Keeping It Simple & Stupid
1How come every time something simple gets popular, people want to make it more complicated? And less fun? And then eventually less popular?
This was the first line of the kickstarter for meh. As a VMP member since August, I feel that things went from simple to complicated. Just my opinion. Meh used to be fun. Now every morning I start my day with a sold out sign. It's getting old and no longer fun for me. Just saying. Oh and staying up til midnight to get in on the deal, but then be tired all day at the office is not fun either.
- 13 comments, 51 replies
- Comment
Nobody said you had to stay up until midnight. If you want to see the deal change at midnight, there are other options such as setting your alarm for 11:55 pm, wake up, get your tablet or other computing device, and then refresh at midnight. Once you made the purchase, go back to bed.
@cengland0 You go, old goat.
how did things get more complicated. new item goes on sale at midnight. one item per day. what's changed?
@Headly Maybe some people are so stupid, even that's not simple enough? Did you ever think of that? Huh? Huh? Did you?
@WTFhqwhgads
Hence my point, it has become more complicated and less fun.
@derek17j why do you choose to do complicated things instead of fun things?
@weinerman Exactly! meh is going to lose us East Coaster's if this trend continues. I loved this site, not so much anymore, and I am sure others feel the same. Just look in the forums.
@derek17j promises, promises
@derek17j the somewhat regular sellouts suggest 1) deals are good 2) they have more followers than detractors 3) the business is sustainable, assuming they hit their bottom line. The complaining in the forums has many more anti-complaining responses. I'd rather have people complaining that the deals were so good that they weren't able to buy it in time than @unixrab complaining about how shitty every item is and have nothing ever sell out.
@weinerman Exactly.
@weinerman Who?
@cengland0 are you trying to get me to say his name 3 times?
@weinerman
@weinerman It's like the devil, say his name and he will come.
@derek17j I'm also on the east cost. So far there has only been one item I missed out on that I had been actively looking for. I was disappointed but hold out hope they have that rocking deal again. Otherwise I look at sellouts as preventing me from spending money on impulse purchases.
@LadyLeela Did the rock speakers sell out?
@zacatac Those were hideous! I actually missed out on the memory foam mattress. I have few months before I need it & it makes sense for them to try to procure a second round of items that sellout, so I remain hopeful.
@cengland0 @weinerman @thumperchick
again. please specify what specifically has changed that makes it more complicated.
@Headly Nothing has changed, beside's OP's urge to buy cheap crap after it sells out.
@Headly Change 1, VMP became free. Change 2, due to free shipping, customer base drastically increased. With these changes, product Should have increased but it didnt. As a result, Change 3, items sell out in an hour. Honestly, good for meh, good for those that get to buy at a normal time, or can be up at 12 to score a deal. For me on the east coast, before free VMP, i could buy at 5 am when I got up. Now i cannot. Thats what changed.
@derek17j The free VMP is only for two months, though. For those who hadn't paid for it, those two months should end around February 25 and then things will be back to normal.
@derek17j VMP is not free. It costs $5 now, same as 3 months ago.
@TerriblyHuang There was a deal one day you could get it for 2 months for free. Other than that deal you are right it is still $5 and it is still $5 for those two months if you missed the deal.
@derek17j Wah! Wah! Wah! If you don't like it here, go someplace else.
@Kidsandliz That is the worst thing meh ever offered. The number of over-entitled whiny little shits has increased exponentially since that dark day.
@Kidsandliz oh, I know that, but that was a one time offer two weeks ago, and only if they liked your address.
My point is VMP is not free today, nor was it free months ago. Still simple.
Does no one see the obvious? The blame is entirely on @joelmw.
@lisaviolet
@joelmw I see your lips moving and all I hear is
Look at today's stats, 33,000 + visitors to buy 1007 knives. Seriously??
@derek17j so you'd rather they didn't sell them at all?
@derek17j We are now at over 40,000 visitors to the site. If on average each person who got the knives bought 2 each, that means that only about 500 people got in on the deal. So then 39,500 saw a sold out sign. I bet they only profited a few grand from todays sale. The bad part is that thousands bought nothing. I was a paying VMP member, but I'm not going to pay $5 a month to see a sold out sign every day. meh is going to lose customer base if the trends continue because why keep checking if it constantly sells out at 1 am. I want meh to succeed, and I want to tell all my friends of the great deals I got, but offering 1000 knives to 40,000 visitors is not gonna cut it.
@derek17j Those numbers include bots that ping the site to check for the daily deal, users who've accessed from multiple devices, etc. So while there are absolutely a shit ton more people than product, the numbers are a bit skewed.
I'm an East Coaster and I love Meh.

@Keyeno Same here! Even though I have to get up early every day to take my kids to school, I still manage to check Meh at midnight every night because I don't want to miss out on deals. It's important to me so I make the choice to stay up and check it out. Other people choose not to make that choice and then bitch here about the consequences of that. This is what's wrong with society today. No one takes responsibility for their own choices. Meh is upfront about their business model; nothing that goes on here is secret. If you don't like finding sellouts when you finally get around to visiting Meh each day then you have two choices. You can either come here at changeover or stop coming here at all. There's obviously enough people here who are willing to show up on time to buy the deals. For the rest of you, shut the fuck up.
