H_Hancock

I particularly like this section from Best Buy's Black Friday ad (front page, in the red box at the bottom of that page......has store hours listed and the "Shop Early-When They're Gone, They're Gone!" at the top of the relevant section): "Best Buy's price match policy does not apply to items in this ad and is NOT VALID ON PRIOR PURCHASES." Still surprising the numbers of people who are not taking the time to read the fine print in BB's ad. It doesn't matter what anyone is telling you at the stores right now, their pricematching policy will be completely different for Black Friday and Saturday. And notice the disclaimer says AD, not early bird specials or the like.....all products in the entire advertisement....all of the pages, all of the products. Now, why would they tell you otherwise? TO GET YOU TO BUY IT NOW!!! I suppose it's in hopes that you'll have it, use it, and not feel like lugging it back to the store to return it and then hope another is still on the shelf to purchase. The one you just returned probably WON'T be available for repurchase anytime soon after you return it....it has to be "restocked" you know, which includes checking the box and contents out to make sure it's all there. It'll probably take the staff maybe a day or two to get your return back on the shelf...just in time to be sold on Sunday.

And I particularly like this section from Best Buy's Black Friday ad (front page, in the red box at the bottom of that page......has store hours listed and the Shop Early-When They're Gone, They're Gone! at the top of the relevant section): "Best Buy's price match policy does not apply to items in this ad and is NOT VALID ON PRIOR PURCHASES." Still surprising the numbers of people who are not taking the time to read the fine print in BB's ad. It doesn't amtter what anyone is telling you at the stores right now, their pricematching policy will be completely different for Black Friday and Saturday. And notice the disclaimer says AD, not early bird specials or the like.....all products in the entire advertisement....all of the pages, all of the products. Now, why would they tell you otherwise? TO GET YOU TO BUY IT NOW!!! I suppose it's in hopes that you'll have it, use it, and not feel like lugging it back to the store to return it and then hope another is still on the shelf to purchase. The one you just returned probably WON'T be available for repurchase anytime soon after you return it....it has to be "restocked" you know, which includes checking the box and contents out to make sure it's all there. It'll probably take the staff maybe a day or two to get your return back on the shelf...just in time to be sold on Sunday.

There is one instance where almost every store will accept a return without a receipt......the week or so after Christmas. Not every Christmas present comes with a receipt inside.....I do know Best Buy, among others, has essentially an open return policy through the middle of January...don't need a receipt, but the UPC code on the product you're returning has to be one that matches what they carry. Not all products are exactly the same from store chain to store chain.

Some nVidia cards have this capability, but ATI video cards have a deeper selection of cards with video-in/video-out capabilities. Their most versatile cards are their All-In-Wonder cards. ATI has an AIW card in almost each of their product lines, such as the X1600, X1800, etc. But here's a link to approx. 50 video cards at Newegg that all have VIVO capabilities: http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.asp?Submit=ENE&N=2010380048+1069409634&Subcategory=48&description=&Ntk=&srchInDesc=

I'd agree with almost everything you posted, but last year was not Best Buy's best year in dealing with computers. While each ad for BF usually has a minimum # of item in stock at each store, typically there is more. Last year, the BB I frequent had double the minimum number of laptops and desktops in stock. Unfortunately, the "bare" computers were limited to the number guaranteed to be in stock.....the rest were packed with lots of software, some I wouldn't buy, like Norton AV and Net Security. This appeared over and over the day of BF and later as more and more people posted about BB packing software on the doorbuster computers and refusing to remove any of it. I am hoping they do not repeat the same thing this year.....it caused a lot of belly aches for lots of people last year. On the other hand, get there early enough and you'll be guaranteed to get a "clean" computer.

CompUSA CompUSA is tying a cell phone signup to a $200 discount on products for BF. Bad part, it requires a 2 year committment to Cingular, Sprint, or T-Mobile. And the Razr you have to take is $29.99 and the plan has to be $39.99 or higher in price. *Groan!!!* With it, you can get a laptop essentially alike to CC's for $99, after the $200 cell phone plan and a mail-in rebate. A 23" Olevia LCD for $99.....same conditions. A "free" Compaq Celeron D computer with 2 mail-in rebates. Save me!!! Circuit City CC is tying a year of Vonage service to a $200 discount on products. But, while they advertise the price as $24.95 for the home unlimited plan, most if not all people in reality pay over $30/mo......regulatory recovery fees, 911 service and recovery fees, taxes, etc. So, in reality, you pay over $350 in a year for a $200 loan. Have to remember that Vonage service probably won't be compatible with satellite TV, like DirecTV, on-screen ordering, nor will it probably work with the land-line based home alarm systems. Hmmmmmm...... Their laptop deal is just like CUSA's. The desktop is, again, just like CUSA's, except it has only one MIR and is $99 after everything. But add to the price $350 and suddenly they're not so cheap. Best Buy While BB has some MIR's, their doorbusters are not dependent upon them and the price paid is a TRUE reflection on what the end cost is. So the $189 desktop is only $189 + sales tax, if that applies to you. The laptop is $379 + tax....and has the better processor for the money. The 32" LCD is $479 + tax..... While some despise BB, at least their doorbusters are priced what they are and you're not tied to a cell phone provider you may not want in a year, but still have a year on your contract, or using Vonage's "loan" at almost essentially 50% interest. I dunno, but I think CUSA and CC are getting a pass this year.....BB is the choice. What do you think?

