@telepheedia If you or anyone else was curious, I just did the research and the current root status seems to be that this model is rootable but slight errors result in bricking. The bootloader is locked and no one has cracked it, so you cannot use system backups or reload your phone completely back to stock once you start messing with it.
I was going to get one if the bootloader was unlocked but screw dealing with locked up junk.
@telepheedian I bought one for my son. What a mistake that was. The OS isnt usable. I was able to get Nova installed and youtube to work with some hackery but I dont recommend these at all.
@Mehrocco_Mole You might like the AMC show 'Halt and Catch Fire', because it has all the boxes, circuit boards, serial ports, cartridges, floppies etc. from the glory days. Lots of in-jokes and allusions, too. A few minor errata, but revisiting all the drama is fun.
@cengland0 YES!, when I tired to go from the forum thread to the deal and site crashed, I thought - I am Fuku-Fuk'd again. To my surprise it was a kindle. (something I won't be disappointed by again)
@boygenius1991 Then you, sir, have never owned a tablet computer. I use mine all the time for... Things. Like when my phone dies and I need something to so in the five minutes it takes to charge my phone enough for it to turn on. And Flappy Bird.
@boygenius1991 I've got a big phone and small laptop so a tablet doesn't make much sense any more for me either. People who complained that the iPad was just a "big iPod touch" were right.
@shawn_mitch I have. my family has one. they play angry birds on it and use it to google. I can do that kind of stuff and more on a laptop, so I see no reason to buy a separate expensive device with fewer functions. it make no sense
@boygenius1991 Tablets seemed pretty ridiculous at first, and it took me years to warm up to the idea after receiving one as a gift.
I now own several, including one dedicated to in-car navigation/music. Keeps me from cluttering my phone and laptop with games and stuff I wouldn't use outside the house. Also avoids the urge to get a phone with an impractically big screen.
@boygenius1991 I got a Nexus 10 mostly for reading digital comics, but I've found it comes in handy for a lot of other situations as well. It's much better than my phone for when I want to have a recipe up in the kitchen or watch Netflix in bed.
I caved and bought an iPad mini earlier this year. My original Fire, which is not all that old, couldn't even be updated to the latest operating system and therefor is now a brick in a pretty purple cover. Sucks. I liked that thing. Just use my Kindle Paperwhite or iPad now...
@mehod amazon subsidizes the cost of some of their tablets and ereaders with ads. You have ads on your lock screen, and some other places sometimes. They subsidize the cost, hoping to get you to accept a little more advertising. It's not intrusive, or crazy - but some people would rather pay more $$ to not have it.
For this, I am not all Fire'd Up. However, this sale, like the A/V receivers, is a refreshing change to quad-copters, water vessels, and baby monitors. This sale is definitely not as Meh-ssed up as others.
I therefore commit a biased yelp of "MEH" only because I like having a (dual boot) bootable SD card slot like the BNTV600.
Come on @JonT what do I have to spend here to get a Fuku, I mean seriously. I buy a Phantom, I buy a Kindle, will it ever come out in my favor? I mean besides having an awesome quad and kindle...
@thismyusername it was $140 with a free year of prime 2 weeks ago.(i bought a used one last year for $80, i don't recommend it unless you know how to root and install cyanogenmod)
Interesting...your take on primeday equals my take on your recent daily selections. Pretty ho-hum (ignoring the birthday, for the lucky few of course)
And as of right now, looks like all but 5 meh-ites agree. Coincidence? Irony? Fate? But, even with the flaws..you're still way better than ruined-woot and any other DOTD site.
Please just get back to the cheap, semi-useful stuff, and let ruined-woot have all of the motherships POS crap to sell. I'm sensing it won't be long until ruined-woot has some shoehorns for only twice what they are worth.
@mdrcoast It sucks because the hardware really is excellent, and the high-end Android tablet market is kinda screwed up right now (if you hate TouchWiz). This would be great and well worth it with real Android. Why Amazon felt like they needed to make a high-end tablet with their media consumption based OS is completely beyond me. And while I appreciate hacks, this particular tablet is a pandora's box, and CyanogenMod isn't the stable, clean OS alternative it used to be, on any device.
@mfladd Item I have never actually seen, but is referred by those who live on the West Coast, people who work nights and people who can still stay up late. I don't fall into any of those categories so they might as well be fiction to me. (Like if Santa delivered one)
@jseay65 Irony... only 6% had visited on a tablet. Obviously they need to buy this tablet in order to bump up that number the next time there's a tablet for sale!
schadenfreude...Why haven't I used or really even heard of this word before? Isn't this the meat and potatoes of the network news "shows"? And soap operas on daytime TV? And, well, just about every form of social interaction on Facebook? It's either look at me, I'm living better than you or, look at me I'm having a bad day, year, life.
