ThunderThighs wrote:Huh, someone said we didn't have one last year and I believed them. Doesn't help that I have the memory of a gnat. Thanks.

Was done with a link within the homepage item description, so many probably thought there wasn't one last year. Everyone else who remembered will probably leave philly.com scratching their head at the traffic spike.

Merry Christmas @ThunderThighs !!

PabloPalmeri6837 wrote:Woot, while I appreciate you making fun of the people upset, I hope you also enjoy me pointing out the most of the people complaining have BLACK next to the name, while most of the people telling us to get over it do not. You're upsetting the people actually spend money. Merry Christmas, and I hope you realize, I won't be back next year. Amazon I love you but your ruined woot.

I know this is going to be way too long, but,...

Looks like it's more like 2/3 black squares are complaining, but I don't see the ratios you're seeing between the black squares and the non-black squares. Everyone seems pretty angry.

I'm working tonight, that's my excuse.

I got my one bag in the past, happy with it, not the reason I come here.

I'm not thrilled with the too-many items-to-search-through revision, but I'm buying about the same this year as previous years.

I think the things woot sells are different w/Amazon as owner, but not as much or as bad as others say when I look back at woot sales from a few years ago. Expensive and cheap and in between.

I don't blame others for leaving, but I haven't had any problems buying almost 50 items, and the main reason I come is to see what other shoppers say. If I was just looking for a bargain, I'd find another relatively trustworthy site where it's sometimes easier to find things.

The customer service is what it is, but I've not been burned yet. They certainly could have communicated more clearly about the bag.

People who complain about their posts taken down fail to realize that if I'm going to buy something, I don't want to wade through all of the complaint posts to find info. I'm not against people rightly ranting, but to not expect it to be deleted?? Really?? If you want your post to stay, go to world of woot. If I complain about something and it's not relevant to the sale, I don't expect it to stay.

My guess: see how many other 1 day sale sites there are? Several of you have pointed to them already. My gut feeling is Amazon figured they have to stay ahead of the curve, and rightly or wrongly, went to this multi-product model which has it's own tradeoffs. They've lost and will certainly lose customers because of this, but I understand why they're doing it. I'd still recommend a cleaner list, easier to access somehow of the different woot/wootplus items available, but that's me.

If woot stays in business, it will be because of the forums and the comments on the products more than what they sell. Despite the facebook episode tonight, bag controversies, etc. I look for the commenters that will help with whatever I buy or don't buy, even for purchases not on woot.

I wish I had more time, but the fact that I'm still working at this hour on Christmas day is not a good sign, and I've got to be on the road tomorrow, and obviously this isn't the best use of my time, but I felt that since I only get the time to peek at woot normally nowadays, but saw the hullabaloo tonight, I'd chime in.

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays/New Year to all of you regardless, even the people I've had problems with before. Take care.

P.S.:To compare at Walmart, "Combo pack contains 26 batteries of Rayovac for $17.97 online, with free shipping if you buy $45 products:

8 AA batteries
8 AAA batteries
4 C batteries
4 D batteries
Two 9V batteries
http://www.walmart.com/ip/Rayovac-Batteries-AMC5-Rayovac-AAA-AA-C-D-and-9V-26-Count-Battery-Combo-Pack-A-26.35-Value/22053719

Not having a Stocking of C-R-A-P for XMas feels weird, even though I wasn't able to get one for the last few times. But BATTERIES!!?????? That's the equivalent of COAL in your sock.

Sniff. Sniff. Sob. Waaaaaaaaaaaaa

I don't think we're related but we do share first names.

Regardless, Ms. Thighs, I wish a very merry whatever you celebrate.

ThunderThighs wrote:It's fine. I know change is hard but so is watching your servers explode on midnight of Christmas day.

Hope you have a wonderful day!

I appreciate that, and understand why you want to avoid it. I read the comment by your boss about the Bunch of Cheer, and understand that, too. What I don't get is why you guys didn't just tell us? And I mean via some means other than a post buried in a thread most of us wouldn't have had reason to read. Add that to those comments over on Facebook, it seems like a big slap in the face.

