Woot - Sometimes, yeah whatever, can work

Woot is an interesting site. It’s the one deal a day place where, at midnight PST, they post a new item that, if it is super hot, is gone by the time anybody on the east coast gets up. Which is fine, snooze you loose, etc. Woot is also defined here.

The Q and A will give you a sense of the tone/culture of the company. For example:

I missed yesterday's item, can I still get one?

No. Each woot.com product is discontinued at 11:59pm central time. That's that. Period. We may get more at a later date if we're lucky, but we offer no guarantees, we allow no backorders, and we have no waiting/notification lists. Too bad.

 

I want to talk to a live person there, can I call you?

No. We are busy sourcing new products and shipping orders. You can post a comment to our community board, but we don't guarantee we'll respond. You should Google for the manufacturer contact to get product answers – we suggest a dating service, magic 8 ball, or ouija board for general life solutions.

 

Will I receive customer support like I'm used to?

No. Well, not really. If you buy something you don't end up liking or you have what marketing people call "buyer's remorse," sell it on eBay. It's likely you'll make money doing this and save everyone a hassle. If the item doesn't work, find out what you're doing wrong. Yes, we know you think the item is bad, but it's probably your fault. Google your problem, or come back to that product discussion in our community and ask other people if they know. Try to call the manufacturer and ask if they know. If you give up and must return it to us, then follow on to the next FAQ entry.

As you can see, it’s part of the, well, culture.  Woot has a blog which is in my RSS reader. There have been a couple of items I want. The steps to order?

– Read the feed

– Click on the link which takes me to the blog entry

– Go up to the top of the page, click on the “todays woot” page.

– Figure out if they have any and, if they do, proceed to get the item I want.

Kinda dumb, right? Simplest thing in the world to put a link in the blog entry to “I want one.”  Yeah, you’d think so. I’ve sent a couple of notes and, surprise, no response. Am I taking my business elsewhere? Nope, I’ve bought stuff and, if it’s a good deal (to me), I’ll keep doing it.

In the case of Woot, it is all about price, period. Not worth it to you? Hit the road, see you tomorrow. Worth it? Pay for it and we’ll ship it. Done, finished.

It’s been said they do 40 million dollars worth of business a year. Contrast this to Seth Godin’s numerous examples of ‘remarkable’ and ask yourself where this fits.

40 million bux just doing it.

Amazing.

Comments

[Daniel Nerezov]

Yeah...it is amazing.

If you see an item on Woop, and you like the price...you can't exactly bookmark the page and "hopefully" come back when you've done your research.

The item will be gone by then, so you end up buying immediately, for the fear of missing a bargain.

That's a very clever way to sell...it's a good way to compete with the usual catalogue-style online retailers.

I'm gonna try this thing.