Home / On the Internets / Woot’s Birthday a Crapshoot
Those of you who are familiar with woot.com know about the glorious bags of crap. If you’ve been with woot a while, you know that woot’s birthday (July 12) is usually a chance to score a bag of crap.
Like any good carny game, your chances of winning weren’t good. Only on this midway, the price to play is time and not money. Oh, and the prizes usually aren’t highly flammable children’s toys.
Not anymore. Woot’s distribution of the famed burrito of chorizo (see woot filters) is different this time. Instead of simply selling the bags of crap first come first server like normal, they are holding a raffle of sorts. Buy woot-off lights for $8, your receipt also mentions that “You ordered 1 Crappy Anniversary Promotion (see below).” The “see below” part references to the rules of how you can win your bag of crap. Their numbers game is based on ponies the DJIA end value for 7/13 or something like that.
There have been debates in the forums on the legality. Legal or not, this will be my last bag of crap attempt if this is how the rest of them sell. I’m not a fan of the lotto. With 1 in 10 odds of scoring a bag of crap, I don’t want to have to buy $80 worth of raffle tickets (and $3 novelty items that I don’t really want) to land a box of stuff that sometimes is only worth $30. Granted my bags of crap have all been great. More than $100 retail, sometimes more than $200. Still. No thanks.
Hopefully woot figures out something else for the bags of crap. I don’t understand the problem with a captcha or changing up the title/pricing a little to get past the bots. Customers would understand. And I’m sure they’d like it better than the raffle route.
UPDATE: Good on woot. They just sent out emails saying that everyone who bought themselves a birthday raffle ticket also got themselves a pair of $5 off coupons for future purchases. The coupons help smooth over the buyer’s remorse a bit. Thanks woot for making this a better deal.
