I do both remember and miss those days.

Regarding the cheaper items, I agree there too. Too many of the impulse buys on Woot! these days are in the triple digits. For reference, my $270 Viewsonic G-tablet impulse buy 3 months ago, and my $550 Inspiron All in One impulse buy today! Ouch! My wallet pretty much can't take any more at this point. Leakfrogs make a much better impulse buy.

Tarica wrote:I miss the days off the old Woot Offs (like 4 years ago-ish). In those days, the only RAGE QUIT!!!1212!~s to worry about were those projectors. The Bandoleer of Carrots never appeared at the same time each Woot Off, and each Woot Off would last an unpredictable amount of time (there were never two 2-day or two 3-days in a row). Back then there were lots of things for less than $15 dollars, making for great impulse buys, and a chance to actually have fun laughing at the crap people by while F5-ing the the crap people actually wanted. Those were the days when the Woot Off often ended with the Screaming Monkey, which had a faux leather cape and hat instead of cheap Nylon ones they wear now. Those were the good days of Woot, when it would be a family affair on the rare weekend Woot Off and the kids would be pressed into service hitting F5 on their dad's auxiliary computers to increase chances of winning the Big Ol' Cosmos.

And during those rare RAGE QUIT!!!1212!~s, the forum would come alive with the cry of "Paaaaancakes!"

Does anyone else miss those days?

whosgotmyusername wrote:Would you rather miss work or miss your weekend - get with the program!

Also, woot staff probably don't want to do extra work all weekend...

A Woot Minute for something free at random times

chalion wrote:Woot has tried to make the Big o' Cosmos buys more fair, but it invariably never works. There's no way to make it so, from a financial veiwpoint, unless they were to make 1 for each account and then people would complain that the stuff they got wasn't as good as they expected.

Law of supply and demand are at work here: too little supply (3000 or so bags) for a great demand (almost what? 400,000 wooters?500,000?).

You are correct however; WOOT needs to make it RANDOM. Not this between 3-5 every time.

I think it'd be neat to have a woot off not only on the woot homepage but also on the shirt.woot page! Have the shirts that are in the reckoning be priced at just 10 dollars :D

More BOCs. Tough on the servers, sure - but that's what most of us are here for.

elpepe wrote:better products in the woot-off.

maybe this is nostalgia talking, but i remember the days when woot offs were major events, not just waiting for the random crap, but because they offered deals above and beyond the normal woot savings.

now it sort of feels like just normal products stacked together and everyone waiting for the random crap.

Agree that it's a little demotivating to see the same products offered at the same prices a few days or weeks ago recycled into the WootOff. It'd be a lot better to offer products that haven't been on Woot for a while, or at a lower price than previously.

Better still, offer a limited number of a product that you will offer again in a week or so (after the first batch are received so the recipients can comment about it); that would ease disappointments about having missed it the first time around and give people a reason to continue to check daily in the hope that a WootOff product might reappear.

In other words, there really should be more of an incentive to spend time watching Woot during a WootOff than the Big o' Cosmos.

lparsons42 wrote:How about a new woot domain that is all woot-off, all the time? It could be off.woot.com, with regular one-day woots on the other ones. Bags of crap would be completely random on off.woot.com, instead of only on Wednesdays during the east coast evening commute.

I'd also like to see a woot launch sometime. I can't remember the last time one occurred; that icon must be getting lonely

Talk about a productivity killer!

fxfuji wrote:Talk about a productivity killer!

Yeah, but it would quickly become tiresome and eventually people would stop watching.

Then again, people would just use a tracker and wait for the Big o' Cosmos. This will never happen though; I don't think Woot has enough stuff.

bsmith1 wrote:I still have a scheduled task that opens the woot.com/happyhour page at 4:05pm every day. Just in case... (I don't do all that twitter nonsense, so I wouldn't be notified otherwise)

Pardon the newbish question, but what is or was the Woot! Happy Hour?

fxfuji wrote:Pardon the newbish question, but what is or was the Woot! Happy Hour?

It was a mini woot-off. It lasted for an hour (4pm-5pm). Sometimes Woot even offered a Big o' Cosmos.

They have since been discontinued and might be back in the future supposedly (hopefully).

Other: How about woot offs where you can only buy the bag o' crap IF, and only IF, you've wooted during the running woot-off.

This would eliminate scabs like me who only come for the bag and none of the swag..

;)

Trahentis wrote:I'd put a time limit on them as well. I know you guys off at Woot need to get rid of stockpiled crap that people didn't/wouldn't buy, but they're not going to buy it this time either, so give them a chance, but move on quickly.
Having items that sit up there for four hours seems to defeat the purpose of the Woot-Off

The purpose of the Woot-Off may indeed be to get rid of a bunch of stockpiled crap.

Bdunshee wrote:I would love a giant sign telling me a woot off is going on. If I hadn't noticed the product change when my browser crashed and reloaded I may not have noticed.

The flashing yellow lights aren't obvious enough?

hackman2007 wrote:It was a mini woot-off. It lasted for an hour (4pm-5pm). Sometimes Woot even offered a Big o' Cosmos.

They have since been discontinued and might be back in the future supposedly (hopefully).

Thank you.

Quit giving all your cute little Woot monkeys to Doug Benson and put them back in the woot off!! The giant monkeys SUCK .. and MORE BAGS 'O CRAP so people who WORK during the day can have a shot at them

mmmata wrote:Other: How about woot offs where you can only buy the bag o' crap IF, and only IF, you've wooted during the running woot-off.

This would eliminate scabs like me who only come for the bag and none of the swag..

;)

I agree with this. This would def eliminate alot of people who just wait for just the bags. However, with the only products being offered during the woot off costing so much, not many people would be able to afford to participate. I don't mind spending 8 bucks on complete junk, but spending three digits to just have the opportunity to try? Not so much. I agree with everyone talking about the good old days, where you can buy complete random junk. I miss my usb toys...

For once I would like to be able to get a Big Orphaned Cetacea. I've been a wooter for almost 6 years and have yet been able to get one before your server locks up. Maybe you should offer them to only woot members based on seniority or something.

Just sell unlimited crap bags

a perpetual woot-off from now until 12-21-2012 and then no more Never-Ever-Never, should give us enuff time to spend all our savings, sell the house and car and be ready to go.

In a perfect world, we would have Bags o' crap as the featured deal of the day.

I would like 1-day wootoffs more frequently. however 1 Big Orphaned Cetacea a month during one of them. Also would love to change the name of the Big Orphaned Cetacea every time and have it at different times. this way more people will have to "stay tuned" as opposed to the auto buyers sweeping it up all the time and not buying anything else.

kenny3552 wrote:I would like 1-day wootoffs more frequently. however 1 Big Orphaned Cetacea a month during one of them. Also would love to change the name of the Big Orphaned Cetacea every time and have it at different times. this way more people will have to "stay tuned" as opposed to the auto buyers sweeping it up all the time and not buying anything else.

Have a Big Orphaned Cetacea at 4 in the morning to give the real die hards a shot

I agree with many of the commenters that a Woot! Off used to be a big deal, with items we hadn't seen before, and a wide selection of things. Now it just seems like it's all a rerun of the past month or so. Many times now I don't even bother to watch the Woot! Off anymore, it's all junk I already saw and didn't want before. As for the Big o' Cosmos, it seems like a lot of people just hang out for those and never buy anything else. If that gives your life fulfillment, go for it! Personally, when I actually used to be able to get them before everyone was using scripts or whatever, every single item I received was just as billed-crap-and went into the trash or recycled as appropriate. In closing, Woot! we love ya, but it's time to go back to the roots that made you great-let's have some old school Woot! Offs now!

Woot-offs in the past couple years aren't nearly as good as before then. They do not hold my attention like they did in the past. The items and deals aren't as interesting.

OTHER

More Big o' Cosmos

No Big o' Cosmos during woot-offs, bring back the midnight Big o' Cosmos

I also echo the many of the comments here. Woot is fun and exciting because if it's random, who knows what will happen attitude. Woot offs need to be random in both duration, and products. You need to have those products that you don't sell most of the time, leak frogs, screaming monkeys, bacon salt, weird things that can be powered by USB and bacon flavored condoms... etc.

You need to mix it up both duration and when/if the Big Old Chorizos happens. That's what keeps us coming back... like a slot machine You have to pay off occasionally... Keep us pumping those nickels in... ya' know?