Is there a way to click the Meh button twice?... or the existence of an "ultra meh" button per se? like a button that describes the feeling you get when you see a deal like this and go: "this is not mediocre, this is what goes beyond mediocre" like Meh, Meh and Beyond?
Ouch. Swing and a miss. I wonder what happens to these now. Do they try to offload with wholesale? Make it a 2 for Tuesday? Build a fort them and cry themselves to sleep?
Bought an HDX 7 last year to root; the specs were too good to pass up for my first tablet. After a couple days of reading horror stories of bricked ones, meticulously rooting mine, and realizing future updates could lead to extra work, I realized my time had value. Returned it, got a Nexus 7 with vanilla Android stock, and haven't looked back.
I actually want one, but I have all these dang best buy gift cards from the 'turn in a tablet to buy a surface' deal, etc. Also I bought the $75 tablet on prime day (because gym movies.) Wonder if I can convince them to price match Meh.
Everyone seems so down on this offering in principle, I feel I have to put my two cents in. I am practically a Luddite at technology. I loved my original Kindle, using it as an ebook reader and a web surfing tool. After many years of use, the charging port stopped working. Instead of sending it to one of those ebay guys to get it fixed, I bought a Tab 4 during Black Friday last year. The bloatware on it is incredible. I have no idea what I can delete without breaking it. I miss the ease of use of my Kindle. Now the bottom line - I would buy this sucker in a heartbeat except for the price. A lovely screen resolution, dual antennas, and a quad core; I would pull the trigger at $150 off, but not $100.
This deal just came at the right next day after I purchased the kindle fire with the exact same config on amazon and my total ended up being 408 $ ( including taxes Shipping was free as a prime member) But the deal Meh is giving just knocked me out of my seat and I had to got for this. I am returning the one that brought from amazon. Thanks MEH !!
Follow-up: while I greatly enjoyed today's write-up, in retrospect, looking at the numbers, it seems it might have been better to spend the space talking about/persuading us why we should buy this item, rather than talk about Amazon's debacle.
@defibrillator Writeups that are only vaguely related to the product are a proud tradition that goes back to the Woot glory days. Basically, if the item is something most people are already familar with there's less need to sell the product, and with more obscure stuff (like the Sphero robots) the writeup is usually more product focused.
Hey @snapster, any chance we could find out what meh's cost was on this order? I'm curious how profitable they are at this price for your guys? Maybe you could share it after the sale is over? If it's too much secret to share no worries. Thanks!
This is a lot of comments on a product no one is buying. Pro tip for Meh: If you want to slow down the sales of future Fukus, describe it as a Kindle Fire.
I think they should do falling prices. There would be price drops throughout the day, to see what the sellout price would be. Of course you would need to vary the quantity greatly across products/days so no one knows how many are actually for sale. Wouldn't be as fun if there were always 1,000 available for instance because you would know if you could wait it out for a lower price. Then you charge everyone the lowest paid price that caused the sellout.
Of course might not be fun for the Mediocre and their bank account, but would be fascinating to watch.
@MrMark It doesn't work if you charge everyone the lowest paid price that makes it a sellout, that's ideally what they try to do now. However I like your idea about prices that drop throughout the day though, I've thought about that as well. That could work, possibly as another Mediocre site? The idea being that if you really want it, you buy it early to make sure you get it. If you only like it at a certain price, you wait by the computer as midnight closes in and cross your fingers. It's exactly what I did with the Phantom, but does take three sale days.. So do you setup the price decrements based on the number sold? For example, say you start with 100 of these to sell, and for every ten sold, the price drops by $5. Of course visitors to the site don't know the bottom price or how many are for sale. Interesting...
@MrMark Previous company I worked for did this. All their prices had a half life and if stuff wasn't purchased it would continue to go down to a point. Eventually the item was written off and thrown out.
@mehdaf I think I would do a price drop randomly by times. If you do it by quantity then you are predetermining the lowest price.
For example if you had 100 items starting at $100 and dropped price $5.00 every 20 items you know the final price would be $80.00 (Assuming you do sell out)
20@ $100 20@ $95 20@ $90 20@ $85 20@ $80
You would never know what the true sellout price would of been, because that could all happen within 10 minutes of the sale posting. There could be many more that would buy it @ $100. Perhaps the $100 was the sellout price.
By doing it by time you get a slightly better idea of what the sellout price would be. Say you drop the price at 10:30am ($95), 2:30pm ($90), 7:00pm ($85), and 11:15pm ($80). If the item sells out at 2:50pm you know $90 is the magic price point. Sure the person who bought it at 2:50pm might of paid more, just didn't get on the site until it was at $90, but I still think it would give you a fair idea of what that golden price is.
