jtolli

Here is a report for San Antonio, TX. Went by the Wal Mart on Potranco RD and Loop 1604 at 5:40 PM. The store was open, but I wnet inside to see if a line had formed. Didn't see any line inside, I went by the electronics area and it was pretty dead. Went by the Best Buy in the shopping area at Clubra and 1604. There were 20 people in line and one tent. This was at 6 PM. There is a Target there too, but no line yet.

Thanks angelic680. Actually as I pointed out in my original post, there are a couple on sale on Black Friday. Although there may be better deals in the summer. But then again, I would think buying one "off season" would increase the chance of getting the best deal. But being in south Texas, this is a good time of the year to grill here. The more I though about the Home Depot grill in the ad, the more I am convinced it is a grill they don't have in the stores right now. The ad says "exclusive" and says theere will only be 20 per store. It also says it is a $299 value. The only similar grill they had in the Home Depot store was for $199. So it wouldn't be much of a door buster to only knock $20 off the price for Black Friday. I think we will go there and check it out on Black Friday. Wonder how many people will be rushing to Home Depot for a gas grill that morning?

I'm looking to buy my first gas grill. I'm talking about a full size gas grill for my patio at home, not a portable gas grill for camping on BF. I noticed a couple of stores have some on sale for BF. Sears has a Kenmore for $179, plus have all of their gas grills on sale. Home Depot also has one for about the same price. I wentand did some advanced scouting today since Sears is having a pre-BF sale with some of the same items on sale. I checked out the Kenmore grill, and didn't like it as it seems kind of flimsy. In fact I did some research on it, and found similar reports. I also checked out what I think is the Brinkmann grill that Home Depot will have on sale. I can't be sure if it is the same model though, as it doesn't look like they have a model number in their ad. But like the Kenmore, the Brinkmann seems kind of flimsy. I would like to find a sturdy gas grill that is likely to last a few years. A bonus would be if there is a conversion kit to convert it to natural gas from propane. I would like to stay below $300 if possible. Is it possible to get a good sturdy gas grill for less than $300?

My wife was watering the lawn and her cell phone fell out of her pocket onto the ground without her noticing. By the time she did notice it had gotten a good soakng. We took the battery out, and let it dry a couple of days. Worked as good as new....for about a year. Then the display quit. When I took it apart to look at it, it was all corroded inside from the watering it had taken before. After this had happened I heard about the "rice trick". It seems that rice draws out the moisture in the phone. So, while letting the phone dry out may work for a while, it will probably be left with some moisture inside. Therefore the best thing to try is putting it in rice, as others have suggested.

Maybe you should have just dropped it, and perhaps even call the UPS driver and apologized to him. Sounds like he may be kind of psycho, and who knows what he will do next, especially if he ends up losing his job over this incident. This may be a situation where you win the battle, but lose the war.

What would be wrong with handing out tickets for the major door buster items, like Best Buy does. That way, there isn't a real big need for people to get in the store quickly, and make a mad dash for the goods. Wouldn't that be a more responsible way to do things? If they would have done that, could they have prevented this death?

I think WM can and should be sued. Not because they didn't have adequate security, but because they seem to encourage a "dash and grab" or "blitz" environment AND this has caused major problems in the past. What have they done to address this issue? This was preventable. We have a local store here that also did the dash and grab thing last year. Once they opened their doors, the employees were lined up on both sides of the "runway" cheering and clapping while people ran to the back of the store to get the limited quantity doorbusters. They also had someone on the store PA system encouraging people to hurry if they wanted to get the items. Based on a environment like that how can anyone say the store isn't encouraging people to act unsafely on their property? To me having a crowd run through a store is an unsafe act. I think the Toys R Us situation from today is a different situation. From what I understand it was two "rivals" doing the shooting. When I hear that, I think of gang activity. Not much a store can do to prevent that, other than have metal detectors. A big difference is Toys R Us didn't encourage people to hurt each other to get the good stuff. WM (and some other stores) encourage people to act unsafely to get the good stuff.

Here's a report from San Antonio TX. Went by the Best Buy near Ingrim Park Mall this morning at 11 AM. Counted 15 people in line. There was no one in line at the CIrcuit City same location.

Big Lots has one on BF for $79.99. Can't tell the brand, but the pic looks like the same Magnavox I bought there a few months ago. I haven't had any problems with it, but also rarely use it, and have yet to use the DVD recorder feature.

