Launching under the Jet brand, Walmart is trying out a personal shopper service that you text whenever you want to make a purchase rather than use an online site. Called JetBlack, the service costs $50-a-month for access.

When a subscriber texts the service, the personal shopper can reference the user’s frequently purchased items in order to figure out what to purchase. There’s also a short interview conducted with the user at the start, specifically to identify the user’s preferred brands.

In addition to ordering frequently purchased items, the personal shopper can offer up suggestions on that to order. The service can offer top 3 choices as well as limit choices by how much they want to spend.

In addition to texts, users can send a picture of an item to the personal shopper. This would be ideal if you are shopping at another retailer, but wanted to compare prices with the same (or similar) item in Walmart’s inventory.

When the product decision is approved, the purchase process is entirely completed by the personal shopper. Basically, the user doesn’t really have to do anything besides send text messages.

Walmart is likely targeting more affluent shoppers due to the price of the subscription service. The company has been testing the service on a small scale for the last 8 months. On average, users purchase more than 10 items per week via text messages.

At the moment, Walmart is only operating the service in New York City, but plans to expand out to more areas if demand exists. Anyone interested in the service can sign up on the JetBlack Waitlist here.

Walmart wants you to pay $50 a month for a shopping by text service

Currently being tested in markets such as Atlanta, Austin, and San Antonio, Best Buy is trying out a free service in which a salesperson is sent to your home in order to provide recommendations about products to purchase. Basically, its a personal shopper for electronics, appliances and everything else Best Buy sells.

The company is trying out this method of sales since customers seem to spend more money while shopping online at home rather than when they go into a Best Buy location. However, it’s unlikely that all online shoppers would want a personal shopper on hand during the process.

According to the store, the employees working in this new on-call service are not being paid any form of commission, but rather flat hourly rates. Of course, it’s likely that the associates would push high-margin services with products, such as replacement / service plans or new Best Buy credit cards. It’s also likely that home installations of said product recommendations will be promoted during the point a sale, which would cost the customer an additional fee.

While Best Buy has certainly lost business to Amazon over the last several years, the company is rebounding a bit with a push into smart home tech, large appliances and mobile devices. Revenues at U.S. stores has risen this year and beat Wall Street’s expectations. Similar to Walmart, Best Buy is in a good position moving into the high volume sales event that’s the Q4 holiday shopping season.

One potentially useful service that could be incorporated into Best Buy’s new program would be testing a home for Wi-Fi dead spots in order to upgrade to a mesh, wireless networking system. With the increasing bandwidth needs for everything from smart locks to several televisions streaming Netflix at the same time, mesh networking is a must for reliable Wi-Fi in large homes.

Offline shopping? Best Buy wants to send a salesperson to your home