Alice – Your Personal Shopping Assistant
I used to have a OK time stocking my little bachelor pad. But after I got married and had a baby, it isn’t always that easy keeping all your items, your significant other’s items as well as the little one’s diapers and food stocked on your shelves. I hear some of you guys snickering and saying, “Isn’t that what you have a wife for?”
True but she has lots of other important stuff to do like, I don’t know… Um, how about raising my daughter?
We have found a website that helps keep our stockable items in stock!
It even can beat most of the prices you are currently paying – especially if you are buying things in a brick and mortar store. Alice is the help we have been looking for and this handy web service is free! Just the way we like it! Let’s take a look at how she works:
First, you have to sign up for the service and tell them a little bit about your family and what products they/you use. For example, if you add an adult female, tampons become a stockable item or a child under 3 — diapers. The service categorizes items by the person who will most likely use them. So I selected the This is me button next to “Adult male”. Then, I choose an adult woman and a baby. This was easily done by the screen you see below:
Next up is your chance to narrow down products that you don’t use. Everything starts out checked, so uncheck the products you don’t want to see or that you do not care about. For example, if you do not use women’s deodorant or you do not want Alice to track this (ie: you get it somewhere for free or really cheap) than just uncheck the box and continue on.
You knew it was coming… The registration. Fill in your info along with a valid email address and you are on your way to completing the setup process.
Now you should search and add your favorite products. Then you can order what you need online for right now as well as let Alice remind you when it thinks you are running low on a specific product.
Let’s take a look at your products. From here, you see each item represented by a blue duck. To go into one (or remove one) click on the plus sign on the duck.
That takes you to the individual product page and you can find your brands or specific products here. Or simply click “Delete the duck” to remove this item.
When you click “Let’s Go Find Some” you will come to a product page where you can add products, pick sizes and see what discounts are available. See the listing from baby diapers. This is only a small fraction of the 50 items they carry. 17 of them have coupons or savings available.
Next, you can create a custom label, choose how many you order at a time, and you can choose when Alice should remind you to get some more. If a product is out of stock, you can select “Save for future order” and add it to your list. Then you will be notified when it becomes available.
After you are done, you can always go back and add or modify products in one of three ways. You can search, browse or click an item’s place holder.
Well, to me, this service is simply awesome! It helps me out a lot! Do you use a similar service? Do you save money using it? If so, let us know in the comments!
(By) Karl Gechlik is a superhero of the IT industry. His days are spent monitoring and maintaining systems on Wall Street. He helps people with their technical issues for free over at AskTheAdmin.com.
Unless you are ultimate laziest person walked on earth and/or despise going to the store, Alice has nothing beneficial for you. I have searched some household staple items and compared the prices of few I found on Alice.com. I am always better off going to the sundaysaver.com and viewing my local sale flyers and stop by the store on may way to/from work for every item I investigated (about 20 items, more than half can not even be purchased through alice.com unless you go for fancier and pricier alternates).
So, alice.com is bound to be another webvan.com in the dotcom graveyard. Give it a few months or a couple of years, tops.
Ultimate Lazy Person? How about not enough time in the day to hit the stores in addition to 3 jobs and a family…
I thought I was going to love Alice because I’m a college student in a small town (the college is 80% of the population, one of those types) with no car. The more I can streamline my shopping trips, the better. I’d much rather only have to ask for a ride every 2 weeks than twice a week!
Unfortunately, Alice misses the mark in a few ways for me, all related to product availability. 1) No store brand. I LIVE on store brands because they are frequently half the price or even less. The coupons & discounts available through Alice did not make up for the higher price, either. 2) Not a great selection of larger/bulk product sizes. 3) Sparse, random selection of varieties w/in the brands. I could find Brand So&So Product A Variety 1 and Variety 3, but not Variety 2. This happened frequently when I was looking for the products I normally buy at a store.
Here’s something even cooler and more convenient than Alice, that fills in the gaps as well! It’s called MyGofer (www.mygofer.com)! It was only a concept earlier this year, so there are only a few MyGofer named stores, but because of such popularity, they offer “MyGofer @ Kmart” so that the service is offered at many locations where Kmarts are located. There are about 50-100 Kmarts that offer the service, and they are planning to expand throughout the rest of the year!
The service is similar to Alice in that you can do all of your shopping online, BUT has more convenient options, and will offer more as it grows! In areas where there is not a MyGofer or “MyGofer @ Kmart,” you can have items shipped as you do in Alice, but in areas where there IS a MyGofer or “MyGofer @ Kmart,” you can actually just pick up items (like a drive-thru) on your way home from work OR have them delivered! I work in a Chicago suburb, and they make deliveries to our office! Also, they offer personal shoppers that you can chat with on the site or call, and in the case that you can’t find something you’re looking for, they will find it for you and add it to your order, even if they have to go someplace else!! How cool is that?!? This will be helpful to people who don’t have lots of extra time on their hands for sure!
Also, another cool part is that when shopping, you can not only use your “shopping cart,” for what you’re buying today, but you can also make “shopping lists” of various types, such as everything you need for a birthday party or a fishing trip, as well as “recurring lists/orders” for stuff/groceries that you need every couple weeks, and can set up an automatic order!
Best part? It’s free! (You have to pay for your purchases, of course!) If you live in an area where they have already begun delivering, I believe there is only a $3.99 flat delivery fee to your workplace!
Be patient as they grow to your area, but start taking part asap because it is really cool!
mygofer is also designed to evolve according to your needs. So if they don’t have X and you really want X, just tell mygofer and they’ll get it.
They also have an online community at myvoice.mygofer.com with message boards, a place to share what you think mygofer could be doing to make things better, and a blog with pictures of events and promotional codes (when available). The site is myvoice.mygofer.com. I’m the community manager there and would love for you or anyone out there reading to join us.