Woot.com: many people leaving

[Craig234]

If you don't know what woot.com is, it's a 'deal of the day' retail web site with a good following - just go to woot.com to get a feel for it.

They were sold to Amazon with a lot of claims they wouldn't be changed but it's clear they didn't live up to that, and the employees are largely leaving now. Thread there on it:

http://deals.woot.com/questions/det...rticle-today-about-woot-execs-checking-out#98

 

[CZroe]

Uhh, it's been years since that "sale." They would've changed on their own in that much time.

 

[madoka]

woot sucks now. The deals are not much better than what's normally available online. They will delete any negative posts or criticisms of the products they sell, thus leaving only positive reviews making you think the item is better than it really is. They raised the shipping prices. They got rid of the bags of crap. They lost their sense of humor. The list goes on.

 

[styrafoam]

/\ Read the article: http://techcrunch.com/2013/05/12/fi...als-site-feels-the-strain-under-owner-amazon/

Amazon hobbled them pretty good.

I used to check woot daily, but since the buyout the interesting and random stuff seemed to fall off the map and be replaced by mostly refurbished dyson vacuums. For example: today's deal is a refurbished off brand lcd tv for $250 with a 90 day warranty. Or you can think about it for a minute and then go to Amazon, or your local retailer of choice and buy a brand new 40" for about $60 more.

 

[Craig234]

Uhh, it's been years since that "sale." They would've changed on their own in that much time.

You don't understand the situation.

I don't think explaining would do any good.

 

[Cuda1447]

Heh, woot was the inspiration for my small business. What made them good (being a smaller company, flexible, creative and fun) was lost when Amazon purchased them.

 

[dud]

Heh, woot was the inspiration for my small business. What make them good (being a smaller company, flexible, creative and fun) was last when Amazon purchased them.

Safe to assume that make = made and last = lost above? My brain hurt reading just that one sentence.

Been a member of Woot for many years. I remember the site before Amazon assimilated it. Was better then ... not so good now. Their deals have become less attractive so I no longer buy there (last purchase was about 12 months ago).

I'm still amazed that Woot/Amazon still allows negative reviews of their products to continue to be posted during their "daily" deals. If Woot is selling an item that I own and I know that is crap I post about it and they allow info to be advertised.

Also, their frequent woot-offs typically get a lot of negative publicity on the popular deal sites. Their woot-offs are definitely not what they used to be ...

 

[edro]

Good for them.
They had a novel idea, executed well and sold out making millions.
On to the next!

 

[Cuda1447]

Safe to assume that make = made and last = lost above? My brain hurt reading just that one sentence.

Been a member of Woot for many years. I remember the site before Amazon assimilated it. Was better then ... not so good now. Their deals have become less attractive so I no longer buy there (last purchase was about 12 months ago).

I'm still amazed that Woot/Amazon still allows negative reviews of their products to continue to be posted during their "daily" deals. If Woot is selling an item that I own and I know that is crap I post about it and they allow info to be advertised.

Also, their frequent woot-offs typically get a lot of negative publicity on the popular deal sites. Their woot-offs are definitely not what they used to be ...

Haha, wow. My English skills really failed me there. That's what I get for ATing in the morning.

 

[lxskllr]

I haven't gotten anything from them in a couple years. The deals became crappy, and the site less fun. Adding all the other sister sites irritated me also. I want to look at exactly one site, and see what junk they're shilling. Several sites doing the same thing reeks of cash-in, and removes the simplicity of design.

 

[Vdubchaos]

It's always been a marketing gimmick....nothing less, nothing more.

That has not changed, and will not change.

There is no such a thing as a "deal". Sure you might save a little bit but at the end of the day the company and retailer still make their profit.

There is no magic

 

[Miramonti]

"Garth Mader" is the CEO, and has '0' sense of humor with his name? LOL

According to the woot posts, he sounds like a culture killer.

 

[lupi]

Could care less. Most of the "deals" they had started at stupid times so never made a purchase from them.

 

[TwiceOver]

Yeah, I haven't bought anything from Woot in so long now. The deals just aren't there. I still take a look every now and again.

 

[TechBoyJK]

We used to host Woot.com until they got bought out and Amazon migrated them into their cloud.

They had 2 full racks of Dell PE 1900 and 2900 class servers, and during a woot off, would do as much as 600Mbps in traffic.

The woot.com guys didn't like the idea of moving to Amazon's cloud. But I guess they couldn't say no to Amazon's money.

 

[Fritzo]

woot sucks now. The deals are not much better than what's normally available online. They will delete any negative posts or criticisms of the products they sell, thus leaving only positive reviews making you think the item is better than it really is. They raised the shipping prices. They got rid of the bags of crap. They lost their sense of humor. The list goes on.

This exactly. They were a warehouse/reseller website before that had a good thing going. Now the man steps in and ruined everything. I can see why they sold out (they got a huge offer), but money always ruins creativity.

 

[Miramonti]

We used to host Woot.com until they got bought out and Amazon migrated them into their cloud.

They had 2 full racks of Dell PE 1900 and 2900 class servers, and during a woot off, would do as much as 600Mbps in traffic.

The woot.com guys didn't like the idea of moving to Amazon's cloud. But I guess they couldn't say no to Amazon's money.

Flagged for spam.

 

[TechBoyJK]

Flagged for spam.

The feels

 

[vi edit]

It's always been a marketing gimmick....nothing less, nothing more.

That has not changed, and will not change.

There is no such a thing as a "deal". Sure you might save a little bit but at the end of the day the company and retailer still make their profit.

There is no magic

It hasn't "always been" a marketing gimmic. There were legitmate deals to be had, but it wasn't like it was an everyday thing. I'm talking 5+ years ago before Amazon prime shipping and all of the deal sites (groupon and the like) started popping up.

Woot had some great prices on things that were a) tax free and $5 shipping whether you bought 1 or 20 of them. At the time Amazon had limited options on free shipping and Prime wasn't in play to make shipping even more attractive. Things that were normally $30-$40 on Amazon were on Woot for occassion for $15 + $5 shipping. They had things like headphones, iPad cases, misc electronics that made good stocking stuffers and gifts for people that you could buy 2 or 3 of and save a good chunk of money.

They used to offer deals on those huge DLP TV's for like $500 less than you could buy locally (or on Amazon) and have them shipped for $5. If you were in the market for that kind of thing it was good deal.

For me the turning point was once they moved from a single item and went to all of the other .home/.wine/.shirt/.don'tcare categories and changed the site into what all of the deal sites look like.

 

[Fenixgoon]

i just get shirts from shirt.woot

 

[Gillbot]

never bothered so meh, idc

 

[CZroe]

You don't understand the situation.

I don't think explaining would do any good.

I do understand. I'm just saying that their changes probably would've sucked by now with or without Amazon, so it's not like Woot suddenly went downhill and it's all Amazon's fault. Many of the changes people ITT are complaining about were pre-Amazon.

 

[bigrash]

I only buy them every once in a while. Mostly shirts.

 

[middlehead]

Apparently the last time I bought from Woot was mid-March, before that it was October.

One of these days, though, I'm gonna buy about 40 Now Let Me Get This Straight shirts.

 

[Red Storm]

I liked them when they had a simple site with a simple premise and they nailed that well. Now it's a convoluted mess with no good deals.