It's cool you want to save your servers, but Woot can't blame us for not being happy campers. Heck, you guys even joked about the servers being up if you're seeing the picture of the bag when you offer it. It's a thing, ya know?

Thanks for reading this, and Merry Christmas. I'm sure it's no fun working in the middle of the night on a holiday.

You know, I think I can put this whole thing in perspective, and keep the holiday theme.

Surely someone at Woot must have seen "National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation." You know, the classic story of a man who has set his sights on the expectation of getting his Christmas bonus, like he has for many years past, and has told all his friends and family about what he is excitedly expecting.

But that is not what happens.

No, his boss decides to cut out Christmas bonuses this year, to enhance the bottom line. What does Mr. Griswold get instead? A membership to The Jelly of the Month Club. He feels about how we feel now, except we get batteries instead of jelly.

Now in the movie, all is forgiven when Griswold's boss repents of his mistaken ways, and reinstates the bonus program (plus 20%!) because he saw how poorly his "little people who make things happen" (us) reacted to the loss of their bonuses. Will we be so lucky here? Who can say. I hope that the number crunchers at Woot see the amount of wailing and gnashing of teeth that has been created and consider the Bunch of Cheer as the best advertising budget expenditure they ever had.

I for one will be staying tuned to see what happens, so until then Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night!

ThunderThighs wrote:Good feedback. I'm passing it on (along with others). Thank you and Merry Christmas.

I hope you'll understand that based on how the new leadership of Woot took the feedback from 4/1, it's clear that our feedback then and now is destined for the round file... So you probably don't need to bother.

Merry Christmas, TT! I don't post much anymore but every time I check the forums I see you're always busy being streets ahead.

Save their servers? They've got perhaps the largest cloud computing farm at their disposal. Of course, the elastic load balancer seems to have snapped yesterday and taken out half of netflix, so maybe they can't handle the crap.

I love woot!, obviously from my purchase history and how long I have been here..

If I might just say one thing, its that I wish woot! would not promote the use of disposable batteries.

Other than that, merry xmas everyone. Looking forward to the calendar sale at the end of the year.Please don't complain about what you don't have. The very fact you are visiting this website means that you have more than most people in the world.. Please be grateful for what you have received and celebrate the people in your lives.

-David

Woke up and checked in, never even thought about a Santa bag until I started reading comments....

Merry Christmas everyone, Especially those working graveyard shifts at customer service and all data centers. I have been there.

Enjoy the snow in Carrollton, we are getting some bad thunderstorms and possible tornado's in Houston.

Merry Christmas Thunder Thighs! I hope Woot gave you many bags this Christmas!

ThunderThighs wrote:Good night and Merry Christmas. Sleep well so you can enjoy the day with friends and family.

Merry Christmas to you and yours TT.

First of all, let me say that ThunderThighs has been amazing over the time she's been around. I don't post much here, but I felt compelled today.

I used to be a daily wooter. I used to buy all the cheap stuff during woot-offs, and I'm even guilty of buying a "nut roaster" a few years ago to "move the woot-off along."

That said, I was reflecting on my Woot account and realized my last purchase was the Santa's sack of crap from last year. I don't think I even visited Woot more than a couple of times throughout the year.

Sometime about 4-5 years ago (when woot was only woot... No sub-sites), I got my first Bunch of Cheer it was full of amazing stuff. I even got a Roomba that fully worked and was just missing the power cord. I felt like I actually had a chance at getting something awesome for my 8 bucks. I had some crappy crap, but it was normally a broken Sansa MP3 player or ten... Something techy regardless of how broken it was.

Then came the sub-woots and the amazon buyout... Then the multiple site redesigns. I watched this site morph from a really neat one-of-a-kind-but-often-copied gem of a site into what it is today... A broken hub of "deals" that just don't compare in value to what we used to see.

The first thing I noticed was the quality of the bags of crap going down, but it was okay because ThreePieceWoot's love notes were legendary.

Then the craps got fewer and far between, and it got to the point where the items inside were almost certainly going to be kids.woot overstock (something that the tech savvy people who frequented woot in its inception don't really have need for). As a 27-year-old man, I have no use for the six high school musical alarm clocks I got in my last sack, but I took it in stride because sometimes you get good crap and sometimes you get bad crap.

A few years ago, my family sat around a kitchen table, each with our laptops, F5'ing woot to score our santa's sacks. As sad as it sounds, it was a neat family tradition that has just abruptly died. We put up with server errors, improperly-sync'd mirrors, broken flash games, and hidden $1 million off coupon codes for years because it was fun, and we did it together.

As woot continues straying further from what it used to be, my shopping habits stray further from woot. The lack of crap on Christmas is the final straw. Woot and I are on completely different pages nowadays, and I doubt I will ever spend another dime.

So to you up-and-comers with light colored squares next to your names, I hope you enjoy the monster you've created because veterans like myself are retiring.

It was all fun and games in the past when Woot's customer service was snarky. Now that you've positioned yourself as this "professional" company with all these different sub-sites, I don't think it's appropriate to be posting things like "we don't need you to buy the Bunch of Cheer on your Facebook page. If you don't need customers, I don't need to be one.

I didn't bother staying awake for the Christmas woot, but I did happen to wake up at 2 AM by chance. Came to the computer to see the happy wooters get their crap, and others complain about not getting it.... and then to find that they killed a tradition. I'm not angry, not even a little upset. I was one of the woot faithful. Every wootoff, every Dec 25th, played along every April 1st, every July 12th. The woot that we all enjoyed is gone. It was fun while it lasted. Woot will be unliked by me in facebook, their websites will be taken off of my favorites, I will be not following their wootoffs anymore. Now don't get me wrong this isn't a boycot, I may check out the site from time to time and perhaps still buy something if the deal is something that I want, but that's all it is... another site to check on occasion when I feel like it. The fun and mystique from the site is gone. Perhaps it may come back some day, but I may never realize it since if that day comes woot may be a part of my past, my memories that I will look back on fondly.

Just stopping by to wish Thunder Thighs and the rest of the Woot staff a Merry Christmas!!

whatsamattaU wrote:
I'm not thrilled with the too-many items-to-search-through revision, but I'm buying about the same this year as previous years.

This is the one real complaint I have about the 'new' woot! I can't keep up! Some of the best deals that I would have bought have popped up on woot plus! sites and are sold out way before I even notice they are there.

Obviously all this is working for woot! and making them money, if it wasn't they would change by now, I just wish it was easier to get notified of new woot! items or have one page where everything is listed.

Feel better anyone?

rnatalie wrote:Save their servers? They've got perhaps the largest cloud computing farm at their disposal. Of course, the elastic load balancer seems to have snapped yesterday and taken out half of netflix, so maybe they can't handle the crap.

I think that the amount of new users on woot! has gone way up in the past few years and the work / money needed to get the servers to withstand a normal Bunch of Cheer sale just isn't worth it for them for the small amount of time they need it to withstand that kind of load.

Add me to the list of people who are disappointed.

I've told countless people that there's a good chance for a Bunch of Cheer tonight -- some who have bought here before, some who registered today just so they'd have a chance. I've gotten over a half dozen Bunch of Cheer myself, and my Woot purchase log exceeds $2,000. That may not be a huge number to a lot of people, but for a site that basically set itself up for people making impulse buys, it's not an insignificant amount.

I made three orders this year from Woot, my lowest ever. I used to check the site daily at 1 AM EST to see what was up. Once they switched to the new format, adding a hundred items in the process, I generally stopped. I remember spending nights with no sleep at all because a Woot-Off was going on. Now, with five Woot-Offs happening simultaneously and the items being the same things I've seen over the previous two weeks, I don't even bother watching, except for about 4 PM - 6 PM EST on the second or third days, since that's generally when a Bunch of Cheer will show up (if at all).

I'm a huge Amazon fan and between my personal and work accounts, I easily exceed $20,000/yr in purchases from them. I was hoping Woot would maintain itself even after the purchase. In the end, though, I've come to realize that things definitely have changed for the worse, and the only benefit is that it's saving me money, so I can't be totally upset.

/rant

EDIT: ThunderThighs and I have the same join date, from back in 2006. Odd.

trunks2020 wrote:I didn't bother staying awake for the Christmas woot, but I did happen to wake up at 2 AM by chance. Came to the computer to see the happy wooters get their crap, and others complain about not getting it.... and then to find that they killed a tradition. I'm not angry, not even a little upset. I was one of the woot faithful. Every wootoff, every Dec 25th, played along every April 1st, every July 12th. The woot that we all enjoyed is gone. It was fun while it lasted. Woot will be unliked by me in facebook, their websites will be taken off of my favorites, I will be not following their wootoffs anymore. Now don't get me wrong this isn't a boycot, I may check out the site from time to time and perhaps still buy something if the deal is something that I want, but that's all it is... another site to check on occasion when I feel like it. The fun and mystique from the site is gone. Perhaps it may come back some day, but I may never realize it since if that day comes woot may be a part of my past, my memories that I will look back on fondly.

Tradition. That's what it all comes down to for me. It was an unspoken promise of competition, victory, defeat, complaining, anticipation, wonder, disappointment, and all the other things which made up the Big ol' Celebration tradition, not just on Christmas, but on the other days you mentioned. Woot's still here, but the soul seems to be gone.

QUALITY POST!! Anther old timer on his way out.

josmul123 wrote:First of all, let me say that ThunderThighs has been amazing over the time she's been around. I don't post much here, but I felt compelled today.

I used to be a daily wooter. I used to buy all the cheap stuff during woot-offs, and I'm even guilty of buying a "nut roaster" a few years ago to "move the woot-off along."

That said, I was reflecting on my Woot account and realized my last purchase was the Santa's sack of crap from last year. I don't think I even visited Woot more than a couple of times throughout the year.

Sometime about 4-5 years ago (when woot was only woot... No sub-sites), I got my first Bunch of Cheer it was full of amazing stuff. I even got a Roomba that fully worked and was just missing the power cord. I felt like I actually had a chance at getting something awesome for my 8 bucks. I had some crappy crap, but it was normally a broken Sansa MP3 player or ten... Something techy regardless of how broken it was.

Then came the sub-woots and the amazon buyout... Then the multiple site redesigns. I watched this site morph from a really neat one-of-a-kind-but-often-copied gem of a site into what it is today... A broken hub of "deals" that just don't compare in value to what we used to see.

The first thing I noticed was the quality of the bags of crap going down, but it was okay because ThreePieceWoot's love notes were legendary.

Then the craps got fewer and far between, and it got to the point where the items inside were almost certainly going to be kids.woot overstock (something that the tech savvy people who frequented woot in its inception don't really have need for). As a 27-year-old man, I have no use for the six high school musical alarm clocks I got in my last sack, but I took it in stride because sometimes you get good crap and sometimes you get bad crap.

A few years ago, my family sat around a kitchen table, each with our laptops, F5'ing woot to score our santa's sacks. As sad as it sounds, it was a neat family tradition that has just abruptly died. We put up with server errors, improperly-sync'd mirrors, broken flash games, and hidden $1 million off coupon codes for years because it was fun, and we did it together.

As woot continues straying further from what it used to be, my shopping habits stray further from woot. The lack of crap on Christmas is the final straw. Woot and I are on completely different pages nowadays, and I doubt I will ever spend another dime.

So to you up-and-comers with light colored squares next to your names, I hope you enjoy the monster you've created because veterans like myself are retiring.

It was all fun and games in the past when Woot's customer service was snarky. Now that you've positioned yourself as this "professional" company with all these different sub-sites, I don't think it's appropriate to be posting things like "we don't need you to buy the Bunch of Cheer on your Facebook page. If you don't need customers, I don't need to be one.

