What's your favorite Meh-rathon schedule?
5So we’ve done three versions so far. I think I’m getting this right:
Meh-rathon 1:
5 minutes: midnight/8am/4pm
1 hour: the other 21 hours
Total: 57 offers
Meh-rathon 2:
6 minutes: midnight/8am/4pm
30 minutes: 1am, 9am-3pm, 11pm
1 hour: 2am-7am, 5pm-10pm
Total: 60 offers
Meh-rathon 3:
10 minutes: midnight/8am/4pm
20 minutes: 1am, 9-noon, 9pm-midnight
1 hour: 2am-7am, 1pm-3pm, 5pm-8pm
Total: 55 offers
Which of those three was your favorite? What would you do?
- 24 comments, 48 replies
- Comment
#2 please.
@therealjrn
Pick your poison.
@mflassy Well, in light of new information, I think the poo pillows are moar better. #3?
Quick feedback about this past Meh-rathon:
There was an unsettling lack of poo dough which was found by the other two Meh-rathons.
In addition, I like the trend of more Fuko listings.
The first Meh-rathon had 3 listings, the 2nd had 4, and this one had 5. Of course, I also noticed the amount of cancelled orders for Fukos. It seems to be that despite @Thumperchick having made a notice during the 2nd Meh-rathon about duplicate orders, since not everybody looks at the forums, they didn’t know about the rule.
Maybe there could be some sort of protective measure against duplicate orders so that people don’t get more than two?
While the extra orders get cancelled, it still prevents people from getting one initially.
Edit: Yesterday evening [I recorded the numbers for Fuko sales as they stood at that time][1].
Since then, the numbers have gone down as follows:
1st listing: 9 cancelled orders.
2nd listing: 11 cancelled orders.
3rd listing: 41 cancelled orders.
4th listing: 41 cancelled orders.
5th listing: 23 cancelled orders.
So yeah. Quite a few people missed a shot to get Fukos because the cancelled orders don’t get reallocated in the same listing.
[1]: https://meh.com/forum/topics/fukobukuro-18-meh-rathon-edition-3#5a26040bdcec180edc9e3809
@mflassy I was wondering about those stats. I was not nearly as quick and alert as you.
@mflassy I thought the last fuko session was meant to compensate for multiple ordering.
@sligett
I don’t even try to pretend to act like there’s some sort of logic to what Meh does.
I’m just displaying facts.
@mflassy On the other hand, there are people in the follow up offerings who were able to access fukos, who otherwise would not have been able to, because of the canceled orders from before. There is karmic balance in this. It’s a meh kind of balance, but it’s balance nonetheless…
@mflassy so you aren’t allowed more than one fuko per day?
@shahnm
While some orders were cancelled during the Meh-rathon, the majority were cancelled afterwards.
Sure, Meh will cancel duplicate orders, but the cancelled orders don’t get reallocated in the same Meh-rathon.
@wmbarr
Once per Meh-rathon/day as expounded upon over here.
@mflassy And I did enjoy your facts, truly. Unlike Barbie, I like math. I sometimes pretend there’s logic in what I do and what others do. I was likely overreaching here.
@sligett
Wait… So does Barbie not like math, or do you not like Barbie?
@mflassy
I have no problem with Barbie.
@sligett As one of the greedy jerks that got lucky twice had a subsequent Fuko cancelled, I second that idea.
So far #3
NOT ON A MONDAY!
Whichever one happens least often.
I’m still waiting for the Purple hour. All purple all the time.
@Barney
Number 2 although I wouldn’t complain if there were a couple of three hour blocks overnight.
I enjoyed the pace of #3 the most. #2 second, and #1 the least (both too long and too short with only 5/60 minute intervals).
This week’s event left time for things to be done and I found myself checking in throughout the day and not feeling like I’d missed tons of stuff. The 5 and 6 minute paces on the fast hours feel more demanding. I liked the 20 minute pace most of the day.
Of course that relaxed feeling may go against higher buyer engagement. I wonder what your stats show about buying behavior across the different schedules, because that can be very different from the stated preferences of this subset of the Meh audience.
I also liked the experiment on captcha in fuko and am curious how that went.
As far as what I would do, I might try even wackier timing. 1 minute fukos. 37 minute pearls. My original thought was timing as a reflection of inventory in stock vs projected sales pace, but maybe not even that. Maybe put in a way to have the Meh button boo slow sellers off the stage (or sell boo clicks for a quarter each). Maybe make the fast hours inventory based instead of scheduled. Collect data and see what makes us lab rats buy.
@djslack
To quote @KDemo:
3,2,1. I would like excitement for the first hour, snoozy excitement until I wake back up, more excitement, no excitement while I pick up my kid at preschool, then more excitement please. I will gladly add you as a friend on Find My Friends so you can know where I am as to when to schedule said excitement.
Number 3 for me.
I would also vote for a later VMP. Maybe chose a different hour and add it to the message about like it or not. I know 4pm is the official time normally but Meh-rathon is special.
Weekend for a change. Those who have off on week days have had their time in the sun, now those of us who have to work on weekdays would like ours. Of course I still don’t know if this job will be extended an other term so it might be irrelevant again… but in all fairness some variety of when you do it would be appreciated.
I like how #2 has more items, but I preferred #3 timing with more 1 hour blocks especially because - well you know - work and all.
@Kidsandliz Agreed. #3 was nice for timing and although I didn’t need them, the extra fuko breaks were a nice thing. Blow someones mind some time and do two in a row!
And more shorter-time items during the VMP hour would be cool too.
@duodec @dave
While it doesn’t affect me, having higher quantities for VMP hour items would (probably) be appreciated.
@duodec I’m a life-long VMP, and never heard squat about any VMP hour until thread, wassup w/ that?
@PhysAssist Yeah, Um…that’s my fault. My bad you haven’t been reading the newsletters, and totally my bad you haven’t been around reading the threads. But you have what we call a “job” I suppose so it’s understandable right?
Oh and sorry for that kid that threw up orange juice all over the exam room.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
@PhysAssist
You know the circuit breakers Meh put in place so east coasters wouldn’t have to stay up for the item change? Meh set up a morning ‘second chance’ for them at 7AM Central, and then also set up a last chance for VMP members at 3PM Central. They did something similar for the Mehrathons. ~Around 7AM and 3PM Central the fuko was re-offered, and from 3-4PM Central, only VMPs were able to buy the offered items. Maybe items too limited to sell generally, or maybe they just actually like us!
But IMO it would be more fun to have a whole series of 5 minute items than the longer intervals for that hour. More selections! More choices! More items shipped ‘free’! More making @unixrab wish for VMP status!
@duodec
@duodec
Umm they want us to drop VMP and the associated perks (wait we have perks?) so why would they do things to indicate they like us if they want to discourage us? LOL
@duodec What unixrab said…
Thanks for explaining!
The timing worked out well for me in #3. It neither felt rushed nor boring. The 1 hour items during the day lined up with times I was busier and wouldn’t have checked in if were frequent listings. I also found myself adding a few comments in the forums which I hadn’t done in the past as it seemed like every time I blinked there was a new item. Overall I would say I enjoyed this past one the most so far.
@Raider I agree and for like the first time ever I was able to both find somethings I wanted, AND buy them, including my only Fuko ever [so far]…
Door number 3, please.
I liked this one the best
Meh-rathon 4:
5 min midnight-1am, 8am-9am, 4pm-5pm, 9pm-10pm
10 min 10pm-midnight
30 min 5pm-9pm
1 hour all other times
It’s a whole lotta product, but it would keep me watching.
Also, fewer Fuks with proportionately better value. I would be disappointed to see Fuks become as common as BOC. The last BOC I grabbed was up for nearly three minutes before selling out. If you didn’t get one it was only because you didn’t want one. BOC isn’t a special thing anymore, it’s become a cliché.
@ruouttaurmind You are 100% correct about the number of BOC’s. Snagging a BOC has become meaningless because there are just too many of them. I’d hate to see that happen to the Fukos.
However, props to Woot! (@Del) the overall quality of the BOC’s has become better lately. I hate to say this, but they’ve been a lot better than the Fukos.
@Barney
My last BOC was a total lie. It was a bag of stuff I was actually able to use. There wasn’t a single broken item, no fitness bands for a long discontinued exercise system, no empty Motorola headphone boxes, no bluetooth adapter for an unknown piece of equipment. Every item in the bag was new, complete, working and… useful!
@ruouttaurmind
You may have a valid claim against Woot.
Did you mention it to @Del?
@mflassy
The items I listed that it didn’t include were all actual items I’ve received in previous BOC’s. Broken glasses… both eye and drinking, soiled clothing, used fast food napkins, empty beer can, so many unidentified cables, connectors and pieces of consumer electronics I can’t even count… but the last couple BOC’s were actually mostly useful stuff, or stuff I had no trouble giving away at the office.
I took my last Fuk to the office… no takers on anything. LOL!
@ruouttaurmind
I’ll take it.
@ruouttaurmind
Well that was pretty crappy of Woot. How were you able to handle the disappointment?
@Barney I got my first BOC in the 2014 Balloons of Celebration tour. I don’t recall what I received, but that was the event which netted @daveinwarshington that awesome steel rooster sculpture, @mikibell got a giant box filled to bursting with a pretty fantastic assortment, @helenhalla got a super sweet alien statuary, @markwchandler, skip something or another and several others got palettes loaded with an amazing assortment of some pretty awesome booty. It was also the event which netted @Ghimo97 a palette loaded with hundreds and hundreds of telephone handset shoulder rests. There was certainly no shortage of major awards in that batch.
