I’ve been posting some rage tweets the past couple days about Woot.com. Finally, the cryptic 140-character rants have teased my loyal following too much. They have demanded I explain myself. Here’s the longer version of my tale being on the receiving end of an abysmal customer service experience by Woot.
In the beginning
Let’s start with some background. Woot debuted in July of 2004. News traveled fast through the Interwebs about the cool, new one-day-one-deal site. I don’t know exactly when I found out about it, but I officially signed up and made my first purchase a few months later in October of 2004. I bought a blazing fast 8x DVD-ROM drive – not burner – for $13.99 (thanks Gmail for the archives!).
From that first introduction, I’ve purchased additional woots at least a couple times a year. Anything from ear muffs to an MP3 player to a desktop computer (the one I’m using now, in fact). Never had a problem or expectations not met. Woot had been good to me.
I also like to think I’ve been pretty good to Woot. Totaling up all my Woot acquisitions, I calculate having spent $1775.80 over the past 6 years on their site. Not massive by any means, but that’s certainly a good chunk to throw at one place that sells one thing at a time and usually has them quite discounted. In other terms, my 6 years of Woot purchases could have paid for roughly 3 years of high-speed cable Internet. That’s a whole lot of Internets!
My point being, I’ve willing paid Woot a lot of money for things that are very far from being the necessities of life. Not that Internet access is itself anywhere near being a necessity of life, but definitely something I use a whole lot more on a day-to-day basis.
(Frankly, this whole ordeal is very much an extremely first-world problem, but an ordeal I want to share, nonetheless.)
Things take a turn
So, all of that brings us to Cyber Monday of this year. Woot started one of their exciting Woot Offs for the occasion. Basically, instead of one deal for the whole day, they sell a single item until their allotted quantity is out, then they put up another item. I can’t remember the specifics, but at one point on Tuesday with the wootoff still in progress, I realized that their raiment site, shirt.woot!, was offering a few bucks off any of their top 25 shirts. $12 for anyone you wanted with free shipping. I found a great t-shirt for a yet-to-be-revealed recipient as part of the gift exchange with my siblings-in-law for Christmas. Perfect!
Honestly, it being November 30, I didn’t even consider the date and shipping times for something that was needed with roughly 3 weeks to go. We leave for Montana tomorrow (Dec. 19), but I didn’t even consider that to be an issue.
A series of horrible events
You know where this is going, but here’s the timeline. I ordered the shirt and successfully paid on Nov. 30. I received my confirmation/receipt email that day. My credit card shows it was charged on Dec. 1 for the order.
Woot generally takes a few days to actually ship purchases, and I knew that. No big deal. I didn’t actually get my shipping confirmation and tracking number until Dec. 6. Again, not concerned. It was traveling by SmartPost, so FedEx would have it most of the way with last mile delivery by USPS. This has worked beautifully in the past. No worries.
It was on Dec. 16, I actually registered that the shirt still hadn’t arrived. I looked up the tracking number and found out that the first entry by FedEx doing anything with the package (usually indicates when they first get their hands on it) was just 2 days before. The expected delivery date to be Dec. 20. The day AFTER I leave town. Ack!!!
The art of “how not to help”
I promptly typed an email to Woot describing the situation and indicating that I’m a bit more than miffed. I also noted that this was an intended Christmas gift that I would not have in time for my trip.
I get a very detailed and caring response from Woot:
I’m sorry, we had to print this design. Unfortunately, since it’s currently in transit, there’s nothing we’re able to do.
Really? That is all the more you care to provide when I’ve very clearly expressed my frustration. “Nothing” should NEVER be an answer to a customer complaint. At best, you’re going to alienate a random customer and probably not entice them to make another purchase. Much worse, you’re going to incite that customer into being more upset and making a bigger deal out of the situation. Guess which one I am! 
Stee-rike 2!
Well, as satisfying as that response was, I was going to let that be the end of it. Oh, no. I indicated that the original response was unacceptable and need real options to resolve my situation. Over 24 hours after that email to them, I still hadn’t heard anything, so I fired off a reminder. Finally a reponse arrived this morning. It was the same line of “nothing we’re able to do” but with more words. I was kindly reminded of the delivery date and provide another link to the tracking number on FedEx.com. No kidding! I know the delivery date. That’s the whole point of my complaint! <SCREAM!!!/>
I would have taken any number of options besides “nothing”. Send out a new shirt to the Montana address I need it at and I’ll send back the other one when I get there. Offer to reroute the existing delivery to the new address. I don’t really care. Just SOMETHING would have been a sign of caring.
Strike 3, you’re out!
I’d also put a comment out on Twitter mentioning @woot and the poor experience. That was entirely dead air. Why even bother to have the account? At this point, my only recourse(s) for resolution was to go outside Woot to see what could be done. I still have an active tracking number with FedEx. They have real people on phones (pretty sure Woot doesn’t). Turns out that SmartPost doesn’t have any means of re-routing the package so it has to go to the USPS then out to the original destination (my office).
Woot received a final email expressing my severe disappointment with how this has been handled. Then I actually went through the trouble of totaling up all my previous purchases to see what my 6-plus year history with Woot has amounted to. That $12 shirt is less than 1% of my total purchases over the course of being a Woot customer, let alone the combined total of anyone reading this or who’s seen my tweets or Facebook posts. But to me, being it was a specifically chosen gift for someone else, that shirt is clearly worth well more than $12. And I won’t get it in time to give it to someone else. That sucks.
Socialnomics 1, Woot.com 0
And now I’m writing this massively detailed blog post indicating my frustration and the poor experience provided by Woot. That’s exactly what you don’t want happening as a company try to stay at the top in this high socially networked world we live in (aka, Socialnomics). I’m by no stretch a massively connected person, but between unique Twitter and Facebook connections that will at least see a link to this post, at least 300 people have the chance to see this. If even one of you chooses not to buy something from Woot because of this post or my other tweets, they’ve likely already lost the $12 it would have cost to make things right. That seems like a really stupid move.
Sure, I probably haven’t been a flawless customer in this exchange. Perhaps I should have been thinking more about delivery date way back in November. Maybe I just ended up having my situation reviewed by people on a bad day. I get that, but I don’t blame any individual for what’s happened including myself. Woot had the option to help one of their earliest customers and they failed.
We ARE on a break
At this point, I won’t be visiting Woot for a while. I’m not doing this to reach some sort of estimated dollar amount of reparations. Just general principle of having such a bad taste in my mouth form this. But, I’ve always enjoyed the snarky product descriptions and the neat, random offerings, so I’ll probably go back someday. But now I need to go find a Christmas gift for someone. Our plane leaves in exactly 24 hours.
Merry Christmas!
This is what I wanted. Thank you. I am a bloodthirsty consumer. And yes, I assumed that by including @woot in your tweets, some kind of response would come quickly, rather than not at all. Having recently had some issues with Carnival Cruises that were handled via Travelocity, my esteemed traveling companion posted a @travelocity message on Twitter and was responded to within 9 minutes – that’s terrifically fast.
Um…read Woot’s FAQ. You get crappy customer service for a reason – it costs money, and their goal is crazy low prices (not awesome customer service). You’re going to order a cheap product just before Christmas from a company that tells you flat-out their customer service sucks? Heh.
From Woot’s FAQ: