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#1
29th May 2009, 12:16 PM
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What's woot?
I saw someone mention woot.com, so I went on over to check it out. I've looked at woot.com's homepage, then I've looked at the Wikipedia page. I still don't get it. The idea is that they sell one thing per day, but the price is good?
OK, so this is a stupid question because I'm sure with a little more research I could get a feel for it myself ... except I don't feel like doing the research right now. So please, someone tell me about woot.com, if you know about it. 
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#2
29th May 2009, 12:44 PM
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You pretty much answered your question in the OP. The sell one thing per day, and only have a certain number to sell. The deals are usually fantastic, and everything (no matter how big) has $5 shipping.
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#3
29th May 2009, 12:50 PM
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I've wooted many times and got some good stuff out of them. Occasionally a few duds as well (my USB disco ball was underwhelming).
You've got the basics down. Woot.com sells one thing a day. When they sell out, they don't sell anything else that day. These items are sometimes new, sometimes refurbished, and usually the best price you can find for that item. They sell everything from big plasma TVs to bacon salt. Freight is always $5, no matter what the item is. You can always order up to 3 of an item, and no more (but I hear they don't mind if you set up multiple accounts). Occasionally they will have what they call a Woot-off. Instead of one item per day, they will start selling something different as soon as they sell out of one item. These are often items that they were not able to sell out previously, but they throw in a few good things as well. At the end of the Woot-off (or sometimes in the middle lately) they will sell what they call the "Bag of Crap". The Bag of Crap is a duffle, briefcase, or some other container full of other small items. It used to be $1 (plus $5 shipping) but lately it has moved up to $3. The items in the Bag of Crap are usually worth around $50-$100 total, and it always sells out in a couple of minutes. I have never been able to get the Bag of Crap because their site gets hit so hard and responds so slowly when it comes up that it's always sold out by the time my purchase is done authorizing. On the forums, the Bag of Crap is hardly ever referred to as a Bag of Crap, but instead by a three word phrase with words starting with B, O, and C. They are often very honest about the quality of what they sell. Once they sold a video projector that had uniformly bad reviews as "The worst video projector ever", with links and excerpts to reviews about how horrible it was. They have stats on their site showing how much money they are making per hour from their customers, what states are buying items, and showing who the "First Sucker" is on every sale. Their item descriptions are always accompanied by a funny article or story about the item. They have a Woot-cast which features a humorous song about whatever is being sold that day, or "The Theme for Wooting Off" on Woot-offs. They also have very good customer service. Every time I've had to deal with them they exceeded my expectations.
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#5
29th May 2009, 01:36 PM
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#6
29th May 2009, 02:26 PM
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I pretty much always check woot.com before hitting the sack at night (they put the item up at midnight their time [central?] so it is up 10:00 my time (pacific). There are often very good deals there.
I picked up a refurbished Dyson vacuum cleaner, and I love it. I also got in on a Bag of Crap (Blue Oyster Cult, Bandolier of Carrots, etc) which...which was pretty crappy. The bag (a red backpack) was nice. On Tuesdays, they usually have a 2-fer Tuesday special, so you get two of the items. There is also shirt.woot and wine.woot. Some of the t-shirts on shirt.woot are awesome. Most of the designs come from contests, so they are user generated. Great site right before holidays, especially if you have to give a lot of gifts.
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#7
29th May 2009, 02:39 PM
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Thank you all for the thoughtful answers. Even though I basically had the gist down, I appreciate the elaboration, which was more interesting to read than the Wikipedia page. I've become a bit of an online shop-aholic, so learning about this site is both exciting and a little scary.
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#8
29th May 2009, 02:41 PM
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#9
29th May 2009, 03:23 PM
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We have http://www.1-day.co.nz/ in NZ (there are others too but this is the most popular I believe) where they post 3 new things at midday every day. Sometimes they are worth it, sometimes not - you just have to make sure you're aware of the items real value.
They also regularly do Bag of Crap sales where you can get some bizarre stuff which usually wasn't worth the money, though 1-day reckon the 'bags' can be up to $500 in value with some things like Xbox 360s, coffee makers, digital cameras etc sent out in the past. And they do the '24 hours of new things when the last sells out' occasionally too. We recently bought a Robomop robot floor cleaner for hard floors from 1-day (like the one pictured here, but our ball only has an on/off switch) and it is surprisingly good value for money (it was only NZ$20 + $6 shipping). Charge the little ball up, velcro a cleaning pad to the plastic surround and let it go. It hasn't got stuck yet and is great for picking up cat hair, dirt and dust off the tiles. Quote:
I'm waiting on my bag of ~400 dark chocolate Hershey's Kisses to arrive...
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