Brad

https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2019/09/10/gamestop-store-closings-2019-retailer-closing-up-200-stores/2279343001/

Apparently if you change your location in the Target app to one of the test markets (Charlotte, Denver, Indianapolis, Kansas City, Phoenix) a prompt should appear that lets you sign up for Circle early.

https://www.cnbc.com/2019/09/09/target-set-to-roll-out-its-revamped-loyalty-program-nationwide.html Anyone here in one of the test markets? Thoughts on it?

https://www.cnn.com/2019/09/09/business/freds-bankruptcy-closures/index.html

Time for everyone's favorite contest - the first ad prediction contest Simply reply to this thread with your guess for the date and store for the first ad to be posted on the Black Friday site. Only post one guess and if you edit your post more than 10 minutes after your initial post, your entry won't count, so make your best guess now! For help, view this chart for 2006-2018 dates. Also keep in mind that Black Friday falls on the latest possible date this year, so ad leaks and releases could be later than last year when it was on the earliest possible date. I'll accept entries until Sunday, September 22nd at 11:59pm ET. At that point I'll randomly select 10 people who posted their prediction and they'll win a GottaDEAL Black Friday survival kit! If someone ends up being correct on both the date and store for the first ad, I'll send you a $10 Amazon gift card. If more than one person is correct, you all win gift cards. If there are more than 10 winners, the gift card value will be $5 instead of $10. We'll use eastern time zone to determine which day a late-night ad is posted on. Good luck to everyone! IMPORTANT: If the first ad comes out before the contest ends, there will be no additional winners beyond those who already had their guesses posted, but you can still reply to the thread with a comment to have a chance to be chosen randomly for the 10 survival kits. Limit of one survival kit prize per member but if you win you are still welcome to enter future contests for fun. For more info on the Black Friday survival kits we're giving away this year (including the bonus mystery prizes inside), see this thread.

This year we are giving away GottaDEAL Black Friday Survival Kits through our contests here on the forum and on social media. Yes, that means that we're taking a year off from selling and giving away t-shirts (well not completely, keep reading...). These Black Friday survival kits will each contain at least 5 items inside of a custom reusable GD zippered pouch. Most of the items inside these kits are brand new and have never been given away before including GD Popsockets (2 different designs), koozie can/bottle coolers, cell phone wallets and more. There's also a fun mystery element to these prize packs! 1 in every 4 survival kits will contain a bonus prize. What are these bonus prizes? Most will be gift cards. We've inserted $5, $10, $15, $25 and $100 gift cards from popular retailers such as Amazon, Walmart, Target and Best Buy into these packs. And we couldn't completely skip t-shirts, so several lucky winners will also get a voucher in their survival kit which can be redeemed for an ultra rare 2019 Black Friday t-shirt. These are extremely limited and to keep the mystery alive I won't reveal the design so the lucky winners can be surprised. A hint though: this shirt is in a color we've never used before. I know some of you will be disappointed that we're not doing shirts this year, at least not on a widescale basis, but I can pretty much guarantee that they'll be back for 2020 as I have already come up with a pretty clever idea for a design. Look for the first survival kit contest thread shortly...

