After sharing 7 practical summer travel tips, discount travel site Hotwire.com eliminates its airfare booking fees on all flights this summer.

“Our customers count on us for incredible travel deals,” said Eric Grosse, senior vice president and general manager at Hotwire.com. “And with travel costs continuing to inch upward this summer, eliminating our airfare booking fee will be a welcome relief for vacationers.”

In the last six years, Hotwire has helped over 14 million people find extraordinary travel deals often not available anywhere else. Eliminating booking fees on all airline tickets further reinforces Hotwire’s commitment to deliver the lowest possible prices on travel.

However, this strategy is not new in the industry. Last month, its competitor, Priceline, has removed booking fees for all domestic and international flights purchased by July 4th for travel up to 330 days from date of purchase.

Originally posted on July 10, 2007 @ 9:39 am

Designed to make the vehicle purchase easier and faster, Mazda North American Operations (MNAO) has launched Mazda Shopping Assistant (MSA) program, the first in the industry to provide potential buyers with an actual quote from the customer’s choice of dealer of the vehicle they’ve chosen, as opposed to other manufacturers’ programs that simply offer the manufacturer’s suggested
retail price (MSRP).

The company believes the MSA program will be a huge hit among its youthful demographic, the second-youngest in the industry.

The MSA program accelerates the purchase process by streamlining three of the steps involved when buying a vehicle — model selection, price and financing. It connects consumers with Mazda Personal Shoppers who can answer specific product questions and provide personalized shopping experiences through live Web-chat sessions. Through the help of these in-house Mazda employees, buyers can configure a vehicle, select a dealership, search vehicle inventory, acquire an actual dealer quote, schedule a sales appointment and get information about financing for the Mazda vehicle of their dreams.

“On average, a typical car buyer spends four hours at most dealerships buying a new car. In a day and age when every hour counts in our busy schedules, we believe the new MSA program is
the perfect tool to help Mazda customers spend less time shopping and more time driving,” says Mike Ray, director, Customer Satisfaction and Loyalty, MNAO.

Originally posted on July 9, 2007 @ 5:10 am

PharmacyChecker.com, a leading Web site helping consumers continually find the lowest priced products from the most qualified and reputable online pharmacies, has analyzed hundreds of thousands of online searches for drug prices and found that drugs for erectile dysfunction (ED) were among those most often checked.

“The amazing popularity of the ED drugs in online searches is probably driven by a combination of factors. First, these are among the most expensive pills to buy – about $10 to $16 each – but are often not covered by insurance, so it’s very worthwhile to price-comparison shop. Second, the anonymity offered by the web spares the embarrassment some men feel going into their local pharmacy to check prices and purchase ED products,” said harmacyChecker.com’s president, Tod Cooperman, MD.

In fact, all three major ED drugs, Viagra (Pfizer), Cialis (Lilly), and Levitra (GSK/Bayer), ranked in the top 10 out of nearly 9,000 medications for which consumers searched.

After drugs for erectile dysfunction, cholesterol-lowering products were the most searched drugs, with Lipitor leading the group as it has since 2004.

Some of the biggest changes in search popularity since last year were seen with Levitra, which moved to 8th position from 26th, Propecia (Merck) a hair- growth drug, which moved up to 7th position from 16th, and Lexapro (Forrest), which moved from 15th to 10th to became the most searched for anti-depressant, replacing Zoloft (Pfizer) which was ranked 6th last year and is now 13th. No generic drug made the top 10, but fluoxetine (the generic form of Prozac) was number 12.

Originally posted on July 9, 2007 @ 9:54 am