Anybody here use Alice.com shopping site?

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

I read about www.alice.com in a magazine. Having a bout of insomnia last night, I decided to poke around on it.

I found it aggravating that I couldn’t take a look at the products and prices offered until I set up my (free) account, but having said that, I can see myself using this a lot. They don’t sell anything perishable, and hopefully their inventory will grow as they become more popular and widely used.

Here’s how it works: you shop the site. You can shop by “room” (bathroom, bedroom, nursery, pantry, etc), or you can search products you need. You order them, they ship them right to your door, no shipping charge. And their prices look to be very competitive with the grocery stores around here.

What do they sell? Well, lots of stuff. Basic toiletries like razors, shaving cream, feminine hygiene products, body wash; paper-type products like foil, paper towels, plastic wrap; non-perishable foods like breakfast bars, some snack-cracker types of things. They even have a limited selection of makeup and beauty accessories like foot cream and emery boards! Oh, they have pet food, too, which makes me happy. I don’t like lugging home bags of Iams for my kitterz.

They will track your spending so you can pull up your “budget” in pie-chart form. And if you tell them what your rate of usage is for a particular product, they can send you an email reminding you it may be time to re-stock. Or you can put particular items on auto-ship.

Unfortunately, though they are hoping to branch out in the future, right now the only serve the “lower 48” of America.

I’m definitely going to be placing an order in the next few days. If anyone else here is using this service, I’d love to know what your experiences have been.

I’m personally thrilled to find it, since, number one, I live a good 30 minutes from my closest “mega mart” type store, and number two, no online grocery service (like PeaPod) serves my area.

2

I just checked it out. It looks pretty interesting and the prices look good too.

3

I checked it out after reading this yesterday and placed an order. Thanks for the tip! I live in a very small town that has a decent grocery store but doesn’t have things like makeup and sometimes doesn’t have the best prices on things like toilet paper. I foresee myself using this quite a bit.

4

I placed my first order yesterday, and this gave me a good feeling about them: apparently, they require a minimum of six items, but I only ordered five things; I got a pop-up that said, basically, “We have a six item minimum, but since this is your first order, we’ll go ahead and process it anyway!” So that was nice. They didn’t make me go back and add an item. My stuff should be here tomorrow or Thursday!

I’ve already started compiling a second order! :slight_smile:

5

I’ve been using Amazon Subscriptions for stuff like toilet paper and laundry detergent. They don’t have all my preferred brands, but they do have some things I can’t find in the store always like the big cans of Muir Glen diced tomatoes. You get a discount off the already low Amazon price by subscribing, and you can do IIRC once a month, once every three months, or once every six months? Anyway, so far it’s been really great for us for stuff we’ll definitely use.

6

Yeah, apparently on Alice (named after the housekeeper on The Brady Bunch, btw), you can tell them, for each item, if you want a reminder every two weeks, four weeks, etc. Or you can choose “I don’t know”, which is what I’ve done for now. Actually, I plan on marking a date on the stuff I order as it comes in, so I can get a feel for how often to request a reminder. Really, that’s something I’ve never paid much attention to. Duh!

As for Amazon Subscriptions, sounds like a good service. But my hubby has some, I dunno, ancient grudge against Amazon for something (I’ve long since forgotten what, but I’ll tell you, if ever there was a man who knew how to hold a grudge. . .) that he’d have a fit if I started regularly buying things from them! (And he doesn’t have fits about much, so when it’s that important, I just give in). In fact, I told him about them having the new Stephen King book at such a deep discount (just in time for my birthday! Yay, what a great birthday gift that would be!), he pretty much said he’d rather spend $10.00 extra than give money to Amazon! :dubious:
Oh well. It’s his money. If he’d rather buy the book retail, I’m happy to let him do that. As long as I actually get the book. :wink: