Brad

When we have the ads they will be posted Thread closed.

The KB Toys BF ad was posted on another site (a site obviously new at this stuff) and so the ad was photographed with a digital camera (not scanned), has huge watermarks over everything, has camera flash marks covering some items, and nearly 2 of the 5 pages are too blurry to make out what the items are. So that being said, I'm not posting the full scans until we have a cleaner copy, but I was able to make out quite a few of the items and have posted them on the BF site: http://blackfriday.gottadeal.com/BlackFridaySales/Store/KBToys Enjoy :) (and again, I'm not posting the full scans until we get a cleaner copy)

it was just posted minutes ago. I'll make an official thread now.

The impact depends on the store. For Target, it's a big impact as we've been an affiliate of them for years and have sold large amounts of their items through the site. I can't give out exact numbers, but it's a major loss to be sure. For a store like F.Y.E, the impact is minimal because they are not a major retailer for the site and because most if not all of their BF items wouldn't have been available online anyway. If this kind of thing continues, it could get to the point where I have to decide that all the ads can no longer be posted in order for the site to be financially successful for the rest of the year. As as for contributions - no I don't need you all to contribute or donate anything. Just tell everyone you know about the site, and when you shop online, do it through the links on this site, which helps us out greatly. You can get our affiliate links for many of the most popular online stores here :)

The LNT and Macy's ads have not been removed from this site as we have not been contacted by those retailers. For the ads that were were forced to remove, the items will disappear from your shopping lists. However we do back them up before deleting them, so they will be restored the week of BF when we can post the ad again.

as far as i'm concerned they apply to only this year. although i was talking to the owner of another BF site and they said one of these stores wanted them to sign a contract saying they would never post the ads, this year or in the future (which is a big joke).

The ad has been removed (although with the BB and CC ads out today, I'm not sure anyone will notice )

f.y.e. just e-mailed us terminating our affiliate account. again, no advance warning, and their ad has been up for weeks now.

http://forums.gottadeal.com/showthread.php?t=82464 scans are up, listing will be added soon

http://qvc.com/qic/qvcapp.aspx/view.2/app.detail/params.item.tsv!.cm_scid.PROM?cm_re=BARS-_-TSV-_-E03703&cm_sp=TSV-_-HP-_-DETAILS seems like a good price: http://gottadeal.pricegrabber.com/search_getprod.php/masterid=47829951/search=a826/sort_type=bottomline

a problem i see is that people are going to be out shopping on BF, not at home waiting for 2pm or 4pm to see the next batch of deals from wal-mart.

Right now for several stores you'll see little blue shopping cart icons on the far right side. Those items (at least as of the last time we checked) were available for ordering from the store's site at the BF price. blue shopping carts = order from the same store at BF price (or less) green dollar bills = order from another site at BF price (or less)

We are going to be doing something similar to that in the coming days. On the main BF site, you'll start to see little green dollar bill icons (http://blackfriday.gottadeal.com/images/cheaper.png) next to certain items. Those items will be available for ordering online (from a different, but GD-approved and trusted web site) for the BF price or less. As you said, keeping something like that updated is a lot of work, so I'm trying to catch up with all the other ads and deal with everything else before we start rolling out this feature.

oops, try this: http://forums.gottadeal.com/index.php?styleid=12

this was submitted anonymously through the site today:

Click here to exit the lite version and return to the main theme: http://forums.gottadeal.com/index.php?styleid=12

To go along with what some of you have said, I think part of it is that some retailers just like to have customers that are clueless. They want their customers to know virtually nothing about the products in the ads, to not read reviews ahead of time or compare different models, and to just take the store's word that the items in the ad are amazing deals. They don't want you to do your homework or to see if you can get a better price online somewhere else. They want to put the ad in front of you hours, instead of days, before you need to be in line.

It's also even more hypocritical that sites like Fatwallet and Slickdeals have had the ad posted for the same amount of time we have, and yet their affiliate status has not changed - all their affiliate links are working still. Looks like Target is playing favorites. Somehow what we did was wrong but other larger sites can get away with it because they bring more business to Target. E-mail [email protected] and ask her why we were terminated but the others weren't.

I never said the WM letter was a C&D. We did receive an actual C&D from OfficeMax today, and other sites have received them from Macy's and LNT.

Exactly. I'd repost them on the Wednesday of that week most likely, primarily just so people can print their shopping lists. By then the ad is basically out so they are not getting much free advertsing.

All these stores doing things now - we are 2 weeks away. It's not like this is mid-October. Your competitors' ads are printed and sitting in a warehouse somewhere by now. Sure would be nice if one of the huge, multi-million dollar deal sites like Fatwallet or Slickdeals would challenge one of these stores in court and maybe get an effective legal precedent set. Being a one-man operation I don't have the resources to do something like that this time of year. I had a bad feeling coming into this year that things were going to happen like this. And like Gurnee Al said, things are going to get worse. Don't be surprised if a bunch of stores send out legal letters well before their ads come out next year like WM did this year. The good news is GD is open year round and we don't need BF ads to find great deals - just look at our Online Hot Deals forum lately and see all the great Black Friday-worthy deals being posted.

They may have for all we know. They didn't demand the ad be taken down, so there is no real way of knowing who else they terminated. I wouldn't bother with a general customer service e-mail. The e-mail address I posted in the OP is from their main affiliate rep who I have been dealing with.

Let's not get carried away with giving them credit - the deadline was probably more because they sent the e-mail after business hours and couldn't know that it would be read before tomorrow anyway.

No, posting the ad was the only issue. The CNN story just let them know the ad was out. I would post the e-mail I received from them, but for legal reasons I'm not going to...

I don't expect Target to demand the ad be removed. They just terminated the affiliate relationship so that we cannot make any money from items purchased through the links on the site. Basically they were upset that their ad was leaked and so they took it out on us like a bully. I'm still debating whether I will just completely remove the ad as to give them no free advertising. Regardless, with any ad that I am forced to remove, I will back up the text list and the shopping list, and when the ad is re-posted, your shopping list items will be restored.