Alice.com – Help is on its way

I always like to guess how companies choose their names. In this case, with the tagline of “Everyone needs an Alice”, it’s a “duh” to guess that loyal, no-nonsense, do-it-all Brady Bunch’s Alice was the inspiration. Close enough: Alice.com is a virtual home manager. It’s household shopping with all the extras and none of the hauling.

The benefits in a nutshell:

• Free shipping – always, whatever the order amount
• Lower prices – they eliminate the middleman, the consumer gets the best price available
• Coupons applied automatically – if there is a coupon for that product, it will be applied, no action needed
• Arrives at your door – No hauling of the 5 lb laundry detergent package, the bulky pack of paper towels, in the rain, in the snow, with the bambinos in tow, on low blood sugar (sound familiar?)
• Replenishment reminders: set your profile to get reminders to restock specific items at determined intervals. As the Alice.com homepage mentions: never run out of toilet paper again
• All the household brands – plus a growing list of environmentally-friendly, green products too.

I learned about Alice.com last month, but was not able to use it until just now, as a recent move left us in house limbo for a couple of weeks. Now that we have our final address, I just placed my first order (it was a hoot), building my profile and my reminders one item at a time, so that future orders will be even faster to place.

For my curiosity, I placed a mock order of identical products on drugstore.com, where coupons were also applied and shipping was free. My Alice.com order, including taxes: $30.98. Drugstore.com: $45.72. That pretty much seals the deal, huh?

Let’s face it, shopping for laundry detergent, TP, and trash bags is the type of shopping that I can live without. And for it to be so price efficient too? I’m going to leave all that fun stuff to Alice.

Thank you dahhhhlin’. Just put it there.