DISCUSS BLACK FRIDAY & WIN AWESOME PRIZES! Here's how it works: Through Monday, December 2nd (at 11:59:59pm EST), you'll earn one entry into the contest every time you post in one of the Black Friday forums including this main Black Friday Discussion subforum and the Posted Black Friday Ads subforum. As usual we're not going to require your posts to be a certain length to qualify or anything like that - we just want a lot of great discussion. We know there are times when a one-word reply is fine. All posts in all threads in these forums will count, including other contest threads. Be aware that it's pretty obvious if someone is attempting to "game the system" by posting repeatedly to get more entries. If that happens, we will give you ONE warning via PM. If we see the behavior continuing, you will be disqualified from winning a prize. I don't expect this to be an issue (it wasn't during the last few years), but I wanted to make it clear that myself and the mods will be watching for any abuse. Any member who is banned is obviously no longer eligible to win the contest either. This includes posting multiple times in a row in a single thread when one post would be enough, replying to many threads with nothing but "thanks!", etc... as I said, it'll be obvious if anyone does this, so don't do it. There is plenty to discuss without having to cheat to earn additional entries. So create interesting threads, reply to other members' questions, give your opinions on everything that is being discussed. This is a discussion board - let's have some interesting discussion here! On Tuesday, December 3rd we will randomly select 5 winners from all eligible entries and you will win the prizes shown below: 1st Prize: $250 Gift Card to the Retailer of Your Choice 2nd Prize: Amazon Fire 7" 32GB Tablet with Case, Fire TV 4K Stick and Echo Dot Bundle 3rd Prize: Amazon Fire 7" 32GB Tablet with Case, Fire TV 4K Stick and Echo Dot Bundle 4th Prize: Google Nest Home Hub Smart Display 5th Prize: Amazon Kindle Paperwhite E-Reader Prizes must be claimed by replying to the winner notification PM here on the forum by January 31, 2020 or they will be forfeited. And as a benefit to those who were here early this year, all the posts in the forums up until now aside from the prize club thread(s) will also count towards this contest. If you have any questions, feel free to PM me and I'll be happy to answer them. Notice: this contest is not sponsored by or affiliated in any way with Amazon or Google.

Keep in mind that Home Depot/Lowe's/Best Buy/etc. start their Black Friday appliance deals the first week of November (last year I think it was on 10/31) so there's no real reason you have to wait for BF and the ads because those prices will be the lowest they go. They don't do a % off the whole line - each model has a different % off depending on various factors, so you'll just have to wait and see what each store offers. If Lowe's has a deal you can score a 10% off coupon easily which can greatly help for high priced appliances.

Just a heads up for everyone in here: the annual big forum posting contest thread will likely be posted on Monday along with details about this year's BF survival kits and the first chance to win yours (yes, the annual "predict the first ad" contest)

Last year we created a GottaDEAL server on Discord for us to chat about Black Friday or whatever else. Here's the invite link: https://discord.gg/3hd2K5t For those who are unfamiliar with Discord, it is a free text, voice and video chat service. You can access it via their apps or through a traditional web browser. Once you sign up for an account you can join the GD server using the special invite link above and can chat with everyone else who has signed up. One advantage of using Discord over the old forum chat function is that you can view past conversation in the channels and not just what is happening while you are there so can come and go without missing anything. Currently there is a #general channel for more off-topic chat and a #blackfriday channel for discussing Black Friday. There's also a #contest channel that we'll use for some giveaways over the next few months. We had over 500 people join during the month or so it was up before BF last year and we're hoping to do even more with it this year, so sign up if you haven't.

I usually put up fall decorations the week after Labor Day (possibly will do it later today) and then Christmas stuff the first or second week of November depending on how busy the site keeps me. With Thanksgiving falling on the latest possible date this year, there's less than 4 weeks between TG and Christmas for those who usually wait until after TG to decorate for Christmas. I don't really do much Halloween decoration besides changing the color of the Hue lights outside a week or two before Halloween.

Hey everyone, and welcome to the unofficial start of the 2019 Black Friday season here on the site. We're still likely more than a month away from the first ads leaking but as always we're getting a head start on opening up the forums and we encourage you to start posting right away (posts you make now will count towards the soon-to-be-announced annual Black Friday forum contest). We're going try something new with how the forums are organized this year, and that is, well... less organization. The main change you'll notice is that we're not going to create the individual store sub-forums this year. They just weren't getting enough threads in them to necessitate dedicated sub-forums. So any topic about a specific store can just be posted in this main BF forum this year. We'll still have dedicated threads for each store's posted ad in the "Posted Black Friday Ads" forum. We're also not going to create the "official" product threads this year for things like TVs, video games, laptops, etc. Some of those threads got so big and had multiple "mini threads" of conversation going on at once so it might be better to just create individual threads about different topics relating to those products. It should also help if you need questions answered or recommendations about certain products because more people will see your exact request/topic when it is it's own thread with a descriptive title and isn't buried in a master thread that many people don't bother checking that often. As I said this is a trial and we'll see how it goes. If nobody likes it we can always go back to how things were for 2020 but this should give you fewer individual sub-forums to check each time you visit the forum and should hopefully spark more discussion overall on the board by giving you more freedom as to what can be posted in this main BF forum which tends to get the most views each day. As always we welcome your comments and suggestions about these changes and anything else. Feel free to reply or PM me directly

