In the last decade, retailers and manufacturers
pushed to put their coupons online, figuring people
would love browsing on PCs for deals. They didn't for a
long list of reasons, including the fact that it was not
easier than leafing through the paper and tearing out
what you need.
Now the cellphone industry is trying its own
approach. The theory is that you will browse for deals
when you are at the store, or maybe receive deal alerts
when you are nearby, and simply use the phone as a
virtual coupon when you are at the cashier.
The idea has lots of promise. Whether it's worth your
while depends on where you live, how much you use the
products featured by these coupon services and how much
work you're willing to do for a bargain.
Of the services emerging in the nascent
cellular-coupon industry, two - Cellfire and 8Coupons -
offer good examples of the state of the art. Both are
free, and will work on virtually any phone, but the
experience can be disappointing if you use one of the
services in the wrong place.
After I completed a short registration form on
Cellfire (the service works on most Internet-enabled
phones), the service scanned its database for deals near
me. Or sort of near. When I registered as a user in
Midtown Manhattan, the featured deals included a free
used DVD and a free movie rental from Hollywood Video.
Great news, except the closest locations were in New
Jersey.
I could also get a free photo portrait from Sears,
provided I wanted to trudge to Brooklyn for it, or order
something online from 1-800-Flowers.com.
That's it. Three deals, and none was actually located
in one of the biggest shopping zones in the
universe.
In reviews posted to the iTunes site, some Cellfire
users have complained openly about the dearth of
available coupons from the application. (Cellfire's
iPhone app garnered two stars, out of a possible five,
from about 50 reviewers.)
Greg Sterling, an industry analyst at Sterling Market
Intelligence, said that no mobile-coupon service had a
great inventory of deals, although he predicted that
stores would start to "get with the program" in the
coming year.
In the meantime, if you live in the heartland, you
may have a better experience. Cellfire recently signed a
deal with Kroger, the grocery chain, to show users a
list of 10 to 30 offers, like 50 cents off Cottonelle
toilet paper or 75 cents off a box of Chex cereal. When
you select a discount, Cellfire feeds the coupon
information directly to the grocer's loyalty program.
Users submit their loyalty program membership numbers to
Cellfire; with subsequent swipes of the loyalty card,
all of the chosen discounts are credited. For nongrocery
items, the cashier simply reads a code on your phone's
display and enters it into the cash register.
Getting the application on your phone is easy enough.
Just go to the Cellfire Web site and register there, and
the service will send a message to your phone with the
application embedded. If you are on AT&T, Verizon or
T-Mobile, you can also find Cellfire's service on the
phone's application stores. (Sprint users must go to
Cellfire.com.)
If you don't live near a Kroger store, Cellfire says
it will soon have similar programs with grocers in the
Northeast. Until then, 8Coupons may be worth a look,
provided you live in New York. The service stands in
sharp contrast to Cellfire, in that almost all of its
roughly 1,200 coupons are for products sold in
Manhattan.
Users of 8Coupons go to the company's Web site and
browse a list of merchants from which they might like to
receive offers. Whenever that merchant has an offer,
users receive the coupon code via text message. Last
week, for instance, users could save 15 percent off the
purchase of two cases of dog food at Groom-O-Rama, a pet
supplies store in Greenwich Village.
The company also feeds its coupons to Outalot, a free
service intended to offer information about stores and
restaurants wherever you happen to be carrying your
phone. When you sign up with Outalot, it will send a
coupon via text message whenever you are near a merchant
you've chosen to receive offers from, say, a
restaurant.
When I set my location as Union Square in Manhattan,
Outalot failed to offer me a coupon for Pop Burger, a
nearby hamburger place that featured deals on 8Coupons'
service. Landy Ung, the chief executive of 8Coupons,
said that was because I was not physically in the
area.
Outalot works on any cellphone with a Web browser,
but owners of older phones with inadequate browsers may
find it harder to use. And if you don't have an
unlimited data plan, it can be costly.
Individual retailers, meanwhile, are also starting to
hop onto the text-messaging bandwagon - most notably
Wal-Mart, which recently began sending out SMS alerts to
subscribers. Wal-Mart customers can receive offers by
logging onto Walmart.com/mobileinfo, and entering their
mobile phone number. Subscribers receive up to three
holiday-season alerts a week, for each shopping category
chosen.
That offers a glimpse of the downside to this trend.
You may be enticed to sign up for text messages from
multiple retailers, and end up with a mountain of mobile
spam, not to mention a fat monthly bill. So sign up
wisely, lest you turn your cellphone into your
enemy.
