One of my favorite websites to check every day is woot.com. It is a site that sells one product a day at a pretty cheap price. Sometimes the items are refurbished and they tend to be more electronics (nerd) stuff. There is also kids.woot.com, wine.woot.com, and shirt.woot.com. You can buy 1, 2 or 3 of the items and no matter the price of the item or quantity it ships for $5. It is fun to see the different items each day and if you’re lucky it will be something you want!

One of the best parts of the site is the woot-off. A woot-off is where there isn’t just one product during the day but many that they cycle though. Once they sell out it is gone and they move on to a different item. There is a progress bar showing how much is left but you don’t know the quantity of items being sold until after they are sold out. Woot-offs usually last for 24 to as much as 72 hours.

The perk of a woot-off is the infamous Random Crap or Bag of Crap (BOC). The is basically a grab bag of at least 3 items which could be lame or really good. Apparently some people have received flat screen tvs! You automatically have to buy 3 random craps at $1 each plus the $5 shipping is a grand total of $8 for your bag of crap. Sounds kind of fun right? Well it is except that they are very difficult to get. There are so many people try to get them at the same time that woot.com’s servers slow way down and they sell out in seconds. Part of the appeal is the game of trying to get the BOC before it sells out

If you know me at all you know I like games, winning stuff, and obtaining the last item of anything. For example, I will buy something at the store if it is the last one even if I don’t need it just to make sure I got the last one. It gives me some kind of rush to know that I got it. I am a master at claw machines. I have tons and tons of free apps on my iphone because I want to download them while they are free incase they start charging for them in the future (this strategy if you could call it that has definitely paid off). I get a panicky feeling where there is a long line for something even at a buffet where the food in unlimited. This is probably why I enjoy getting up at 4am to shop the day after Thanksgiving – for the sport of it all. Nothing beats buying a gas grill at 4am from Sears.

You probably can kind of see where this is going. I needed to get the BOC. I became obsessed with getting it. Luckily one of my coworkers also found the fun of trying to obtain the BOC and he read articles on how to do it and installed a tool on his computer to track items, show alerts, and automatically open the buy page when a BOC pops up during a woot-off. This definitely was better than my archaic method of refreshing the screen a million times when the item quantity was getting low to make sure I was on top of it when the item changed incase it was indeed a BOC. The refresh method isn’t all bad, one time I actually got to the payment screen and clicked the buy button and it had already sold out. That experience was super intense for me, my hand were shaking, heart racing all for nothing. After that I installed the tool and tried that. Unfortunately during the next few woot-offs there were not a BOC to be found.

Then it happened. On the second day of a woot-off this past week there was a BOC. I was ready for it. I was using the refresh method and the tool. I made it to the payment screen. Then to the yes I definitely want to buy this screen. Then I got a message saying they got my order but where trying to run my credit card and things were so slow it might not go through. I waited then my screen went white. Total panic. Did I just lose the coveted BOC? All of a sudden the screen refreshed and said it would ship in 5 days!! I had won! I got the confirmation email. Next I told everyone I knew (that would remotely care), ran over and told my coworker and did a small victory dance in my cube. Yes I was at work – we’ll call this the lunch break.

So what was in my BOC you may be wondering… it has yet to be delivered. Stay tuned for the contents of the BOC!