I recently got an email from Priceline that they are no longer doing groceries or gasoline price deals. Thing is, they didn’t say why.
They had radio ads the very day that we got the email, so it must’ve been a sudden decision. Does anyone know why they stopped these services?
Parts of the company went bankrupt. (Actually “distinct” companies byt the same founder and main backers, one of which was “Garagesale.com” for bidding on overstocked merchandise.
They aren’t sure if you’ll be getting all your money back if you bought gas in advance, but they will try.
There’s lots of articles in the newspaper business section.
The key seems to be it was just too much work to bid on anything excpept for advance plane and hotel tickets, so that’s all they’re keeping.
Another paradyme (sp?) that shifted right back where it was.
Apparently their grocery business was dropping fast. Ironically, I overheard two grocery store employees talking about three weeks ago about how loads of people were using Priceline when it first came out, but it had really declined because it was a pain in the ass. Not only was their website slow and difficult to use, but choice was limited and the segregation of groceries (into Priceline and non-Priceline purchases) seems to have been quite a hassle.
For those reasons, I never used the groceries, but the gas was fantastic. I drive past several dozen gas stations on my commute, and they are in vastly different markets. I saved a good deal, and I thought the website was pretty easy to use (for gas). Others found it problematic, however, and my guess is that, since they were owned by the same company (a privately held subsidiary or licensee or something of Priceline, started by the founder of Priceline), they figured it was easier to cut them both off.
They are being rather generous to customers, however…
Updated from 10 a.m. EDT:
High-profile Internet flameout, aisle four!
Priceline WebHouse Club, which licensed priceline.com’s (PCLN:Nasdaq) name-your-own-price technology to sell groceries and gasoline, said it will cease operations by early next year.
Sliding
priceline over six months
WebHouse said it didn’t think it would be able to raise enough capital to reach profitability.
WebHouse’s closing deals a blow to priceline, whose shares fell $3.56, or 38%, to close at $5.81. Priceline and WebHouse share a founder in Jay Walker, who was also a significant WebHouse investor.
The Priceline radio commercials I’ve run across have been barter spots for programming (You get the program for free if you run certain commercials–Dick Clark’s “Rock, Roll and Remember,” Goldmine’s “Today in Rock History.” come to mind).
Barter contracts are done months in advance and the commercials are shipped to radio stations in week/two week/month packages.
The announcement of the closing of Webhouse was quite sudden. You may be hearing Capt. Kirk promoting the product for a couple of more weeks, but the latest batch of barter spots I got (Friday) didn’t have a priceline in 'em.
SeatTime posted the following link in the thread you accidentally started in GD about this (now deleted) –
Yes, the Dot Coms are falling fast this month, when investors have to look at profits for once.