Brad

looks like it could be another busy day. the MSN and CNN stories are still linked on their home pages, so if it gets bad, we'll have to close the forum again temporarily. if it happens, like BJS mentioned, just go to our facebook page for updates

and you know walmart will have a similar grouping in their ad for $3-4 as well - it's one of their yearly BF traditions, lol.

why does everyone panic? wasn't there a message saying it was closed because of high traffic? if i really wanted to scare everyone, i could have posted a message saying the site had been shut down due to a court order because some retailer got mad and sent their lawyers after us...

we also might close the forum to lurkers, so if you are lurking, consider registering so you won't be shut out.

we're mentioned in stories currently linked on the home pages of both CNN.com and MSN.com and the site is getting hammered. i've already began arrangements to get more servers added to our cluster to handle the traffic, but in the meantime we'll just have to tolerate the slowdowns and occasional forum closings during peak times.

We won't know exactly which items will be online until they actually go on sale. Same thing with free shipping. The store that offer it now will still have it. Others might add it for certain items. Again, you won't know for sure until it happens. If WM has a $99 netbook, I'm guessing most if not all of the stock will go to stores and not online.

It looks like 827200, but it's not on the Staples web site. They'll probably add it as we get closer to BF. It won't be the BlackArmor one. If anything, they used the wrong pic.

I've noticed that on a lot of things too. An item's sale price would have to be around 20% cheaper on BF to be a better deal, even if you use the 15% on BF.

Top 10 items people are adding to their shopping lists on the BF site: Duracell Batteries 20-Pack (Free After Staples Rewards) - FREE After Rebate HP 8GB USB 2.0 Flash Drive - $12.99 Staples DVD+R Media 50-Pack - $4.98 After Rebate Staples DVD-R Media 50-Pack - $4.98 After Rebate HP Everyday 8.5" x 11" Photo Paper 50-Pack - $1 After Rebate HP 15.6" Laptop w/ 3GB, 160GB, Windows 7 - $299.98 After Rebate Staples CD-R Media 100-Pack - $4.98 After Rebate Coupon: 10% off Any One Single Item Saturday Only - 10% off Seagate 1TB External Desktop Hard Drive - $69.99 SanDisk 4GB SDHC Memory Card - $9.99

wondering what people are adding to their shopping lists on the BF site for target? the top 10 items: Free $10 Gift Card with $100 Purchase - FREE Selected DVD Movies (Mall Cop, Kung Fu Panda, More) - $5.99 Disney's Up or Tinkerbell and the Lost Treasure DVD - $13 Selected DVD Movies & TV Box Sets (Friends, Weeds, More) - $8.99 Selected DVD TV Box Sets (Office, House, Gossip Girl, More) - $12.99 Selected DVD Movies (Elf, Batman, Sarah Marshall, More) - $3.99 Board Games (Candy Land, Memory, Cootie, More) - $5 Plan a Family Game Night Games (Bop it, Sequence, More) - $12 RCA Portable 7" Widescreen DVD Player - $47 Board Games (Apples to Apples, Scene It, Uno Spin, More) - $10

CNN story about the ad: http://money.cnn.com/2009/11/11/news/companies/retail_holidayshopping_blackfriday_target/index.htm

Or maybe Sony paid Staples for "promotional consideration" in their ad, just to get info on the product out there.

So as far as "big" ads we're still waiting on Walmart, Best Buy and Toys R Us. We know when WM will be posted (at the latest). Funny how quickly we went from "where are the ads?" to having only a few big ones left. But there are still a lot of the small to medium size stores to come out.

Build-a-Bear just sent this over:

done typing up the ad. not too bad. target does it right - they don't have 900 items on sale, but the items they do have are pretty nice deals usually.

http://blackfriday.gottadeal.com/AdScans

Search eBay for "staples coupon" and you'll find all kinds of them. Usually discounts like $30 off $150, $25 off $75, $20 off $100, etc... just make sure they can be used online and expire after BF.

Thanks!

Just a tip: now is a good time to stock up on coupons from eBay to use on BF for ordering online. The prices of the coupons tend to jump as we get closer to BF.

http://blackfriday.gottadeal.com/AdScans

Just a reminder that we have a dedicated thread in the Online Hot Deals forum where we post the various Kohls.com coupon codes all year long. View that thread here: http://forums.gottadeal.com/showthread.php?t=150164 We already have a 15% code that will be good on Black Friday, so be sure to use a coupon when you order BF ad items online. The 30% off / Kohl's Cash combo starts 11/11 and runs for a week.

Word is some Ace stores have the BF ads and you can just go pick one up, so if anyone wants to try that, feel free. The Ace rep I was dealing with sent an e-mail to their marketing dept (and CC'ed me on the e-mail) asking them to send me the ad ASAP, but I've received nothing so far. Update: well I guess we don't have to wait for Ace to send it. It's been posted: http://forums.gottadeal.com/showthread.php?t=156753 Closing this thread...

IIRC, with previous sales the code started working the night before, but since they are not using coupon codes this time, it's hard to say.

I believe bigjimslade contacted the winners directly on FB, so if you don't have any messages on FB, you are not a winner in this contest. I have the full names of the winners, but for privacy reasons I'm not going to post them on here. I don't know if they are forum members or not.

In the past, it was good on any in-stock (not preorder) DVDs including box sets.