Web Savvy: Where No Shopper Has Gone Before

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.

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