Mehmbership woes

btwonder went on a bit of a rant said
9

TL;DR mehmbership is no longer worth it to me, and I’m one of those trashy people who announces their departure like they’re flying an A380 out of JFK.

In December of last year I was invited to join Amazon Vine, and the near-immediate availability of “free” crap that flows from it has almost completely cured me of what I thought was a formerly robust deal-a-day website habit.

But it’s more than that, because my usage of meh was already severely curtailed in the past 15 months, partly because meh no longer offers IRKs in the same way it did in the past, but also because the stuff for sale here just isn’t as good anymore.

So I’m re-evaluating my relationship with meh.

I’ve been a member since 2019, and have placed orders here and on mediocritee, SideDeal, and Casemates.

In 2021, I ordered 24 things from meh, plus one thing from mediocritee and one from SideDeal. 17 of those things were IRKs, and the total spent was something like $242, including the monthly membership fees. I was happy to pay my $4.99 per month to get free shipping on all those orders, and I got the little extra rushes of hope that the next IRK would be full of cool stuff.

In 2022, I ordered 3 things from meh—the April Fool’s IRK and two other things, plus 2 things from mediocritee. I paid $59.88 in membership fees for the privilege of free shipping on those 5 items.

After almost 3 full months of 2023, I haven’t made a single purchase.

In my mind, I had written off the $59.88 per year as something I would be glad to pay just to support mercatalyst, because they’ve given me no small measure of joy for many years, and it felt good to contribute even if I wasn’t ordering.

But now IRKs are harder to get than ever before, sometimes requiring us to spend $50 or $100 on other stuff for the privilege of buying one. I’m finding almost nothing that I want to buy in the daily deals, and the stuff that shows up in mehrathons seems like even lower quality than before.

I suppose all this could be me updating my expectations based on the fact that I now have a faucet of cheap trash that will show up to my door in 2 days whenever I want it to, but in reality, I think meh has changed for the worse, whether or not I’ve also changed.

And looking at the membership page, I find myself wondering where the members-only coupon codes and private events are.

So bye, $4.99 monthly mehmbership fee. If I order in 2023, I’ll pay for shipping, and it probably won’t cost as much. I wish everyone at mercatalyst the best, but it ain’t happening for me anymore.