So these will last your mom what, a week? Zing!

In any case... Merry Christmas, everyWoot.

It's disappointing to see woot change so much and not for the better. Especially for someone who's been visiting woot as long as I have.

I wish the Woot in texas the original starters of woot would startup another site. Im off to look for sometging a little bit more dun than batteries as the main woot. :-(

Sums up my feelings about woot now almost exactly! Excellent post, I know the woot staff doesn't like hearing the truth but sometimes it has to be said.

josmul123 wrote:First of all, let me say that ThunderThighs has been amazing over the time she's been around. I don't post much here, but I felt compelled today.

I used to be a daily wooter. I used to buy all the cheap stuff during woot-offs, and I'm even guilty of buying a "nut roaster" a few years ago to "move the woot-off along."

That said, I was reflecting on my Woot account and realized my last purchase was the Santa's sack of crap from last year. I don't think I even visited Woot more than a couple of times throughout the year.

Sometime about 4-5 years ago (when woot was only woot... No sub-sites), I got my first Bunch of Cheer it was full of amazing stuff. I even got a Roomba that fully worked and was just missing the power cord. I felt like I actually had a chance at getting something awesome for my 8 bucks. I had some crappy crap, but it was normally a broken Sansa MP3 player or ten... Something techy regardless of how broken it was.

Then came the sub-woots and the amazon buyout... Then the multiple site redesigns. I watched this site morph from a really neat one-of-a-kind-but-often-copied gem of a site into what it is today... A broken hub of "deals" that just don't compare in value to what we used to see.

The first thing I noticed was the quality of the bags of crap going down, but it was okay because ThreePieceWoot's love notes were legendary.

Then the craps got fewer and far between, and it got to the point where the items inside were almost certainly going to be kids.woot overstock (something that the tech savvy people who frequented woot in its inception don't really have need for). As a 27-year-old man, I have no use for the six high school musical alarm clocks I got in my last sack, but I took it in stride because sometimes you get good crap and sometimes you get bad crap.

A few years ago, my family sat around a kitchen table, each with our laptops, F5'ing woot to score our santa's sacks. As sad as it sounds, it was a neat family tradition that has just abruptly died. We put up with server errors, improperly-sync'd mirrors, broken flash games, and hidden $1 million off coupon codes for years because it was fun, and we did it together.

As woot continues straying further from what it used to be, my shopping habits stray further from woot. The lack of crap on Christmas is the final straw. Woot and I are on completely different pages nowadays, and I doubt I will ever spend another dime.

So to you up-and-comers with light colored squares next to your names, I hope you enjoy the monster you've created because veterans like myself are retiring.

It was all fun and games in the past when Woot's customer service was snarky. Now that you've positioned yourself as this "professional" company with all these different sub-sites, I don't think it's appropriate to be posting things like "we don't need you to buy the Bunch of Cheer on your Facebook page. If you don't need customers, I don't need to be one.

theguruguys wrote:This is the one real complaint I have about the 'new' woot! I can't keep up! Some of the best deals that I would have bought have popped up on woot plus! sites and are sold out way before I even notice they are there.

Obviously all this is working for woot! and making them money, if it wasn't they would change by now, I just wish it was easier to get notified of new woot! items or have one page where everything is listed.

I like you.

smittypap wrote:I got a rock.

I got an i-i-island.

I've been visiting this site for years, and even though I only have a couple of woots under my belt because my bank account regularly looks like an Edgar Allen Poe poem (My positive balance, nevermore), I always loved just participating in the Bunch of Cheer festivities.

My friend and I stayed up one April Fool's night where it was the never-ending supply of Energizer battery packs with the random pictures and loved every minute trying to figure out if the pictures meant something. If they were a code to the Bunch of Cheer And even though they weren't, it was FUN trying to figure out exactly how Woot was screwing with us for April 1. I think we wre up until 3am trying to figure out a puzzle that didn't exist and we loved it.

And even this year, like years past, I loved coming in on Christmas morning and seeing the Bunch of Cheer activity. Even if I couldn't participate myself, it was always good fun seeing others score a bag.