If this is really a problem, why doesn't @snapster just change the USA to be one single time zone?
@parodymandotcom Oh, that's absurd! Also, shirts comes before timezone-manipulation.
@parodymandotcom And while you're at it, have them end this DST insanity!
@rand3y ok this needs to go below shirts but above one time zone.
1) shirts
2) end day light saving
3) single time zone for the U.S.
@Ignorant Re: #3. Exceptions? Otherwise, days are going to weird in Hawaii.
@rockblossom but being in Hawaii makes up for it.
@rockblossom Unless Hawaii time is the standard.
@parodymandotcom I know, right? What an asshole.
@parodymandotcom China, all of it, is on a single time zone.
@SIMBM India is all one time zone too. Theirs is weird at UTC+05:30 so whenever I have meetings with someone there, the time is not just different by the hour, it's also 30 minutes off. It's 10:16 pm eastern now but 8:46 am in India.
So, what I hear you saying is that this is awesome as long as it doesn't grow and they don't make any money, that they should just maintain the site for the faithful few who were here the day after you joined. Yeah, that makes perfect sense.
@joelmw I am saying, you are attracting 40K plus visits a day. By offering only a quantity of 1000, you will sell out, and probably profit 1-2000 dollars. But thousands are coming here every day and buying nothing because there is not enough quantity. I want meh to succeed. This increase in customer count is great. But constant sellout are going to drive customers away. With a larger customer base, it should mean bigger buying power, which equates to all of us getting better deals. Imagine you had a store in the mall. Upon opening you sold 1000 knives. After that every single customer that walked in you would have to tell that you have nothing to sell them. They came to buy, but you have nothing to sell. After a week or so of this, they are going to stop coming.
@derek17j Clicking a link to a website is a tiny bit easier than going to the mall. I'll still do it even if they are sold out most of the time.
@derek17j Except that is not the point of this site. They don't want to buy and keep enough inventory to cover every possible visitor, They are interested in offering market clearing deals that by definition are limited quantity. It is sold as first-come, first-served, until it sells out. If you want the items meh sells, get here when the doors open, or be prepared to see the 'sold out' sign.
@derek17j Honestly, it's an experiment. I figure if no one gets killed, it's a good day. There seem to be plenty of folks who like the way the thing is and how it's evolving. And I think it's a workable model. If @snapster wants to tweak it according to your suggestion, we'll see what bitching ensues then. Or not. And truly, I could see it either way. It's a fucking ecommerce site, a place where I pick up shit that--in the scheme of things, even if all is mostly perfect ecommerce wise--is arguably inconsequential anyway.
@derek17j do you think that @Snapster buys stock for the next day's deal at 5PM on his way home from work? (If so, I want to know the name of the store. I really want to shop there.)
It doesn't work that way. Much of this stuff was ordered months ago. This means the quantities were chosen months ago. I am sure Meh has increased the size of the orders to match their best guess for the demand for those products. Don't expect to see things change over night, product lead times don't allow it.
On the other hand, the product descriptions and the videos are created much closer to the sale date. So don't be surprised to see some jokes referring to the sell outs in the near future.
There are those of us who would rather miss a few sales, than to have the price go up. We understand that one key to maintaining a low overhead is not filling the warehouse with unsold merchandise. We realize that sellouts are a natural side effect of the business model. As Meh gets better at predicting the demand for things, the sellouts will tend to happen more often, but later in the day.
If Meh were really good at predicting future demand, they would be wealthy commodities traders. Don't expect perfection, just buy stuff if the product is available at an appropriate price, or say "meh" and move on.
@hamjudo Thanks for the explaination. I started this topic mainly to introduce a discussion as to the many recent sell outs. It is tougher to support meh, since I live on the East Coast. And it does get frustrating when I miss out of things that I would have liked to purchase. But that is how it goes. It was the same at the last site and I have learned to accept it. When meh was younger this didn't happen, but hopefully with time this will get better. I like meh, and I have gotten some great deals. I really want this to continue and I will be supporting this in the future.
@hamjudo Keep up this and a goat nomination could be in your future.
@derek17j You know, I live in Florida in the eastern time zone and I had no problem ordering any of the items that sold out. Sorry but the problem is not with the site but with the user's inability or uncaring enough to sign in at midnight.
I live in the East Coast state known as Michigan. We've got more than 3,000 miles of coastline, and none of it is too salty to drink (alas, there are days when you shouldn't drink from Lake Erie, but that is not due to salt.)
@hamjudo Are there ever days… when you should drink from Lake Erie? And, in what millenium will these days be occurring?
@brhfl I swam and probably ingested plenty of it in the 70's. No extra limbs yet, but so much wasted potential! If only I hadn't! ;}
All this pissing and moaning is like a bunch of little kids who dropped their ice cream cone. Get over it!
Life's not fair!!!
@Teripie you'd know what it's like if you lived on the east coast....oh wait.
@Teripie