Brad

Which would you suggest? I'd rather add one so the two don't split the vote (unless you'd rather have both - doesn't really matter to me)

uh, when do the ads come out? (had to be the first one)

In case anyone needs them, here are our lists from the last 2 years: http://blackfriday.gottadeal.com/2003.txt http://blackfriday.gottadeal.com/2004.txt These are also useful in determining if any new rumored ads this year are legit or just copies of last year's.

While we wait for the first ads... Does anyone have any good Black Friday "war stories" from previous years?

Welcome to the site hhockman :) Glad you found us as well

Like last year we're going to have thousands of new visitors on the forum because of the Black Friday site, and we want to welcome all of you newcomers, as well as those of you who haven't been back since last Black Friday (where did you go? LOL) New this year on the forum is our GottaPoints system. We launched this in mid-September and it has proved to be very popular. In a nutshell, you earn GottaPoints by doing various things on the forum (posting, referring new members, and other things). You can spend your GottaPoints on prizes, contest entries and more in the GottaPoints Store. For a more complete description of GottaPoints, including exactly what you earn points for, please see this thread. You can see your current total in the GottaPoints Store, in your User Control Panel or on your User Profile page. Through the end of the year, we have 2 big giveaways which will use these GottaPoints. First is the Holiday Gift Card Giveaway in which we will be giving away a $20 gift card every week for 10 weeks. You can win one or more of these gift cards by earning GottaPoints and buying entries into each drawing in the store. Second, we have the "Points for Charity" Giveaway in which you can not only win a great prize, but for each entry you buy, we'll donate ten cents to charity. This contest runs through the end of the year or when all 2,000 entries are redeemed, whichever comes first. Besides spending your GottaPoints, you can also transfer them to your fellow forum members - also via the GottaPoints Store. If someone helps you out or posts something you find especially useful, consider sending them some points as a token of your appreciation. Finally, the admins (RossMAN and myself) can give you bonus GottaPoints for any reason. If we see you being helpful on the forum, we'll give you some points. If you find a really hot deal and post it, we'll give you some points. If you post a link to our site somewhere else (such as in your sig on another forum) and we see it or you tell us about it, we'll give you some points. Hopefully this answers some of your questions about the GottaPoints system, and now that you are a registered member (because you wouldn't see this if you weren't) you can immediately start posting and earning GottaPoints.

Welcome back Snoodles :)

Here is the poll we will use to determine the charities that will split the donations from the "Points for Charity" giveaway. You can vote for more than one charity, so if there are a couple that you would like to vote for, feel free. Keep in mind that you can only vote once, so make sure you select all the charities you wish to the first time. If you vote and later wish to add a vote, send me or RossMAN a PM and we'll add the vote manually. The poll will remain open until the end of November at which point the chosen charities will be announced. The charites included are all the charities that were not selected during the last giveaway, as well as a few other suggested by our members. If you'd like to suggest another charity, send me a PM by 10/7. After that the list will be closed.

We have just re-opened the BF forum :) If you can read this then you are a registered, logged-in member of the forum (as this BF forum is closed to lurkers once again this year). Have fun - less than 2 months to go

Last year we got a lot of the same questions popping up here in the Black Friday forum, so we thought we'd try to answer some of them now so we don't have 492 posts asking the same thing What is Black Friday? Black Friday is the day after Thanksgiving when most retailers have their biggest sales of the year. For a complete history of Black Friday, see here. Where are the sale ads? The sale ads that we have will appear on the main Black Friday @ GottaDeal web site available at http://blackfriday.gottadeal.com When do the rumored ads start appearing? We expect the first rumored ads to appear on the site in late October or early November. If you or someone you know has access to the ads early, please contact us. If you can give us an exclusive look at the ad early, there is a good chance you'll be rewarded for your help :) When do the ads come in the newspaper? Traditionally, the actual printed ads come with your newspaper on Thanksgiving Day, however in some areas they will be in the paper on Wednesday or on Black Friday itself. Check with your local newspaper if you need to know the exact date. Some retailers such as WalMart occasionally distribute their ads sooner. Do retailers allow price matching or returning & rebuying for BF items? There is no set answer for this. Each retailer makes their own decisions and policies, and those can even change from year to year. Your best bet is to contact the retailer directly to get their price matching policy. Some stores that allow it during the year won't allow it during BF. Different stores in different areas might have different policies as well. Why is this forum for registered members only? We want to encourage as much participation on not only this Black Friday forum, but all of our other forums. Now that you are registered we invite you to post anywhere you'd like on the various forums. You can earn GottaPoints which can get you prizes and contest entries as well. We'll have a special private forum for scanned ads and other exclusives only for active members who have been posting, so be sure you have made a few posts if you want access to that information when the time comes. How can I help support the site? We're glad you asked :) We don't want your money, we don't accept donations, we don't even have any annoying ads on the site. If you appreciate what we are doing with the BF site, the best thing you can do is just spread the word. Tell your family, friends and co-workers about it, post a link on other sites (without spamming of course ) - anything to let others know about the site. We'll be very grateful and if we see you doing it we'll give you some GottaPoints as well :) What do some of the abbreviations I see on the site mean? BF = Black Friday GD = GottaDeal AR = After Rebate MIR = Mail-in Rebate BB = Best Buy CC = Circuit City TRU = Toys R Us OP = Original Poster (the person who started a thread) FAR = Free After Rebate PM = Price Match or Private Message YMMV = Your Mileage May Varry B&M = Brick and Mortar your local store What about price matching and layaway? In the vast majority of cases, each store will set it's own policy regarding pricematching and layaway as it relates to BF. Many times the stores' policies change year to year, so posting a new thread will not likely get you a confirmed answer. Therefore we suggest you contact your individual store to see what their policy will be. When will 's BF ad come out? We have no idea when each ad will be leaked/released. Rest assured, as soon as it's available we'll post it and you'll know about it, so please do not create these threads asking us as we don't know. How do I use the search function to find something? To perform a generic search, just click the "Search" link in the top blue navigation bar and enter your query. If you want to do a more advanced search (such as searching only titles, only in certain forums, etc..., click the Advanced Search link under the search box, or just click here: SEARCH and perform your search from that page. Can I get these deals online? Again, this varies on a store-by-store, and item-by-item basis. There is no way to know when or if a particular item will be available online at the BF price. However, if you add items to your Shopping List on the site, you'll get an e-mail alert when any of your items become available online at the BF price. We will also have a big page listing every single item we find that is available at the BF price. We will make sure you are aware of this, so as long as you keep coming back to the site, you won't miss anything. Many of the items become available online Thanksgiving Day. Can you tell me more about a certain item? If we don't have the scanned ad posted and the item is not linked to the store's web site on the BF site, some good places to search for info are Google, PriceGrabber, and Amazon.com. My post/thread appears to be deleted - what happened? With all the posts, we are getting a lot of reposts and threads with the same topic. In most cases, we'll either close the thread and include a link to the older thread on the topic, or we will merge the thread with the existing one. We have master threads for many of the popular products such as laptops and TVs, so keep discussion of those items in those threads. New threads created about those items will likely be merged. Any other questions? If you have any other questions about Black Friday in general, feel free to post a new thread AFTER you have searched to make sure it has not been covered already. However, if you are going to post a new thread with a question, be sure to include a detailed thread title. Do not post a thread with the title "Question" or "Help Me". If you have questions, comments or suggestions about the site, send a private message to Brad or RossMAN, or use the contact form on the BF site and we'll get back to you as soon as we can. Last Updated: 11/11/05