Press release: https://corporate.target.com/press/releases/2019/09/Target-Reveals-Bullseye-s-Top-Toys-List-and-Adds-M

Here are the dates (according to our records) when various ads were posted during the past 13 years: https://blackfriday.gottadeal.com/Dates And here are links to text lists of the items in the ads (at least the ones in our database) dating back to 2003: 2003 - 2004 - 2005 - 2006 - 2007 - 2008 - 2009 - 2010 - 2011 - 2012 - 2013 - 2014 - 2015 - 2016 - 2017 - 2018 - 2019 And don't forget, you can also browse the older scanned ads going back to 2004 at https://www.blackfridayarchive.com

Down to 33 members. Tote bags are already here and packaged. I'll start collecting addresses soon

100 days until Black Friday!

https://www.cnn.com/2019/08/07/business/sears-kmart-closure-list-trnd/index.html Surprised there are still 26 stores still open at this point. Alabama Sears: 2500 Riverchase Galleria, Birmingham California Kmart: 1625 W Redlands Blvd., Redlands Kmart: 14011 Palm Drive Desert, Hot Springs Sears: Somersville Road, Antioch Colorado Sears: 8501 W Bowles Avenue, Littleton Florida Sears: 6200 20th Street, Vero Beach Sears: 901 US 27 North, Sebring Georgia Sears: 3700 Atlanta Hwy Suite 270, Athens Illinois Sears: 5 Stratford Square, Bloomingdale Indiana Sears: 2300 Southlake Mall, Merrillville Sears: 6501 Grape Rd US 23, Mishawaka Maryland Sears: 6901 Security Sq Blvd, Baltimore Massachusetts Kmart: 159 Wilbraham Road, Palmer Michigan Sears: 6780 S. Westnedge Avenue, Portage Sears: 4900 Fashion Square Mall, Saginaw Missouri Sears: 18777 E. 39th St South, Independence Sears: 3 Mid Rivers Mall Drive, St Peters Sears: 330 Siemers Drive, Cape Girardeau New York Kmart: 975 Fairmount Avenue, Jamestown Ohio Sears: 600 Richland Mall, Mansfield Puerto Rico Kmart: Highway 3 Plaza, Guayama Texas Sears: 1101 Melbourne Road, Hurst Sears: 10000 Emmett F. Lowry Expressway, Texas City Virginia Sears: 4812 Valley View Blvd NE, Roanoke Washington Sears: 4700 N. Division Street, Spokane West Virginia Sears: 100 Huntington Mall Road, Barboursville

The comparison to BF/CM is a little misleading because a big portion of Amazon’s BF sales happen on Wednesday and Thursday of BF week. Still impressive considering you needed a Prime account to get these deals which isn’t the case for most BF/CM deals.

Press release: https://press.aboutamazon.com/news-releases/news-release-details/alexa-how-was-prime-day-prime-day-2019-surpassed-black-friday

With Prime Day over now I have about 3 months to relax before the first BF ads start leaking

Some deals: https://press.aboutamazon.com/news-releases/news-release-details/starting-monday-july-15-ask-alexa-what-are-my-prime-day-deals-0

I went yesterday and when you open the Amazon app on your phone there is a barcode that gets scanned. I got the $10 email less than an hour later. I believe you can also associate your phone number with your Prime account and give them that at checkout. You can also submit your receipt if for some reason it wasn't linked at the time of your purchase. Finally, I think you can also get the $10 by doing a Prime Now delivery from Whole Foods.

If I didn't have boxes of the survival kits all assembled and packaged for shipment already I'd do it.

Kinda bummed that we're not going to do BF shirts on a large scale this year because I literally just came up with a really clever design for a BF shirt. Definitely going to save it for next year so no hints yet...

Still at 34 members. Didn't lose anyone last month