I was thinking charging the lowest price to all would alleviate all the whining from the purchasers who got in early. Just imagine how happy the guy who agreed to buy it at $100 would be to find out he was only charged $90. However if 99 others agreed that $100 was the sellout price then he would be charged the $100. So you would buy at the highest price you are willing to pay, knowing you may pay less. But maybe charging the price you "lock in" at is the way to go. I can see both sides.
There are plenty of variables and I'm sure you would get different results for different days, but still is something I would find very interesting to see the results of.
@MrMark Don't they pretty much do this now? Rather than over the course of a day, they do it over the course of their product shelf life over multiple sales.
@MrMark I like your idea! My only concern about applying a time based price reduction strategy, does that train me to log in 10 minutes before the end of the day and decide if I really want something? Also, my concern about offering everyone who buys at any price the final sellout price (assuming it's lower than what they agreed to pay) is that it's basically what Meh is now, but they need to increase their prices initially during the sale to allow this math to work. That's how it works in my head anyway, I can't wait for howlowwillmehgo.horse
@mehdaf The risk you run with logging in 10 minutes before the end of the day is the item may be sold out. However I'm sure there would be plenty of people that would let it ride to try and grab the lowest price. Then complain that it sold out before they got a chance to buy it :).
I'm not sure if this could be a viable business, or how you determine the starting price. To be fair the plan is only 24 hours old in my mind, so I have yet to work out all the details. I just think it would be interesting to see the behavior of the customers and if it would change over time.
Part of me thinks you would sell out quicker if you went with the everyone buys it at the "sellout price". Here is how I would think:
Scenario: Everyone's final purchase price is the sellout price: Say the items comes on at midnight at $100, to me it is worth at least $100, I would buy it at that point because I think it's worth it, knowing that I could get it for a lower final price. Worst case scenario I pay $100 for the item. If they have a 1,000 of these items, there maybe 1,000 people like me out there and they sell out at the $100. Total revenue of $100,000
Scenario: Everyone buys at the price they lock in at: Same item comes on at midnight at $100, I may wait to see sales stats start come in, if it is slow selling I may gamble a bit and wait for a price drop. Since everyone likes to save money. Yes I run the risk of not getting the item, but I would view it as a calculated risk. Depending on how badly i actually needed the item would dictate how much I was willing to gamble and wait. Under this scenario perhaps you get 300 @ $100, 300 $95, 400 @ $90. $94,500 revenue.
Obviously these could be switched, and the "lock in" method could drive higher revenue. I really have no idea what the better way to go would be. It would be fun to see it done both ways over time and see which one leads to quicker sellouts and higher revenue.
The biggest flaw in the business plan is if you don't have a sellout, then you are selling for the lowest possible price to everyone which is what you were alluding to. Also you would need a rather large customer base for this to work, as well as a relatively limited amount of supply. If your supply is greater than you customer base you would never hit a sellout, and you could be selling an item for too low.
I'm beginning to wonder if there's some sort of intential humorous linkage between the item write-up and the product being sold. Is this a very subtle ironic slap at Amazon? Not the write-up, that is not so subtle; rather, the Kindle Fire being sold? Something like, ha ha, here we are on opposite day, Amazon Prime Day was a bunch of cheap crap no one wanted, here's an expensive piece of electronics no one wants.
@defibrillator It's funny on two levels right? First, Meh is selling this thing cheaper than Amazon did on Prime day, second very few people appear to want it even at this price. I do think that people here have a higher level of apathy for locked down technology. That forum post about quitting your job showed many users here are involved with IT type jobs. It seems that tech savvy people don't put up with that.
This is obviously an experiment in ecommerce. This gives Meh an opportunity to publicly critique Amazon and @snapster gets to see how we react to this "item".
It is more of a community building exercise, than a sale. So far, more than 64k people have gawked at this trainwreck of a product. All but 16 so far have passed it by. Those 16 were probably swayed by the great hardware, particularly the screen, at a very reasonable price. The 64 thousand of us were repulsed by what Amazon did to their version of Android, and how they rigged it to brick if we make a mistake replacing that software.
I call bullshit. This is gotta be part of an experiment. There's NO WAY that only 17 sold. Meh.com could write a sad story about lonely rocks, and sell a box of gravel to more than 17 people. And I mean Regular gravel, not the fancy kind.
@G1 Yeah, I was wondering if they'd tweaked the code that counts sales. But I didn't want to put my money on the line to test that. I think they are tickled that so few sold.
@narfcake@sourhead If you bricked one of these, it'd be worth less than gravel.
They got $1 per meh! I got a the regular e-ink kindle during Prime Day since B&N and Amazon have differing catalogs and pricing, this is kinda tempting...decisions decisions! 3 mins to decide!!
