Priceline Gives Up On Gas And Groceries

from the it's-about-time dept

Back when Priceline first announced they were going to get into the gasoline business I thought it was stupid. Even if gas prices have been high, I couldn't see oil companies supporting this (the gasoline doesn't "go bad" sitting in tanks) and I just thought it was more of a pain for the consumer. I don't want to log in and figure out "bid" on how much I'm going to have to pay for a fill up, and then wait around until Priceline tells me yes or no. Well, it seems that I wasn't the only one. Priceline is now getting out of that business and ditching groceries as well. The fact is, the only thing people really go to Priceline for are airline tickets, and they're not even that good at that.
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  • identicon
    mhh5, 5 Oct 2000 @ 3:52pm

    Sustainable biz...

    I always wondered why people thought Priceline was so great. Why can't airlines do what priceline does? Or price things in their strange airline-economic-way that prohibits 3rd party arbitrage? Same thing with Paypal. Why don't credit card companies provide the service themselves? In my opinion, these are all short-term money making schemes....

    link to this | view in chronology ]

    • identicon
      ~Penguin~, 6 Oct 2000 @ 12:19pm

      Re: Sustainable biz...

      >< br>
      The only reason Priceline earned any success is because it jumped the gun on the airline companies in offering empty seats for discounted prices. Priceline is failing left and right now, the BBB has a noose around their next (priceline played with numbers on their tickets, so if you wanted a 50 dollar ticket to vegas, they would charge you 49.99 for the ticket, 30 dollars in feul costs and 25 bucks in processing fees...these numbers are made up btw), and now that more airline compaines are getting advanced sites on the web, they are selling their tickets in the exact same way priceline did but without all the bs hassle that comes with priceline.

      Peng

      link to this | view in chronology ]


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