No there is nothing to tell whether someone has quoted you. I agree that the icons look very similar, but the threads you have posted on do have blue dots on the envelope which makes them easy to see. As for distinguishing between old and new threads, the fact that the titles are bold (for new threads) also help.

So how are they going to ship the computers then? I thought they always used UPS/FedEx? Picking it up at the post office wouldn't bother me at all if it's free. As for your config, Ray, I'm thinking it's a combo drive and an external (PC Card) wireless card - not integrated. I think the DVD Burner Savings (and all those other "savings" that are listed) apply to only a few of the 4 configs, which is why all of them are listed, but the total savings is only $39 - for the WiFi card - as that is the only upgrade for the $499 model.

With Dell's recent statement to affiliates that they have lowered the regular prices of their systems and therefore the coupons will be much lower, I seriously doubt we'll see anohter $750 off $1499 or 40% off anytime soon. At this point, I'm thinking the best they are going to do is 33% off. I hope I'm wrong, but going by the tone of their comments, it doesn't look good. You all were spoiled before with the great deals and now you're paying for it

You can get the RAZR for free (after rebate) at places like Amazon.com, Buy.com, etc... Buy.com even throws in a free Bluetooth headset.

I don't know of any EBGames coupons, but you can get 10% off at GameStop.com with coupon code 10OFFNEXT (expires today). Excludes systems.

Check it now. FYI there is also an RSS2 version: http://forums.gottadeal.com/external.php?type=rss2

http://dapreview.net/content.php?review.149 Conclusion: If you just want a simple, easy-to-use player that's gushing with style-points, the MR-100 is perfect. On the other hand, if you want a DAP with loads of functions and features, this ain't it. The MR-100 is a good alternative to the (wimpy-looking) iPod-Mini... If you can live without on-the-fly playlisting. If you can live with the weird placement of the headphone-jack. If you can live with a player that won't blow out your eardrums, even when you want to. ---- And keep in mind that they were reviewing it as a ~$250 player when it first came out

FWIW, when the first came out with this model and their 20GB model with the integrated digital camera, the 20GB version didn't get great reviews, but this dedicated MP3 player faired a little better for $99 shipped AR, it's hard to find anything better.

very nice, just posted it on the main site. pricegrabber: http://gottadeal.pricegrabber.com/search_getprod.php/masterid=5957642/sort_type=bottomline 50 bonus gottapoints for you, nate :)

One cool thing we are going to have on the BF site this year is lists of the most popular items. Unlike last year, you can actually save your shopping list and add to it every time a new store's ad comes out (assuming you have an account on the forum), so we'll be able to use that info to show everyone which items are on the most shopping lists, and break it down by store / item category and overall. Should be very interesting to see which are the most popular items as determined by you, the real BF shoppers.

Good to see you back :) Should be a lot of fun again this year.

I'd imagine starting next month they'll start having some free shipping deals. I know during the week of BF last year they had free shipping on $49+ orders, plus a free $10 gift certificate if you spent $75.

I'm not sure. I'd think that if a store that offers in-store pickup (for example, Best Buy) has an item online at the BF price, you could check out and choose in-store pickup. The only problem would be that the in-store inventories are not always real-time, so when you order, the stores might already be out of stock. And if you order before the stores open, there's a good chance they won't pick your order until after they open, which again, could mean they are OOS.

Just like last year, the BF site will have a complete list of BF sale items available online. Many of the sale items started becoming available online on Thanksgiving Day last year, so there is a good chance you (whether you are going out on BF or not) will be able to get some items the day before.

OK, last year's posts are now in their own subforum of the main BF forum. Once BF 2005 is over, both the 2005 and 2004 forums will become subforums of the Offline Deals board as they are now. We'll decide next year whether we want to keep 2 years of archives, but for now there's no reason to delete them as there are less than 500 threads in the forum.