pricing information for people who lease Micron equipment--which should be the big draw for potential e-Additions customers--is not available, so casual comparison shoppers simply can't tell whether the 4-percent-above-wholesale claim holds up.

Micron says e-Additions.com will offer all kinds of services, including e-mail notification of price specials and software that figures out what you need to buy. It will even have hourly specials for shoppers who keep the e-Additions.com site open on their Web browsers.

But at least for the moment, the site leaves a lot to be desired. Besides the odd price structures, wading through the catalog is slow and confusing. And the site spreads its window beyond the edge of my screen--disabling the shrink controls and hiding the browser menus.