For the next couple years things really went downhill fast. By 2016 I stopped bothering. The previous five or six bags I received were nothing but garbage. In some cases actual trash.
But someone here suggested trying again, as the quality had improved somewhat. I have to say they were correct. As I mentioned, the last couple were, although not palattes of big screen TV’s or rooster sculptures, they were decent. A good assortment of useful stuff. Not always useful to me, but definitely stuff I was able to find homes for.
The moral of my missive… I would hate to see Fuks degrade to the level BOC had declined to.
@mflassy,
I dropped it at the Kiwanis charity market across from my office. I figured they might be able to sell something out of it.
But because hope seems to be a deep well on your farm, and I like that kind of hopeful optimism, hit me up at the old site with shipping deets. I will craft a special Fuk just for you. IF, and only IF you didn’t get one on Monday. Did you get one on Monday??
@ruouttaurmind
I appreciate the gesture which is what counts.
Also, wasn’t Wooster this year?
Unless he got 2 roosters…
https://www.woot.com/forums/viewpost.aspx?postid=7209364&pageindex=1&replycount=35
@mflassy Yup:
I wasn’t expressing myself well, but yes, that’s exactly what I was referring to.
This is what happens when you have two new employees on the same day and you’re trying to train, organize, conduct normal business and maintain an annoying presence in the forums. I was poorly editing my post when I started typing wrong bits in incorrect locations.
@mflassy
Too late. I’m all fired up to do it now. PM me up with some shipping deets. K? K!
/8ball Should I forgive @ruouttaurmind?
It is certain
@ruouttaurmind
Pack a box and drop it off at the Kiwanis charity market across from your office.
@mflassy I’m way ahead of you. I do this at least once a month.
@ruouttaurmind egads! I shall look for some dust and scraps from the warehouse to send you!
Also, the BOCs that sell slow are the odd ones that sell where people aren’t expecting them - Crapvent, Appsclusive, Twitter, FB. I pretty much won’t do FB ones anymore because they’re so slow to sell out.
The ones in the Woot-Offs still sell out in under a minute. And we do less now that we did last year. Birthday and Q4 are still big for us/you though.
@ruouttaurmind All those fun things were Birthday 2017, thank you very much! And you forgot Rat Fink, or as the new owner’s wife called it, “Ugly Ass Rat”.
@Del
Beeler 3 was fun. Although I spoke to 2 people who got it, and they had almost identical boxes.
I know it was totally a coincidence, but still…
@Del
Acknowledged. I mistyped my edit. The BOC I received with 100% non-crap came from the same event.
I would have been like a rat in cheese with the Rat Fink! Huge hot rod and Ed Roth fan.
@mflassy Yeah, if their shipping labels happened to get on two boxes that were built in the same 5 minutes or so, it can happen. We work REALLY hard to get variety into boxes though.
@ruouttaurmind
I just sent a PM, though I dunno how much it will help you.
@mflassy Too clever, you. Boo!
Replied.
@ruouttaurmind
I’m twice as clever as a goldfish is half as purple.
Or something like that. I dunno. 4 years in, I still haven’t learned any worthwhile Texas sayings.
Maybe @f00l could provide one.
@mflassy I had a very Texan receptionist for a couple years. One of my favorites was “Sugar, that boy is all hat ‘n nooo cattle”.
I would really like to sleep through the 8 am hour, since it’s 4 am here and I miss a bunch of clickfaces.
Therefore, I select #3 as the best option to miss the fewest clicks.
Thanks for asking.
Random fukos keep the audience engaged longer, so better for sales I’d guess.
#3
#3 for sure!
#2 is my vote, but mainly because it’s a nice round, even number of deals. However, my favorite one was #1 because it afforded the maximum amount of sleep in the beginning.
/giphy east coast problems
I vastly preferred Number 3. I only missed a handful of clicks, and it was much easier to remember to check/view each item for some reason.
I would like to add a 4th option of 10 second deals featuring available quantities of 2 items each, all day long.
I want to be able to miss out on 40-50 deals while i drop a deuce each morning.
If that’s not an option, then i vote for #3 i guess
@capguncowboy
Pick your poison.
#3 was my favorite.
I think #2 was a better pattern, but consider 5-6 minutes sales mid-1am (the initial rush – after 1 hour might get tedious and say fuck this), 1 hour sales to 1am-8am (common sleeping hours), 30 minutes sales from 8am to 9am (getting ready for work/school/wake-and-bake), 1 hour sessions from 9am-5pm (banker’s hours), and 20 minutes sales from 5pm-mid (End of Day unwind with the vice of your choice).
I know not everyone works the 9-5ish gig, but it might be the best bang for your sells.