Frustrated, and the Air is Blue

Today is another Woot-Off. Woot is a geek oriented site that generally sells one item per day, and when they run out, too bad. No backorders. They have quite the selection of goodies sure to warm the heart of any geek - IPods (and other media players) and accessories, computers, recordable media, bluetooth accessories, R/C toys, LCD and plasma televisions,vacuum cleaners (generally Roombas or Dysons), printers, and well, you get the idea. Woot offers new and refurbished goodies, too. A Woot-Off is when they put up a variety of items one at a time, and when one sells out, another is put on the block. These occur about once a month to six weeks. It's a good way for them to clear out low inventory items. You literally have to be Johnny On the Spot, refreshing the page to see what is new. They do put up a flashing light icon and an inventory bar to give you an idea of how much stock is left. There are people out there that stay up all night and day until Woot is out of inventory and the Woot-Off is over. Some call in sick at work to do this.

So, this came up:



Polaroid DVD Recorder with 160GB Hard Drive and ATSC Tuner

For $99.99. $5 shipping and handling. Oh, did I mention everything is $5 shipping and handling, even if you order one, two or three? Kinda nice if you buy a big heavy plasma screen. This one was a refurb, with a 90 day factory warranty. If you've shopped for one similar, you'll see why I was interested. This one is about half price or less compared to a new one. I saw it had the ATSC tuner, which is digital (or the new high definition signal), but I wanted to check if it had NTSC (the current analog signal) built in. I've got an older HD "monitor" tv without a digital tuner installed. So, if I want to watch the local HD channels, I have to buy a tuner. Having the recorder and hard drive was icing on the cake. Instead of hitting the "I want one" button, I scrolled down the read the description. Well, you can probably see how this story is going.

It was sold out when I hit the confirm button after reviewing my card info, and entering in my security numbers. Turns out they had eleven units. Sales averaged one per 4.601 seconds. By the time I had read the description, I was SOL. I wasn't gonna drop a bill on something I wasn't sure had what I wanted. This is pretty typical of my experiences with a Woot-Off. Oh well, I'm not gonna go nuts - apparently the eleven who bought this item didn't waste any time seeing what they were getting.

Aaaarrrrggghhhhh!!!!!