Inflationary times... Woot's Bags of Crap will be $5 from now on.
2In a shocking turn of events, the quintessential Woot thing where you get three craps and a bag for a dollar per crap (plus five dollars shipping) has changed once again. Now, instead of paying $3 (plus five dollars shipping plus tax in most states), you will be paying $5 (plus five dollars shipping plus even more tax in most states).
Read about it in the official Woot Forum Post.
The salient bit for me is: "Which is all highfalutin preamble to saying that we’re raising the price of the Bag Of Crap by $2 and not improving the quality whatsoever."
I realise the Fukubukuro is $5, but we have VMP to offset that (and far fewer states where taxes are incurred).
A bit of a sad day, IMHO, but oh well... The times, they are a-changin'.
- 9 comments, 7 replies
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their crap is still crap. now it just costs more.
They turned it into something homogenous and not very much fun.
hmmm. why didnt amazon treat woot like it did zappos?
@communist I wondered about that. My husband used zappos before and after and said it didn't change. We wonder why amazon bought woot and then changed so much of it.
Generally ... meaning that there are still plenty of cases in which they made money off the $3 BOC. Given the statement of "not improving the quality whatsoever", that should be a good clue as to its worth.
@narfcake They lose money in the sense that they paid more per item in the bag of crap than they got back when they included it. However, if you tally that they paid $15,000 for 3,000 pieces, 2,000 of which sold for $40,000, then "giving away" (I really hate that term) the last 1,000 pieces in a bag of crap is really losing money. The Bag of Crap used to be used as an advertising scheme, where a small loss was looked at as an advertising campaign. Get people to the site and take a small loss here, but they'll come back later and buy something else. Amazon doesn't see it that way. They just look at it as losing money.
@capguncowboy Point taken. It's all about the numbers to the head honchos, which probably was the idea of "well, if a dozen items a day sells X, then a thousand items a day means we'll sell 40 TIMES that amount!" Probably the same factor with shirt.woot - "if we're selling 2,500/day, imagine how much more we'll make if we change to some cheaper blanks!" Uh, yeah ... so how's the bottom line when it's 600/day?
It's an interesting case study..
The original BOC was used to clear the warehouse of crap. so yes, maybe you are not recouping retail value on the stuff, but how much was the savings in costs related to warehousing or otherwise disposing of the stuff? (dumpsters aren't cheap either..)
Also, what does it do for customer satisfaction? one BOC I got a brand new (music) keyboard (RMA sticker still on it, but worked perfect) you'd better believe that caused me to purchase more from them. (increased revenues)
not to mention the fact that I talked about it on twitter for like a week. (free advertising - increased revenues)
it seems as though Woot has gone the way most retailers have, (gimme money now, who cares about tomorrow) when in reality, it's not the right answer..
Most secret society members said they'd pay $10 for one.
@medz I came here to say this. Woot surveyed a group of active users and most people said that they thought the increase was fair. The BOC was $3 + shipping for ten years. In that time, fuel, shipping, and product costs have all risen by a large margin. It was time. It's still crap, and it might still be crappy crap - but the price jump makes sense.
@Thumperchick So, now not only am I slightly annoyed about the increase in price, I am also slightly more annoyed that I'm not part of the 'secret society'. :P
@curtise You're not missing anything.
Eh both of my BoC's have been decent and well worth what would have been $10. My original in 2006 contained a space alien gun which I still use to terrorize my cats. The one a few months back which is my only other one had a refurbished security camera which allowed me to catch a stray in need( 2 actually ) and he is sitting on my bed right now. Both were easily worth $10 to me and in reality the refurbished $40 wifi cam was worth a lot more since it allowed me to have and rescue a really nice cat who until dec 24th was barely alive.
My 1st Fuku here wasn't anything spectacular and from looking at others was the most basic but it was well worth the price for the bag, leak frog and that really creepy cup which my SO loves.
I am one of those old farts who felt it was over when you could no longer choose whether to buy one, two, or three. That was my introduction to gambling, and it taught me that going large was always worth it. In fact, I'd argue that that was the first price increase.
Since i have never been lucky enough to get one, and probably never will to I am not going to stress over it. I will get a Fuku though, it will happen, as Meh is my witness I shall never be Fukuless again.
@mehbee Now that the membership has grown, you will be fukuless again