My problem is the site has become a mess of its former self. It's charm was in its simplicity. Then we got the 8 different Woot sites and I was still OK with that. But now we have 800 items on each page and it's messy. The charm is staring to fade and the things people loved are slowly dying off.

Woot, you guys have fans and customers that would buy the most inane items just to try and push a Woot-off along to see the next item. Taking one for the team because that's how allof us watching it felt like. Like we were in this together, waiting for the adrenaline rush after seeing that plain brown bag pop up. That's what made Woot-offs fun and after seeing a few that didn't have the coverted Bunch of Cheer even I have stopped following them as the point of hitting the F5 and looking for that treasure was now gone.

We all understand the server load has always been a problem, but that's the adventure for a lot of us. The sense of victory of being able to get your order in and be one of those lucky few. It was a game to us. THE game. And this morning, a lot of people had waited all year to play, staying up far past their bedtime on Christmas Eve to do so, and felt like coal got dropped in their socks. If you're going to change a long standing tradition of the community, at least come out ahead of time and let them know.

That's it. Woot has become one of those sites that copied Woot but missed the part that made it special.

josmul123 wrote:First of all, let me say that ThunderThighs has been amazing over the time she's been around. I don't post much here, but I felt compelled today.

I used to be a daily wooter. I used to buy all the cheap stuff during woot-offs, and I'm even guilty of buying a "nut roaster" a few years ago to "move the woot-off along."

That said, I was reflecting on my Woot account and realized my last purchase was the Santa's sack of crap from last year. I don't think I even visited Woot more than a couple of times throughout the year.

Sometime about 4-5 years ago (when woot was only woot... No sub-sites), I got my first Bunch of Cheer it was full of amazing stuff. I even got a Roomba that fully worked and was just missing the power cord. I felt like I actually had a chance at getting something awesome for my 8 bucks. I had some crappy crap, but it was normally a broken Sansa MP3 player or ten... Something techy regardless of how broken it was.

Then came the sub-woots and the amazon buyout... Then the multiple site redesigns. I watched this site morph from a really neat one-of-a-kind-but-often-copied gem of a site into what it is today... A broken hub of "deals" that just don't compare in value to what we used to see.

The first thing I noticed was the quality of the bags of crap going down, but it was okay because ThreePieceWoot's love notes were legendary.

Then the craps got fewer and far between, and it got to the point where the items inside were almost certainly going to be kids.woot overstock (something that the tech savvy people who frequented woot in its inception don't really have need for). As a 27-year-old man, I have no use for the six high school musical alarm clocks I got in my last sack, but I took it in stride because sometimes you get good crap and sometimes you get bad crap.

A few years ago, my family sat around a kitchen table, each with our laptops, F5'ing woot to score our santa's sacks. As sad as it sounds, it was a neat family tradition that has just abruptly died. We put up with server errors, improperly-sync'd mirrors, broken flash games, and hidden $1 million off coupon codes for years because it was fun, and we did it together.

As woot continues straying further from what it used to be, my shopping habits stray further from woot. The lack of crap on Christmas is the final straw. Woot and I are on completely different pages nowadays, and I doubt I will ever spend another dime.

So to you up-and-comers with light colored squares next to your names, I hope you enjoy the monster you've created because veterans like myself are retiring.

It was all fun and games in the past when Woot's customer service was snarky. Now that you've positioned yourself as this "professional" company with all these different sub-sites, I don't think it's appropriate to be posting things like "we don't need you to buy the Bunch of Cheer on your Facebook page. If you don't need customers, I don't need to be one.

I wanted to say Merry Christmas as well to the Woot peeps, especially ThunderThighs for putting up with us as much as she does

and on a side note, she isn't the only one working today, please remember the Public Safety world (Police, Fire, EMS, Rescue, and your friendly 911 dispatchers) as they are working to make your holidays jolly and your nights a litle more silent .

Anyone know of a website like the old woot? This version of woot just doesn't cut it anymore...