The charm of Woot comes from a combination of the randomness, the good deals, the (sometimes) unusual products and the amusing text in both the product descriptions and the comments. While more bundles of bananas or woot-offs might be fun for a while, part of why they work is that they are so hard to get.

A woot-off is a big time-sink for many participants, and we do it because it is rare and "special." If woot-offs were more commonplace I would not have the time, energy or interest to return. It's the same reason that bars that are hard to get in to are successful: the lack of availability drives the cachet and demand.

Likewise, for the woot-off products. While I presume you want to maximize sales, the reason people come here instead of looking and the mind-numbing Amazon Gold Boxes is that the items are not only discounted, but they are also eclectic, nerdy and fun. To keep sales going you need to keep people motivated, and that means have more weird stuff and not simply pumping out HDTV sets.

Couple some epic three to five day long woot offs every few months with a weekly happy hour and I will be set.

Tarica wrote:I miss the days off the old Woot Offs (like 4 years ago-ish). In those days, the only RAGE QUIT!!!1212!~s to worry about were those projectors. The Bandoleer of Carrots never appeared at the same time each Woot Off, and each Woot Off would last an unpredictable amount of time (there were never two 2-day or two 3-days in a row). Back then there were lots of things for less than $15 dollars, making for great impulse buys, and a chance to actually have fun laughing at the crap people by while F5-ing the the crap people actually wanted. Those were the days when the Woot Off often ended with the Screaming Monkey, which had a faux leather cape and hat instead of cheap Nylon ones they wear now. Those were the good days of Woot, when it would be a family affair on the rare weekend Woot Off and the kids would be pressed into service hitting F5 on their dad's auxiliary computers to increase chances of winning the Big Ol' Cosmos.

And during those rare RAGE QUIT!!!1212!~s, the forum would come alive with the cry of "Paaaaancakes!"

Does anyone else miss those days?

I do! I do! And every once in a while at midnight there'd be a Big o' Cosmos without a Woot-off. Of course, I also miss the purple, so what do I know.

dlramge wrote:Some way to access items that, for one reason or another, might still be available.

Great idea! Maybe put them over on deals.woot with a special icon to identify them as timed out woot.com deals.

Hmmm...tough choice. All I can say is that I love the Woot-off because the item changes more frequently, therefore I check Woot more often to see what sweet deal is up next!! Woo woo!

How about Woot-Offs that don't crash and don't require third-party software to follow? A simple flash interface would make constant refreshing unnecessary. Yeah, some people would cry that it changed, but it would work so much better.

How about a SHIRT.woot.off??!?!? The random shirt days are AWESOME, so why not give it another dimension!?

I didn't read ALL the comments... so if someone said this already... sorry

About the weekends -- My theory is they won't do a woot-off Friday through Sunday because those are the days that the shirt.woot derby winners are debuted. Doing a wootoff during those days would pull attention away from the derby winners on their opening days and could really screw them out of some sales. After all, these are shirts people actually VOTED for. *shrugs* Just my theory.

A Woot-Off! Without Amazon jacking me for the sales tax! You guys are still in Texas, right?

yes! the screaming woot monkey is finally mine! :D

After reading the posts so far, here's my thoughts:

1: Woot-Offs today have more high-priced items than they used to.

2: There are fewer novelty items in a woot-off

3: It used to be that the woot-off would end with the bag, then it changed to the leakfrog, then the monkeys...

4: After the bag, items sell slower, but some people still expect to see a 2nd bag appear.

5: A few people seem to always get the bags, yet the last time I was able to score one was 2009. Server timeouts on most of them since then, and I suspect some people are using higher speed connections and location to get in on it over those with slower connections (FIOS over cablemodem scenarios and similar).

So here's what I would like to see:

1: Make the bags 'hidden' but do it in a smart way. Like right now, the flying monkey is up for sale. Someone visits the site, they could get the monkey page, or the bag page. If they accidentally refresh, or don't go thru the buy process within 5 minutes, they aren't eligible and another visitor gets it.

2: Check the woot sale history and have a woot-off where all items are under $100, or all items are $19.99, or all items are pink.

3: Have a separate bag for the kids site!

More bags of crap and the slight hope of actually getting a chance to order them.