Walking on the wild side with woot.com
Thursday, August 30, 2007 at 04:10PM Thanks to my friend Vivek at Rapleaf, I now know about a site called woot.com. Apparently, it has been hot in the nerd underground since 2004, even though I have been oblivious to it until now.I checked it out last night, and was lucky enough to catch a woot-off. This is a phenomena that happens once or twice a month, when items are sold in a series over a 24-72 hour period. Otherwise, it is just one item posted at midnight daily that is replaced if it is sold out. From a Vivitar digital camera to a desk refrigerator, the items range from techy and useful, to something that you don't mind snagging for a mere $3.99 [we all need digital water purifiers, right?]
Something that is exciting but simultaneously annoying is the element of surprise. You never know the quantity number of items available, and just when your wallet is out- Kablam!-the item is gone. My suggestion: register with an account and credit card before hand. I also dislike the way things are archived. The past selling prices are kept secret, the purpose of which I don't understand.
The text description of the items is written in entertaining prose, adding to the whimsy tone of the site. When time is an issue, I would rather just have cold, hard, concise specs. On woot.com, you can get some pretty good deals. I saw one item available for $14.99, which elsewhere on the net was over $50 bucks. Keep in mind that some of the items may be refurbished, or not new in condition.There also seems to be an active community, though I found the bulk of comments to ineffective or unrelated to the product. Remember that on this site, the refresh button is your best friend; the items are updated frequently.
Once in a blue moon, a $5 mystery "Bag-o-Crap" is released. This is the typical 'fun bag' which may have worthy or worthless stuff, and is for consumers who live on the wild side. I haven't seen one so far, but would be curious to know the contents.
A woot-0ff is still occurring now, check it out. According to the blog, I missed a Roomba...and you all know how bad I want one of those! Sadness :(
What do you think of woot-- is it tons of great loot or more of a garbage chute?
***UPDATE: Have you ever attained a Bag-O-Crap? If so, was what you received treasure or did it live up to its crap name? If you are one of the lucky(?) people who got a BOC [last item in todays woot-off] this time around, I am very curious as to what you end up with. Email me: Neha@nehatiwari.com
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Reader Comments (7)
Yeah Woot is awesome!! I've snagged some good stuff off of there in the past....actually a few weeks ago they had Roombas for a pretty decent price....I didn't get one though :(
Tons of great loot, with a handful of crap thrown in here and there. This is especially true during the woot-offs because, every product they sell is not going to sell out quickly. The ones that take the longest to sell are called the "Wootoff killers" especially if this is during the wee hours of the morning. The Bag of Crap (aka Bandolier of Carrots, Blinged out Cabbage, etc.) can be a gold mine, not too shabby, or as the name implies; a bag of crap. Some people have won big screen HDTV's from the BoC, while some folks ended up winning the hard-to-find (at the time) Nintendo Wii's from the BoC. Good luck with that and hope you enjoy the site.
Almost forgot;
Here are some woot-off checkers that will do the dirty work for you so you don't have to keep hitting F5 on your keyboard.
http://woot.wikia.com/wiki/Woot-Off_Checkers
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Woot is still better than competition
The headphones I'm wearing right now are from woot. $2.50 :)
Woot-offs make my inner cells tingle. You should follow woot on Twitter :)
http://www.twitter.com/woot !
P.S. I hope your audience isn't mad that we installed ReCaptcha. But we haven't seen one spam yet!
In about a year, I've snagged two Bags O' Crap, and about thirty other items of varying utility, from a Stanley socket set to a Vizio LCD HDTV. I figure at least six people have signed up for the site just watching me going berserk.