Specs
Condition: New
Warranty: 1 Year Amazon
Estimated Delivery: 7/30 - 8/2
Shipping: $5 or free with VMP
What’s in the Box?
1x Fire HDX 8.9 Tablet
1x USB 2.0 cable
1x 9W Amazon PowerFast charger
1x Quick start guide
Pictures
Kindle with box
Psheeeewwwww
Thickness
Retail box
Portrait mode
Landscape mode
Price Comparison
$379 at Amazon
Find a relevant price comparison? Please share it in a comment in this thread
Estimated Delivery
Monday, January 28th - Thursday, January 31st
them servers tho @harrison
thanks @starblind
JEEZ FINALLY
That song sure is catchy
@pzy that was my thought! At least we have waiting entertaining better than the Jeopardy song.
Waited 7 minutes for this? Meh.
Sent from my Nexus 10.
Nope nope nope
Ummm, no thanks.
Having some issues tonight?
5 minutes... THAT WAS BRUTAL
Your write-up was so funny, you broke the internet.
So you guys were just simulating browsing on the Kindle? Clever!
@GiantTarget Poor video podcast, if you only knew where you'd end up.
I never understood why people like these. Fantastic hardware and all, but that Fire OS is brutally simplified and upsell crazy.
@telepheedian
Buy it, root it, install Cyanogenmod. Easy peasy.
@shawn_mitch I thought that was a bitch and a half on these in particular, but maybe that's changed since I last looked.
@telepheedia If you or anyone else was curious, I just did the research and the current root status seems to be that this model is rootable but slight errors result in bricking. The bootloader is locked and no one has cracked it, so you cannot use system backups or reload your phone completely back to stock once you start messing with it.
I was going to get one if the bootloader was unlocked but screw dealing with locked up junk.
@telepheedian I bought one for my son. What a mistake that was. The OS isnt usable. I was able to get Nova installed and youtube to work with some hackery but I dont recommend these at all.
um
Are you using these as your servers?
@eeterrific For a minute there I was worried someone wasn't going to make this obvious joke.
@eeterrific Why screw with what works?
This was my first computer. Got one before Timex got involved. Came as a case, circuit board, and a bag of parts to solder on. Loved it!
@Mehrocco_Mole You might like the AMC show 'Halt and Catch Fire', because it has all the boxes, circuit boards, serial ports, cartridges, floppies etc. from the glory days. Lots of in-jokes and allusions, too. A few minor errata, but revisiting all the drama is fun.
Did someone say schadenfreude?
How is it that Meh can beat Amazon's price by $100 on an Amazon product? Witchcraft. I tell you, it's witchcraft.
@mr_crash_davis The Witches of Mehwick.
@mr_crash_davis Can you imagine how hard it is for Amazon to sell these at $379? The market has spoken and it's not saying $379!
No breakfast octopus? For that alone, meh.
@njd fine fine
@snapster don't listen to him. Freaking sweet!!!
Argh. If it wasn't the 16GB model...
Something went terribly wrong... I think you meant for this to post on Tuesday (2 for $279).
You had to take that extra 5 minutes to be like, "Are you sure we wanna make fun of Amazon... again?" "YUP"
@Thumperchick for a second there, I thought they surprised us with another FUKU.
@cengland0 YES!, when I tired to go from the forum thread to the deal and site crashed, I thought - I am Fuku-Fuk'd again. To my surprise it was a kindle. (something I won't be disappointed by again)
site was down. I don't want this, even for 30% off. I don't get the point of tablet computers.
@boygenius1991 Then you, sir, have never owned a tablet computer. I use mine all the time for... Things. Like when my phone dies and I need something to so in the five minutes it takes to charge my phone enough for it to turn on. And Flappy Bird.
@boygenius1991 I've got a big phone and small laptop so a tablet doesn't make much sense any more for me either. People who complained that the iPad was just a "big iPod touch" were right.
@shawn_mitch I have. my family has one. they play angry birds on it and use it to google. I can do that kind of stuff and more on a laptop, so I see no reason to buy a separate expensive device with fewer functions. it make no sense
@boygenius1991 I didn't know I needed one until I got one.
@boygenius1991 Tablets seemed pretty ridiculous at first, and it took me years to warm up to the idea after receiving one as a gift.
I now own several, including one dedicated to in-car navigation/music. Keeps me from cluttering my phone and laptop with games and stuff I wouldn't use outside the house. Also avoids the urge to get a phone with an impractically big screen.
@2many2no Sounds like most Apple and/or meh customers...
@boygenius1991 I got a Nexus 10 mostly for reading digital comics, but I've found it comes in handy for a lot of other situations as well. It's much better than my phone for when I want to have a recipe up in the kitchen or watch Netflix in bed.
