Is Jet really better than Amazon?
Let's put it to the test.
I'm Bridget Carey, this is your CNet update.
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Many retailers dream of crushing Amazon, but there's There's a brand new shopping website that's actually taking on the challenge.
Jet dot com launched Tuesday.
It says it can not only beat Amazon's prices, but its scanning the web to offer the lowest prices from any site.
Jet is a shopping club.
You have to pay fifty dollars a year to use the site.>> And that' s where it makes all its money.
Jet's whole pitch is that the more you shop, the more you save on some items.
The idea is that the items are coming from the same warehouse, it is cheaper to ship it together with your other items so it will shave some money off your total.
You can also knock off a few cents off your total by.
Waiving your right to return the item.
Now to see if it was really cheaper than Amazon, I took it for a spin.
All right, let's see how this whole discount thing works.
Let's do a little shopping.
We'll go in here, I need some household items.
Let's pick up some Clorox.
All right, saving 59 cents, keep going.
Let's get some Swiffer.
Adding that to cart.
Okay, getting some interesting savings alerts, let's keep it going.
You know what, I need some Dixie cups for the bathroom.
Let's see, okay, I'll grab one of these.
Add to cart.
[SOUND] I feel like I'm at a casino here.
It just keeps rolling the numbers.
I don't even know what this even means.
All right, so far I'm saving $4.53.
Keep it going.
I need some socks.
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No socks available at all.
Okay, so I continued on my journey and picked up a shower curtain.
My total price came to about $31 which was cheaper than picking out the exact same items from Amazon.
So yes, jet was cheaper.
but there are a few other things you have to keep in mind.
Jet's membership only gives you free delivery when you spend $35 or more and delivery for many household items is one or two days, but some things could take five days.
And remember how it didn't sell any stocks?
The site has an answer for that called Jet Anywhere.
If you use Jet as a portal To another website like Macy's and then go shopping on there.
You can earn points to spend later on jet.com, but to get the points you have to forward an order confirmation email back to Jet.
It's a huge hassle.
But it's part of the start-ups awkward growing phase and it's gonna be a long awkward phase.
In fact, it's losing money with some orders because it doesn't actually carry many items yet.
So it's employees are buying them on your behalf from Walmart and J. C. Penney and then shipping it to you.
That's the plan until it can secure more retail partners.
The founder and CEO Mark Lore said in interviews that it won't be profitable until it gets about 15 million members, which may happen in five years.
But you might as well check it out now to see how it works.
It's free to try for the first three months.
That's it for this tech news update, there's more at cnet.com.
From our studios in New York, I'm Bridget Carey.
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