---

Akamai buys and
delivers groceries

Question: I find that I am too ill to do any food shopping except at a nearby convenience store. This is not a good diet for someone who has a chronic problem. Do you know of a grocery shopping service?

Answer: It appears that there is only one business on Oahu that now will shop for and deliver groceries: Akamai Grocery Shopping and Delivery Service. Call 685-0900 or e-mail akamaigrocery@aol.com.

Four and a half years ago, the Star-Bulletin reported on three grocery delivery businesses that had recently started (starbulletin.com/2000/12/27/features/story1.html).

Today, only Akamai Grocery remains.

"There is such a need for it, but I am the only one left," George Peacock, the owner, shopper and delivery person for Akamai, said last week.

All you have to do is to call, put in an order, tell him which store or stores to shop at and he'll take it from there. He pays upfront, then you pay him, with cash, check or credit card, upon delivery.

He shops at all the major grocers, including Costco, Daiei and Longs. He'll shop at up to two stores, per customer, per day but asks for a minimum $25 purchase and charges 17 percent of the total. That works out to $4.25 for $25.

However, Peacock only serves a very small delivery area -- basically downtown Honolulu to Aina Haina -- "because I am a one-person operation."

He has 75 "solid weekly and biweekly customers," plus another 20 who call him periodically.

There is a demand, Peacock says, although not a great demand. In his estimation, having another two or three grocery delivery services like his to cover the rest of the island "would suffice."

In the beginning, "I thought (customers were) going to be mostly the elderly and disabled," he said. "But I've got everything from small businesses to people that don't have cars and don't want to pay the taxi guy anymore," as well as seniors and the disabled.

Q: We filed our state tax return the same time as our federal tax return. Our federal tax refund came in the middle of April. We are still waiting for our state refund. Is there any number we can call to check the status of our tax refund or if they received our tax return?

A: Call the state Taxpayer Services Branch at 587-4242 or toll-free at 800-222-3229.

If you have a touch-tone phone, you can check the status of your refund any time of the day or night, seven days a week, if you provide your Social Security number and the exact refund amount requested on your tax return.

There has been no unusual delay in providing refunds this year, according to state tax officials.

Refunds generally are issued within eight weeks of the filing of a return and, again generally, are determined by when you filed the return. It could take longer to get a refund if the return was filed close to the filing deadline, if there were errors in the return or if your address changed.

|

---

---