Selling an Amazon product on Meh bring SWTW. So meta, you don't even know you are meta.
I don't understand why the page won't load. :P headstrong-taxing-fig bought one just to be uber Meh.
@mehdaf :( had to cancel. You guys...
I caved and bought an iPad mini earlier this year. My original Fire, which is not all that old, couldn't even be updated to the latest operating system and therefor is now a brick in a pretty purple cover. Sucks. I liked that thing. Just use my Kindle Paperwhite or iPad now...
just a note, this DOES have a slimport, so you can convert the microusb to an hdmi to access content on a tv
did i miss it somewhere ? what are the "with special offers" ? would that be $200 worth of Amazon coins
@mehod amazon subsidizes the cost of some of their tablets and ereaders with ads. You have ads on your lock screen, and some other places sometimes. They subsidize the cost, hoping to get you to accept a little more advertising. It's not intrusive, or crazy - but some people would rather pay more $$ to not have it.
@mehod on the lock screen you get "special offers" aka ads with coupon codes. if you dont feel like hacking your kindle, you can pay amazon to remove the special offers from your device http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/29/technology/personaltech/removing-the-ads-from-a-kindle.html
@mehod Has anyone gotten special offers in the past like 6 months? I used to get text alerts and everything, and I never get any now.
Fuck amazon and their locked down app store and fuck prime, otherwise it's a nice tablet with good specs. Pass
@robson Not that the Google Appstore isn't locked down or anything right?
@alpine Normal Android devices let you sideload. This doesn't.
@telepheedian *scratches head * I am writing on an HDX with sideloaded apps from Google.
Are we being punished for something?
@jaremelz could be worse, we could have multiple items a day
@jaremelz At least it's not a Donald Trump product.
@communist I'm sad how much I'm LOLing. But I still haven't committed to a speaker dock size so I have to come back.
Wow that's spendy.
For this, I am not all Fire'd Up. However, this sale, like the A/V receivers, is a refreshing change to quad-copters, water vessels, and baby monitors. This sale is definitely not as Meh-ssed up as others.
I therefore commit a biased yelp of "MEH" only because I like having a (dual boot) bootable SD card slot like the BNTV600.
I'd rather go with Android... The Kindles have everything too proprietary.
@Phoenix_Tears You're aware that Kindles are Android...Right? I mean, a customized, Amazon centric Android, but Android nonetheless....
@dkaine no Google Play, gotta use the Amazon App store :(
@thismyusername I got an older version of the Fire to work with the Google Play store, but it was messy.
@Phoenix_Tears you can sideload nearly all apps found on the Google playstore. The trick is getting the apk file. Not as difficult as it seems.
@alpine Yep I tried this. It seems to work.
Come on @JonT what do I have to spend here to get a Fuku, I mean seriously. I buy a Phantom, I buy a Kindle, will it ever come out in my favor? I mean besides having an awesome quad and kindle...
@mehdaf Just spend $5 on the day the FUKU is offered and you can have one. No previous purchases necessary.
@cengland0 No I tried that...
Where are the $20 Fire Phones???? Come on meh.
@thismyusername it was $140 with a free year of prime 2 weeks ago.(i bought a used one last year for $80, i don't recommend it unless you know how to root and install cyanogenmod)
mehiest deal ever. You could try selling fire phone for $300 with same result. Either you drop it to $99 or nobody buys it.
i'm just going to say, if they had actually put the 55 gallon tub of lube on say, people would have rejoiced and bought stuff.
@vampje In case someone doesn't get the reference:
I should buy, after all I have a super cool neoprene case for it.
@conandlibrarian Only one?
Funny... Primeday reminded me of every w00toff and bag of crap since the sell-out to Amazon.
dont ever buy a kindle fire, full of fail
Interesting...your take on primeday equals my take on your recent daily selections. Pretty ho-hum (ignoring the birthday, for the lucky few of course)
And as of right now, looks like all but 5 meh-ites agree. Coincidence? Irony? Fate? But, even with the flaws..you're still way better than ruined-woot and any other DOTD site.
Please just get back to the cheap, semi-useful stuff, and let ruined-woot have all of the motherships POS crap to sell. I'm sensing it won't be long until ruined-woot has some shoehorns for only twice what they are worth.
Yikes, 5 sold and 99.99% pass. What's the record for most Meh?
@ajhaag That is 5 people who will price check in the future...
Same item from Frys? $219???
Amazon Kindle Fire HDX 8.9 - Wi-Fi - 16 GB - with Special Offers
$219.90 In stock
@mdrcoast 2013 model, so specs aren't nearly as good. Same shit software though.
@telepheedian Thanks, Exact Model looks to be quite a bit more. ($379 is correct) I don't think they are worth it at either price.
