With UrbanFetch now dead, finally the story can be told...
   by Justin Frohwirth

UrbanFetch.com went live just over a year ago. The IT guys at Jupiter were the first to discover it, and it was much more interesting back then with the opening sale of everything 50% off (or as a wise man once said "If they're stupid enough to sell below wholesale prices, then fuck 'em."). The site was only music, movies, books, and snacks in the beginning, but who could argue with a major-label CD for $8? I logged on the first time and searched the site for decent CDs, which was difficult since their inventory was limited and the search interface stank. It was clear that the site had been quickly cobbled together in order to compete with Kozmo.

That became even more clear when I stumbled upon the Miles Davis 5-CD "Complete Bitches Brew Sessions" deluxe box set. $70 retail, but listed at $8 at UrbanFetch. Someone obviously made an error in the database, and priced this as a single CD. I tried to place 10 of them in my shopping cart, but they only had one in stock. I grabbed a few other blues CDs, and checked-out, thinking that they would surely catch me and leave the box set out of the order. But no, it showed up about 15 minutes later, with a free bag of cookies (in the early days they gave you a whole pound of them -- much better than the tent-like t-shirts that sometimes came later.)

I logged on the next morning looking for more deals on CDs. I didn't find anything else, but noted a banner at the top of page reading "Video games launch today at 5:00 PM!" I made a mental note to return, hoping that I'd maybe find a Playstation game for my brother for $10.

Shortly before 5:00, I returned with my then-"boss" Lapt to find the site crashed. (Quick aside: Lapt was no stranger to scamming eCommerce sites, having bought the then-$500 Palm Pilot V for $90 a short time earlier.) We played the reload game for a few minutes, and when the site finally came back up, the banner had been changed to "Video games launch later tonight!" It looked like the rollout had failed, and they decided to delay the launch. But we continuted to poke around the site, and quickly found the video games in the video (DVD/VHS) section, and everything had a listed price of $0.00!

The window of opportunity lasted less than 60 seconds. I got a Playstation and Nintendo 64 into my cart. Lapt and John (others had joined in by now) got a system each. Stuart and Rob got 2 games each. We started the process of checking-out, not believing that we'd ever pull this off. If you've ever used UrbanFetch, you're surely familiar with the game of watching your order being processed. It starts with "Placed": (these are absolutely genuine screen shots - I made them as evidence in case UrbanFetch tried to stiff us.)

A couple minutes of hitting reload always results in "Ready to Fill":

Next usually comes "Filled." I was still on "Ready to Fill", but Lapt, who had started the process earlier, got a mysterious new status along the lines of "Order Held for Review by Customer Service". Surely we were caught and the orders would be cancelled. But within a couple minutes it changed to "Filled", which is also where my status went:

The phones started ringing within a half-hour. The receptionist was calling us to say a bike messenger was here. Before signing for my delivery, I asked the messenger to see the receipt. I wanted to make sure they hadn't just charged our credit cards (which we had to enter) for the full amount. He laughed, saying "What receipt? You guys got this for free!" I asked him if they were pissed off back at UrbanFetch homebase. His reaction was affirmative. I walked back to my desk with a big, stupid grin on my face, and not only discovered a free bag of cookies with my order, but the most unbelievable receipt I've ever seen in my life:

I also checked my transaction history on the site and found that they really did settle my credit card for $0.00:

Not being much of a video game player, with the exception of 8-bit Nintendo and earlier systems, I considered selling them on eBay, where I had just sold the Miles Davis box for $37 and change -- I'm not a jazz fan either. Being a few months before the holidays, I also thought about giving them to a toy drive, but with the games costing $50 a pop, that didn't seem to make sense. In the end, they became the best gift my younger cousins will ever get from me. The happy recipiants:

Postscript: UrbanFetch Learns Their Lesson

As UrbanFetch further expanded their offerings, I continued to search for loopholes in their system. There were a few successful small scams, like the Taj Mahal 3-CD box set for $8, of which I bought a handful to flip on eBay for $20 a pop. It was also fun in the pre-minimum order days to have a bike messenger deliver a 60 cent bag of chips. But one day reading the Village Voice, I saw a big ad of theirs that had extra tabs along the top: electronics, gifts, drug store. Playing with the URL in my browser, I got into these pre-launched sections by changing something like "category=3" to a higher number. But when I got to the electronics section, I saw that instead of filling their price database with $0.00, it was ridiculously high numbers like $100,000 for a Palm Pilot, to keep someone like me from trying to buy it.

UrbanFetch, RIP.

And next time: Fat Cats in the New Economy or How I Learned to Stop Paying for Cat Food and Love Pets.com $15 off $15 Coupons...

- Justin