Forget Black Friday deals. So-called freebie bots can score discounts of up to 100% on merchandise ahead of the holidays.
R
ather than braving the Black Friday crowds to do his holiday shopping this year, Dan, a 46-year-old data analyst in Buffalo, New York, doesn’t go any farther than his basement. All year he’s been getting free stuff from Amazon, snapped up by a bot he runs on his computer and dropped off daily on his front stoop. It’s a head-scratching hodgepodge of random merch: Cordless vacuums, drones, slushie makers, mermaid pool floats, solar-powered string lights, satin pillowcases, dog beds, cow print phone cases, Christmas ornaments, collagen pills, turtleneck sweaters and blankets that say “Best Mom Ever.”
“It’s anything and everything. You name it,” said Dan, who started experimenting with bots during the early days of the pandemic so he could get his hands on a PlayStation 5. He now uses so-called freebie bots to automatically scoop up stuff that gets listed on Amazon for free, sometimes by accident.
It’s a sign of the times. Tech-savvy shoppers are increasingly turning to freebie bots, which have risen in popularity in the last year. They scan the internet for products that are listed by retailers for free or at very deep discounts. Sometimes a retailer will accidentally offer a discount code for 100% off. Increasingly, it seems, it’s happening by design.
Retailers have aggressively ramped up their discounting in recent months in an effort to offload excess inventory, offering deep markdowns on pandemic-era favorites like loungewear, home goods and electronics that have fallen out of favor. Some brands, particularly those that sell on Amazon and pay a fee for storage in the company’s warehouses, have apparently decided it makes more financial sense to just give away inventory.
“They’re selling at a loss because they don’t really have a choice,” said William Rogers, 24, a software developer who created a freebie bot, called Nova, this summer to help shoppers take advantage of the trend.
One user got boxes of free diapers delivered, which he donated to a local pregnancy resource center.
Nova
Nova charges fees — $50 upfront and $25 every month. Users can set their own parameters. The vast majority opt to only receive items that are truly free. Some choose to receive products that are marked down by 80%, for instance, with a maximum dollar amount of $10.
“With the holiday season coming up, I think a big selling point is that you get free gifts,” said Noah Hirschfield, 22, a software engineer at Nova. A lot of users have reported receiving free drones and cordless vacuums. Nearly 900 of those doggy life vests landed on users’ doorsteps. Rogers recently got some Christmas lights that he gave to friends as they put up holiday decorations, plus a few outfits that are perfect for his sister’s French bulldog.
The use of freebie bots is expected to rise during Black Friday sales, said Cyril Noel-Tagoe, principal security researcher at cybersecurity firm Netacea. Some will then turn around and try to resell the items for slightly more, he said.
“Users are never quite sure what they are going to get, they just know they are going to get them cheap,” he said.
Boxes of free stuff from Amazon pile up in one user’s garage.
Nova
In Dan’s Buffalo basement, there’s plenty of merch that will make great gifts for his family and friends, like remote-controlled cars, building blocks and electronic flashcards for his nephews. A winter hat with built-in headphones served as an early Christmas present to himself that he’s been wearing outside in the first big snow dump of the year.
Dan also doesn’t anticipate being able to gift all 30 of the dog life jackets he’s accumulated, so he’s thinking he’ll stop by a nearby doggy aquatic center and see if he can trade them for swim time for his dog, a Belgian Malinois.
He won’t dare give any of the jewelry, clothing or shoes to his wife, he told Forbes with a laugh. “She knows too well.”
MORE FROM FORBES
Source: https://www.forbes.com/sites/laurendebter/2022/11/25/freebie-bots-holiday-shopping/