@mdrcoast It sucks because the hardware really is excellent, and the high-end Android tablet market is kinda screwed up right now (if you hate TouchWiz). This would be great and well worth it with real Android. Why Amazon felt like they needed to make a high-end tablet with their media consumption based OS is completely beyond me. And while I appreciate hacks, this particular tablet is a pandora's box, and CyanogenMod isn't the stable, clean OS alternative it used to be, on any device.
Ouch.
@jseay65 ouch is right. 'Hopefully it was a consignment deal, whatever the quantity.
@RedOak either that or we know one item everyone will be getting in the next fuku.
@mfladd Fuku? What is this Fuku of which you speak? ;-)
@RedOak I know :(
@mfladd Item I have never actually seen, but is referred by those who live on the West Coast, people who work nights and people who can still stay up late. I don't fall into any of those categories so they might as well be fiction to me. (Like if Santa delivered one)
@jseay65 Irony... only 6% had visited on a tablet. Obviously they need to buy this tablet in order to bump up that number the next time there's a tablet for sale!
So, it is 9:30 on the East coast, and Meh has sold a whopping 5 of these. No doubt this will be in the finalists for "most meh deal of the year"
@wilfbrim not even enough sold (>1 in a given state) to show up on the sales map.
schadenfreude...Why haven't I used or really even heard of this word before? Isn't this the meat and potatoes of the network news "shows"? And soap operas on daytime TV? And, well, just about every form of social interaction on Facebook? It's either look at me, I'm living better than you or, look at me I'm having a bad day, year, life.
Is there a way to click the Meh button twice?... or the existence of an "ultra meh" button per se? like a button that describes the feeling you get when you see a deal like this and go: "this is not mediocre, this is what goes beyond mediocre" like Meh, Meh and Beyond?
Ouch. Swing and a miss. I wonder what happens to these now. Do they try to offload with wholesale? Make it a 2 for Tuesday? Build a fort them and cry themselves to sleep?
wow! i do not think i have ever woken up to see only 5 items sold before.
It's April 1st right?
Geez first the Donald doing his "Springtime for Hitler", now this.
Was it intentional that this was the deal posted next to the Amazon Prime Day failure writeup?
7 sold so far... this seems like an epic fail by meh.........
Bought an HDX 7 last year to root; the specs were too good to pass up for my first tablet. After a couple days of reading horror stories of bricked ones, meticulously rooting mine, and realizing future updates could lead to extra work, I realized my time had value. Returned it, got a Nexus 7 with vanilla Android stock, and haven't looked back.
I actually want one, but I have all these dang best buy gift cards from the 'turn in a tablet to buy a surface' deal, etc. Also I bought the $75 tablet on prime day (because gym movies.) Wonder if I can convince them to price match Meh.
Everyone seems so down on this offering in principle, I feel I have to put my two cents in. I am practically a Luddite at technology. I loved my original Kindle, using it as an ebook reader and a web surfing tool. After many years of use, the charging port stopped working. Instead of sending it to one of those ebay guys to get it fixed, I bought a Tab 4 during Black Friday last year. The bloatware on it is incredible. I have no idea what I can delete without breaking it. I miss the ease of use of my Kindle. Now the bottom line - I would buy this sucker in a heartbeat except for the price. A lovely screen resolution, dual antennas, and a quad core; I would pull the trigger at $150 off, but not $100.
@lbrannick Samsung should never be used as a point of reference for what Android looks like.
@telepheedian Didn't say it was. This is just my experience with a non-Kindle tablet.
This deal just came at the right next day after I purchased the kindle fire with the exact same config on amazon and my total ended up being 408 $ ( including taxes Shipping was free as a prime member) But the deal Meh is giving just knocked me out of my seat and I had to got for this. I am returning the one that brought from amazon. Thanks MEH !!
Is that @MEHcus smiling? I didn't think that ever happened.
@sammydog01 I don't smile
@sammydog01 He's photoshopped obviously.
@cinoclav Or is that his non-evil twin?
As of 11:45 pm Eastern, as I type this, there have been exactly EIGHT of these sold, according to the stats.
What went wrong here? I can't imagine that Meh is happy with only selling 8 units in roughly 11 hours.
@defibrillator Making me check my watch to ensure I didn't fall asleep in my cube! It's still AM... whew.
@defibrillator Update: 12:30 pm and there's 9 sold.
@cengland0 Oh yea baby..almost double digits.
@brhfl oops!
@defibrillator handy username. Especially in this scenario.
Follow-up: while I greatly enjoyed today's write-up, in retrospect, looking at the numbers, it seems it might have been better to spend the space talking about/persuading us why we should buy this item, rather than talk about Amazon's debacle.
@defibrillator The product being sold today is an Amazon debacle.
@defibrillator Writeups that are only vaguely related to the product are a proud tradition that goes back to the Woot glory days. Basically, if the item is something most people are already familar with there's less need to sell the product, and with more obscure stuff (like the Sphero robots) the writeup is usually more product focused.
@Starblind I always thought it was because the writers' brains were frazzled and the writeups were what happened when they free-associated.
Hey @snapster, any chance we could find out what meh's cost was on this order? I'm curious how profitable they are at this price for your guys? Maybe you could share it after the sale is over? If it's too much secret to share no worries. Thanks!
@DaveInSoCal maybe they needed a day to catch up in the warehouse so they put this up, figuring they'll buy a dozen on Amazon to cover the sales. :D
Good write up. Don't need a kindle, but liked the write up.
This is a lot of comments on a product no one is buying. Pro tip for Meh: If you want to slow down the sales of future Fukus, describe it as a Kindle Fire.
Now THAT'S a slow burn.
I think they should do falling prices. There would be price drops throughout the day, to see what the sellout price would be. Of course you would need to vary the quantity greatly across products/days so no one knows how many are actually for sale. Wouldn't be as fun if there were always 1,000 available for instance because you would know if you could wait it out for a lower price. Then you charge everyone the lowest paid price that caused the sellout.
Of course might not be fun for the Mediocre and their bank account, but would be fascinating to watch.
@MrMark Too complicated for daily use, but I like it for fuku. Start at $50 and end at $5; the game becomes when to jump in or miss the boat.
@MrMark It doesn't work if you charge everyone the lowest paid price that makes it a sellout, that's ideally what they try to do now. However I like your idea about prices that drop throughout the day though, I've thought about that as well. That could work, possibly as another Mediocre site? The idea being that if you really want it, you buy it early to make sure you get it. If you only like it at a certain price, you wait by the computer as midnight closes in and cross your fingers. It's exactly what I did with the Phantom, but does take three sale days.. So do you setup the price decrements based on the number sold? For example, say you start with 100 of these to sell, and for every ten sold, the price drops by $5. Of course visitors to the site don't know the bottom price or how many are for sale. Interesting...
@MrMark Previous company I worked for did this. All their prices had a half life and if stuff wasn't purchased it would continue to go down to a point. Eventually the item was written off and thrown out.
@mehdaf I think I would do a price drop randomly by times. If you do it by quantity then you are predetermining the lowest price.
For example if you had 100 items starting at $100 and dropped price $5.00 every 20 items you know the final price would be $80.00 (Assuming you do sell out)
20@ $100
20@ $95
20@ $90
20@ $85
20@ $80
You would never know what the true sellout price would of been, because that could all happen within 10 minutes of the sale posting. There could be many more that would buy it @ $100. Perhaps the $100 was the sellout price.
By doing it by time you get a slightly better idea of what the sellout price would be. Say you drop the price at 10:30am ($95), 2:30pm ($90), 7:00pm ($85), and 11:15pm ($80). If the item sells out at 2:50pm you know $90 is the magic price point. Sure the person who bought it at 2:50pm might of paid more, just didn't get on the site until it was at $90, but I still think it would give you a fair idea of what that golden price is.
I was thinking charging the lowest price to all would alleviate all the whining from the purchasers who got in early. Just imagine how happy the guy who agreed to buy it at $100 would be to find out he was only charged $90. However if 99 others agreed that $100 was the sellout price then he would be charged the $100. So you would buy at the highest price you are willing to pay, knowing you may pay less. But maybe charging the price you "lock in" at is the way to go. I can see both sides.
There are plenty of variables and I'm sure you would get different results for different days, but still is something I would find very interesting to see the results of.
@MrMark Don't they pretty much do this now? Rather than over the course of a day, they do it over the course of their product shelf life over multiple sales.
@march5th00 Not necessarily; speaker docks have increased in price.
@MrMark I like your idea! My only concern about applying a time based price reduction strategy, does that train me to log in 10 minutes before the end of the day and decide if I really want something? Also, my concern about offering everyone who buys at any price the final sellout price (assuming it's lower than what they agreed to pay) is that it's basically what Meh is now, but they need to increase their prices initially during the sale to allow this math to work. That's how it works in my head anyway, I can't wait for howlowwillmehgo.horse
@mehdaf The risk you run with logging in 10 minutes before the end of the day is the item may be sold out. However I'm sure there would be plenty of people that would let it ride to try and grab the lowest price. Then complain that it sold out before they got a chance to buy it :).
I'm not sure if this could be a viable business, or how you determine the starting price. To be fair the plan is only 24 hours old in my mind, so I have yet to work out all the details. I just think it would be interesting to see the behavior of the customers and if it would change over time.
