Woot'n

OK.. So I'm a little behind the times... but I just discovered this really cool shopping site called Woot. (yea, yea.. I'm a little sheltered, OK?  Get over yourself ;-)  They are rather unique in how they do things.  But it is a great hook.  Hey, it hooked me ;-).. I won't bore you with the details of how they operate since you can read for yourself here. (go ahead, I'll wait :-)  They even have an RSS feed so you can keep track of the Woot stuff in your favorite aggregator tool.

As a bit of a gadget freak, I really like reading the Gizmodo blog, and last week they highlighted a really cool product that was that days “Woot” item.  They were unloading a really cool Omnifi/Rockford-Fosgate digital media player bundle for an unbelievable price of USD $199 + $5 shipping!  Usually, if something looks to good to be true, it usually is. However, I quickly looked around the web and found that this place is on the level.  So I figured, what the hey... so I ordered it.  Now I'm shopping around for for an Aux input adapter for my car's factory radio head unit.  It makes no sense for me to replace this head unit since it is already a 6Disc CD changer, has really cool DSP functions, and a good subwoofer and power amp.  It's no $5000 thumpin' lane shifter (you know, those cars that drive by and all you can hear is the “thump, thump” of the bass that is so powerful you think that any minute that tiny Honda Civic is going to suddenly jump into your lane), but it sounds good.  I've found some that may work over at LogJam Electronics that aren't too expensive.

So, anyway, I finally get the FedEx tracking number and I wasn't expecting it to arrive until next week sometime.. until today I noticed that it had already arrived at the local FedEx sorting facility and said it was on the truck for delivery.  Sweet!  3 days early!  I get home and look around and there's no package.  Hmm.. Went back to track the package and I see that at 4:38pm it was taken off the truck with a status of :”package not due for delivery.”  Huh?  It was on the silly truck.. at least that is what the tracking data said.  So, off to Google again and I soon discovered that this is now a very common thing with the FedEx Express Saver option.  So basically the gist of this is that they ship everything the same fast way, but they artificially delay the delivery since “I didn't pay for them to deliver.”  No problem... There are those that paid much more for the timely overnight and two-day service so they should get priority space on the trucks.  I just find it odd that they were willing for my package to take space and add weight to the delivery vehicle and drive around town with it, then pay a worker to unload it and toss it aside.  Now the package has to be touched again to be reloaded on the truck and then finally delivered.  Not particulary efficient if you ask me.  Sure the shipper is saving money, but is FedEx?