My experience: ticketed items are the doorbusters only. Other items are first come, first served. When the doors open, they will try to control the crowd, at least at first. But it ends up being a free-for-all............everyone gets in as quickly as they can. I've seen people running over people to get to short supply "hot" items that weren't ticketed.

I think you actually meant to say "Since KMART bought out SEARS....." KMart bought Sears, not the other way around.

From some here who've seen corporate emails centering on just this issue that emphatically state they will NOT price match anything during their sale on BF, sure you can threaten to return it. They'll probably take it back. But will they sell it to you afterward? They don't have to, you know. I guess it'll depend upon how much of a butthead each individual store manager is......but consider this. You are going to try to deal with a store that, under its corporate umbrella, made a decision last year to have, in the case of the desktop doorbuster, more than the minimum number in the store. Unfortunately, once the minimum guaranteed number was sold, the rest were packed with unwanted software, most of which was FAR if purchased separately, but you couldn't have the rebate when they packed it on the computer from the Geek Squad. (I always wondered what happened to all those rebates since the software was all retail versions.) The BB I frequent, because of their excellent crowd control, steadfastly refused to remove any of the packed software, so we did purchase the computer and then file a complaint with BB corporate and the BBB. I guess the BBB complaint got their attention because we received a price adjustment on the computer to the doorbuster price without the software costs included and a $100 gift card in the mail. It did take a month and a half to get it all straightened out and repeated phone calls, but it did work out. But, seeing what they've decided as policy this year, you may be hard pressed to find cooperative managers on that weekend.

Since the price match disclaimer says "items in the ad" and not "items on the front page," I think the disclaimer applies to ALL the items in the entire ad. At least that's the way I read it.

There is the little detail of the fine print in the Best Buy Black Friday ad that states: "Best Buy's price match policy does not apply to items in this ad and is NOT VALID ON PRIOR PURCHASES." As for Circuit City, while I usually end up at Best Buy, I did CC last year because of the laptop/AOL promotion. While the service desk was open, it was only open to register all the people for the AOL promo.....and had no one there to work price matches/adjustments. You could give it a try, but I'd be not surprised that with the Vonage promo this year at CC, you may be stuck waiting to price match until after the doorbuster sale hours are over, and then your price advantage is gone. But this is just MHO.

And, honestly, that's probably the way it should be these days. Before the days when the ads were leaked weeks ahead of their "official" release, price matching probably wasn't a problem for the retailers at all. Now, though, they've most likely had to move to a policy like this because of the ads being leaked early and to partly ensure that more people will show up for the sale......and maybe to ensure decent stock levels of the non-doorbuster items. Just a thought..........

Just in case no one has actually read the fine print in the Best Buy ad about price matches on Black Friday for the prices in their BF sale circular, at the bottom of the front page, in the red box, is a little disclaimer about price matching: "Best Buy's price match policy does not apply to items in this ad and is NOT VALID ON PRIOR PURCHASES." Besides, I'm just getting tired of all the "Stay home and price match later in the morning......don't stand in line" threads that are cropping up over and over. No matter what any salesperson tells you in the store or on the phone, I'd think that one sentence on the front page of the ad will be shown again and again to those attempting to price match. May make for some very unhappy people on BF.

Sure they'll price match stuff on Black Friday, provided you can FIND a Best Buy that has a customer service desk actually open for price matching instead of being used for a checkout counter and a laptop delivery area, as almost all Best Buys do on BF. It'd be a rare Best Buy that will do price matches during the 7 hour early sale on BF..... Of course, there is also the little detail of the fine print in the Best Buy Black Friday ad that states: "Best Buy's price match policy does not apply to items in this ad and is NOT VALID ON PRIOR PURCHASES." So, good luck getting your price matches on BF at Best Buy....probably not going to happen, no matter what anyone has told you over the phone.

From my experience, there will be vouchers ONLY for the doorbuster items, not the 2-day sale specials. Those you are on your own to obtain. But out of your items, the video card is the LEAST desirable item there. You can go online and buy a 512MB Sapphire Radeon X1600 Pro video card for $114, shipped, from ZipZoomFly. If you're willing to sacrifice half the memory, and with the slow speeds of the X1600 series of cards, having the memory size at 512MB won't make a bit of difference you can see, you can get a Sapphire Radeon X1650 Pro for around $130, worth the extra $30 as it's a bit faster memory and GPU speed. For $200, ZZF has a Sapphire Radeon X1950 Pro 256MB video card, vastly superior to any above, and well worth the money.

As far as I can tell, 5AM is their door opening time regardless of location. At least that's the ad time. Tickets for doorbusters will be handed out around 4AM.

As someone who's been doing Best Buy for years on BF, we've always been able to obtain as many vouchers for as many different products/doorbusters as we've wanted. While there usually is a 1 per person or household per item limit, there never has been a limit on the number of different items we've been able to have. Laptop, LCD TV, desktop, had all in my hands last year. No different from any year. The one voucher per person limit seems to be a store-generated policy, because it's not corporate policy.

I started in 1986. OF course, back then there was no internet leaking ads before Thanksgiving Day newspapers delivered the ads. So, we'd spend part of the day plotting buying strategies....where to go, where to avoid. And the lines were nothing like today. Didn't have to spend 9 hours in line before the doors opened to get the doorbusters, either. Kinda miss those days.......but then again, while it's a bit of a pain from the cold and weather, it is a bit more interesting!

While the monitor and Mini DV are nice prices, I wouldn't get too worked up about the video card. The going price across the internet for an ATI X1600 Pro is $96 to $120. E-Wiz has a 256MB PCI-e for $96 and ZipZoomFly has a 512MB version for $119.99 shipped. Honestly, I don't know how Best Buy sells those cards for the claimed $199 price that's displayed in the ad. For $199, you can buy a 256MB Radeon X1950 Pro PCI-e video card from ZipZoomFly, shipped......a MUCH faster card than the X1600 Pro.

Every year the ads are leaked and every year the "The ads are fake" or "The ads are planted" accusations crop up. I remember last year a news station ran a story about BF websites and the "real" probability the ads were not legit. They even had an "expert" economist interviewed who said he couldn't believe how the ads were real.....after all, who'd sell a microwave oven for $30 that normally retails for $70 or more? Needless to say, when the ads revealed themselves on Thanksgiving, invariably they somehow exactly matched these "fake" or "planted" ads here and on other BF websites. The only ad I saw changed last year was the Wal-Mart ad and that was for two or three items.....they'd tried to pass off regional pricing on a laptop, a TV and maybe some other items. Even trhough Thanksgiving, the regional pricing existed on their website....but on BF, the pricing for those items mysteriously dropped to the lowest price advertised in their regional ads, and WM ended up putting an outside page with the lower prices for those items. Even in the stores, they had "price update" sheets refelcting the lower prices, if your region was one of the higher priced ones. Otherwise, I've never seen the leaked ads change at all to what arrives in the newspapers.

You are. First, you live in one of the five states in the U.S. that don't impose a general sales tax. Second, the comment was in reference to purchasing something off the internet. People who purchase something off the internet don't have to pay sales tax on their purchase unless the retailer they purchase from has a physical presence in the state they reside in.....unless you live in one of the 5 aforementioned states. So, for instance, I buy something from Fry's. Since they are in limited states in the U.S., the chances of me living in a state with a Fry's in my state are small, unless I live in a west coast or western state(Fry's has a presence in most of the Western U.S.), Texas, Illinois (I think), and Georgia. So, unless Fry's has a physical store presence in my state, I won't pay sales tax on my purchase.

Which LCD TV at Fry's are you referring to? If it's that Emprex 32" for $499, no thanks, I'd rather stand in line for better quality. If their LCD TV is of the same quality that their LCD monitors are, they are terrible. I've looked at enough of them at Fry's in Atlanta, and honestly I wouldn't buy an Emprex anything......bottom of the barrel in quality. But I guess price sells over anything else, including quality.

If it works like last year's AOHell signup, you first waited in line for a ticket for the doorbuster item you wanted, if that's where you were going to spend your $200, then upon entering the store, you had to go to customer service FIRST and sign up for the account. After signing up, then you went to where they had whatever you were after, such as the Toshiba laptop last year. They'd only let you buy one if you had a ticket and a receipt for signing up with AOL. I'd guess the Vonage signup will work the same.

The outside of the eMachines box will have the model number in the upper left corner of the box. Very plainly printed in whatever color print that particular computer has on its box....I think it's a lightish red color. But, you have to find, first, a BB with one in stock, then , second, find one that has it priced at the $220 price. Some still have it clearanced at $320.....was told the closeout price was quite regional....some stores will be at the $220 price, some at the $320 price.

Honestly, the BB early bird deals, at least to my eye, are deals. $189 for a computer w/a 15" LCD? Granted, a 15" LCD isn't my cup o' tea, but since they're retailing for $120 or so, that makes the complete computer quite a deal for someone. The 22" LCD......cheapest I've been seeing is around $320 or so...just wonder where you've been seeing 22" WS LCD's for $200 already. I know I've not seen any and I cruise lots of deal sites. The laptop........just because it replicates the price for a bit better componentry doesn't make it a bad deal, just a repeat of a good deal.