Part of me thinks you would sell out quicker if you went with the everyone buys it at the "sellout price". Here is how I would think:
Scenario: Everyone's final purchase price is the sellout price:
Say the items comes on at midnight at $100, to me it is worth at least $100, I would buy it at that point because I think it's worth it, knowing that I could get it for a lower final price. Worst case scenario I pay $100 for the item. If they have a 1,000 of these items, there maybe 1,000 people like me out there and they sell out at the $100. Total revenue of $100,000
Scenario: Everyone buys at the price they lock in at:
Same item comes on at midnight at $100, I may wait to see sales stats start come in, if it is slow selling I may gamble a bit and wait for a price drop. Since everyone likes to save money. Yes I run the risk of not getting the item, but I would view it as a calculated risk. Depending on how badly i actually needed the item would dictate how much I was willing to gamble and wait. Under this scenario perhaps you get 300 @ $100, 300 $95, 400 @ $90. $94,500 revenue.
Obviously these could be switched, and the "lock in" method could drive higher revenue. I really have no idea what the better way to go would be. It would be fun to see it done both ways over time and see which one leads to quicker sellouts and higher revenue.
The biggest flaw in the business plan is if you don't have a sellout, then you are selling for the lowest possible price to everyone which is what you were alluding to. Also you would need a rather large customer base for this to work, as well as a relatively limited amount of supply. If your supply is greater than you customer base you would never hit a sellout, and you could be selling an item for too low.
hi meh ilu it's ok we all have bad days
Wow, almost 60000 visits and only 12 sales. I think you should give a Fuku to each person who purchased one.
I'm actually surprised at how horribly this is selling.
I'm beginning to wonder if there's some sort of intential humorous linkage between the item write-up and the product being sold. Is this a very subtle ironic slap at Amazon? Not the write-up, that is not so subtle; rather, the Kindle Fire being sold? Something like, ha ha, here we are on opposite day, Amazon Prime Day was a bunch of cheap crap no one wanted, here's an expensive piece of electronics no one wants.
No. That doesn't make any sense.
@defibrillator It's funny on two levels right? First, Meh is selling this thing cheaper than Amazon did on Prime day, second very few people appear to want it even at this price. I do think that people here have a higher level of apathy for locked down technology. That forum post about quitting your job showed many users here are involved with IT type jobs. It seems that tech savvy people don't put up with that.
@defibrillator We can be a bit meh ta at times...
12 sold in 17 hours . . .
@ekw With 60000 Views
This is obviously an experiment in ecommerce. This gives Meh an opportunity to publicly critique Amazon and @snapster gets to see how we react to this "item".
It is more of a community building exercise, than a sale. So far, more than 64k people have gawked at this trainwreck of a product. All but 16 so far have passed it by. Those 16 were probably swayed by the great hardware, particularly the screen, at a very reasonable price. The 64 thousand of us were repulsed by what Amazon did to their version of Android, and how they rigged it to brick if we make a mistake replacing that software.
I call bullshit. This is gotta be part of an experiment. There's NO WAY that only 17 sold. Meh.com could write a sad story about lonely rocks, and sell a box of gravel to more than 17 people. And I mean Regular gravel, not the fancy kind.
@G1 Regular? Perfect! Non-proprietary gravel FTW!
@G1 I hear, ya... But probably not $279 gravel.
@G1 Yeah, I was wondering if they'd tweaked the code that counts sales. But I didn't want to put my money on the line to test that. I think they are tickled that so few sold.
@narfcake @sourhead If you bricked one of these, it'd be worth less than gravel.
@narfcake Backwards compatible, all the way back to the Stone Age!
@G1 And Earth friendly too!
I can't believe only 45 minutes away from the new MEH and they have only sold 19 of these. Does this mean this will be the Two for Tuesday deal?
@joe43wv oh I hope not rofl
@joe43wv lets hope so. There is a price that I like this product at, but $279 is not it.
@mehdaf free with prime? I'll do that price.
@joe43wv This is really quite depressing...mocking Amazon and then they themselves fail. Irony?
@Zypher It's mehta.
There should have been a "guess the amount sold" contest for this pile of crap
72000+ visits, 20 minutes to go and 19 sold...
@kensey if amazon took at look at their lockdown stance I suspect a lot more of these would have moved.
They got $1 per meh! I got a the regular e-ink kindle during Prime Day since B&N and Amazon have differing catalogs and pricing, this is kinda tempting...decisions decisions! 3 mins to decide!!
I almost want to buy one so it breaks 20.
Someone in Butler County, Ohio really likes this deal. Maybe even two people.
Well that worked well...I'd buy two if they were 300, maybe 350...MAYBE
Course I paid $150 for each of my 32GB HP Touchpads during the fire sale, so all these silly $300+ tablets are just crazy talk to me.