Have done most of my shopping already. The biggest things left I want to buy is a 19 - 23" LCD TV, a 4-in-1 printer, and maybe a digital picture frame. Hopefully I can pick up a TV in an on-line sale, and I know I can get a decent deal on-line now on a printer. So I am debating going anywhere at all. If we go, it will be around 5 or 6 to either Circuit City, Wal Mart, Staples or Radio shack, or perhaps a combination of those places. Definately not camping in the cold this year.

So what, you carry a portable generator with your portable heater?

Here's a story about that. Two years ago we were in line at Best Buy. They had a "secret sale" or something like that, don't remember what it's called but it was for a laptop they only advertised on-line. Some college aged kids came through the line asking what everyone was buying. We were there for the laptop that was only advertised on-line. When I said we were there for the laptop, they asked which one (they also had a different laptop in their hard copy ad). I heard them tell other people that a lot of people weren't aware of the on-line laptop, and when they (the pollers) asked them which laptop, and they (the pollers) told the people in line about it, a lot of them said they wanted that. So what happened is by asking people what they were there for they kind of defeated the purpose of BB having the on-line only ad, as they ended up telling many people about the special laptop that didn't already know about it. In the end, we didn't get one as they were already gone by the time they got to us with tickets. We only missed getting a laptop ticket by about 5 or so people. So if the pollers hadn't told people about it, we most likely would have got one.

To echo what others have already said, no one can threaten you. As soon as they did that, then I would have told the security people that the person threatened you. If security wouldn't do anything about it, then I would have called the local police. In a situation where there are large crowds involved, the police will respond if they think they are going to have an unruely mob on their hands. Two years ago we went to our local Best Buy store the night before to camp out. Someone was handing out raffle style tickets the night before. We, and I think everyone, assumed the person handing out the tickets was a Best Buy employee. Around Midnight a Best Buy manager showed up, and told everyone (by now a crowd of maybe 50 - 70 people) that they had to line up on the other side of the door for safety reasons. You can imagine the madhouse that ensued at that point. People who were in the back of the line rushed over to the other side of the door so they could be towards the front of the line. Then a lot of people complained to the manager that they had lower number tickets then the people now in the front of the line. The manager then informed everyone that those numbers (tickets) handed out were not from a Best Buy employee, and there was nothing he could do as it was first come first serve. He did ask everyone to show some integrity though and honor the tickets that were handed out. Some people with ethics did, others without ethics basically said they didn't have to honor the tickets, and therefore were not going to do so. That caused the crowd to get more fired up. In the end the manager called the local cops who came basically as a show of force. Again all the cops did was sit there to ensure things did not get out of control while the manager again asked everyone to be honest and take their place in line based on the ticket number they had. He went down the line putting everyone back in order based on their number. With the cops there order was restored. The cops (this time about 5 cars) showed up again just before the store opened. They drove up and down the line announcing on their PA that if anyone gets out of control they would be taking them to jail. I told that Best Buy story to show that these "private" numbering systems really mean nothing to the store. In this case Best Buy honored it to restore order, but it is different then your situation where some people meet the night before to assign numbers, went home and slept, then came back expecting others to honor their numbers. I can't imagine any store manager supporting a scheme like that.

Same here, not impressed so far. This will be the first year in a long time that we won't be camping out. Unless Wal Mart comes out with something spectacular. But also we picked up our big ticket items (big screen HDTV and laptop) last year, so don't really need any big stuff this year. I would like to get a good universal remote. Cicrcuit City has a Logitech Harmony on sale on BF, but I can get the same model right now on Amazon.com for a little less; although it is recertified. I can get a newer model Logitech Harmony on Amazon for about the same price as the CC BF sale. I am also considering a GPS. The TomTom that several stores has as a door buster for $99 looks good, but Vanns.com had a sale on the same unit yesterday for $99. Hopefully someone else will have an on-line sale at that price before BF. There are a few other small items I would like to get, but it's starting to look like I will be able to do my shopping on-line this year and get everything at need at or below the BF in store prices. I did get the sub $300 laptop that WalMart had last week, and it looks like that was a good thing as no one else seems to be offering cheap laptops for BF.

My Sears experience, both in store and on line, was positive. I received everything I ordered on line, and was charged the right price. They didn't charge my bank account until the items shipped. I will deifnately do business with Sears again next year.