J_Man

I saw the evening world news on CBS. There was a report about Black Friday and Wal-Mart claimed they didn't do as well as expected. Unless it's because they were counting heavy on their online sales but didn't think things through with the server, I don't know what they were expecting. Wal-Mart here had plenty of people all day long at each one. From what I gathered, most of the items that people wanted were sold out very fast. The junk that nobody would have wanted even if it was a free door prize was all that sold slow. Most of that even looked like it sold too though.

Seriously, how is "You should have gotten there earlier" good advice? Why exactly do people want to wait a full day or more for these deals? There are actually deals like this through the year in various places but they go unseen. A celeron processor is not that great to begin with, but those that will not be pushing the computer hard will get ok use out of it. All through this year I have seen good deals all over the place for celeron computers but hardly any buyers. Is it just media hype that's possessing people to get out there more and more? The past years hasn't been this bad, but the past years hasn't had the media coverage this year had. It seems the more it was talked about is the more people had to be there. I saw a line at Fred's and Big Lots! Fred's didn't have anything. Big Lots had a few items but nothing major. This isn't meant as an "attack" post. I'm just really curious why people wanted to wait that long for deals that were there during the year. Plus why are people willing to throw Thanksgiving away just to be there for the deals? I wanted one of the more expensive computers Best Buy had, but couldn't even get that due to them having too low a stock and too many people. I've already found a better deal anyway and will be getting something just after Christmas.

It was a job well done. The only thing I had problems with was various links wouldn't work. Stuff that went through fastclicks or whatever it was ended up bringing me to a blank page. I ended up having to right click and copy the link and strip out the referer address so I could go straight to the link. I had several instances like that.

Each year that I've looked at Wal-Mart, they had the doorbuster items at the same price even the next day. I've yet to see anything in store of those items beyond Saturday so I don't know if the price would stick all weekend. This year I'd figure it was all gone by the end of the day yesterday.

If people are going to go nuts over the items and they will not enforce it so that people can not line up until midnight Thanksgiving nioght, then they need to think of other ways. They could have a drawing. November 1 for sign up and the week before have a contest drawing. Everyone that signed up to be in line shows up and if your name is pulled, you will get a spot in line at 3am. Your spot in line is decided by when your name is called. Each person can be allowed 1 or 2 guests (non-doorbuster buyers) and must be told to the day of the drawing. These people can buy any item from the rest of the sale, but no doorbuster items. Come the day of, nobody can line up until the time Best Buy (and all other stores that would do this) designates. Rope off the area for the doorbuster winners and everyone else can line up behind the roped off area. Once 3am comes along, all doorbuster winners must be in line for the 2 hour wait. Come 4:30am, if there are winners that did not show up, whoever follows 1st, and so on behind the roped off area will be moved up. The other idea is what I most all of feel should be done. Stock the store better. The stores will only gain more money by doing this and more people can get in on the deals too. The people that are buying the stuff and reselling it out in the parking lot will be cut out since the demand will be far less for people willing to pay over the advertised price. Another thing is to have people monitoring the line. State that there is no leaving the line. No bathroom breaks. You must be in line to get the item. No trading places with friends. No allowing of friends to cut. This will cut down tremendously on people lining up way too early. This is fair too because people do not have any business getting in a line if front of a store on a day the store is open. If they're not there to buy while the store is open, they are loitering. There is a law against that. To me it's bad business and goes along with the fact of the store not having enough items to sell. Letting people line up that are nopt buying is the same as not having enough in that the store is losing money both ways. Potential selling points should be the name of the goal, not dodging a buyer.

That's what I did. I asked one of the employees where the I-Dog was and they pointed out the shelf in the toy department. There were no pallets. Tons of other people had grabbed as I was until there were none on the she'f. They rung me up at full price and I pointed to the ad. They made the correction and I was on my way out the door. It's their fault if they handled it wrong. The ad didn't make any rules about what was and wasn't on sale. There was no pallet (it wasn't even on their map).

If this year was the start of more people camping out, I'll be rethinking my Black Friday shopping. I'm not spending all that time in a line. I'd rather be home with family and doing more productive things. A few hours in a line is one thing, but not a few days.

I'd like to see them have enough items in store to last up to at least 2pm the first day on the 2 day sales items. It's stupid to have so limited a stock that you sell out in 5 minutes of items that should last for a while. But maybe next year there won't be the people thinking about reselling the items they got for more cash. Those people taken out of the line would be great. Then there will not be the console Ebayers thinking they're going to make thousands of dollars online cause the news told them so. If it's just as bad as this year or worse, I gotta rethink how I shop Black Friday.

They handed out maps. Everything was all blended together. Nothing made sense where they put it. People found the pallets with the stuff they wanted most and hovered next to them until it was time to grab. Most had already pulled the wrapping to get what they wanted. Others that waited ended up having to open it themselves since nobody working at Wal-Mart came through to open them up. I got what I wanted and got out. I saw most of all of it and could have had my pick. There just wasn't anything I really wanted. I was killing time while I waited for Best Buy to clear up some.

And THAT's the main reason I don't support the idea of sitting in front of Best Buy for multiple days. Lots of scam artists are doing it. I'm a toy collector and I do not support scalpers. There are people really wanting to resell what they bought (which I have issues with that all in it's self), then there are those that are going to scam others. If the scams become more and more frequent, what will stop people from adding 2 and 2 together and those "first in line" people get "pay back" for something they may not have even done.

I think if nothing else, they should have more stock. They should be able to determine the demand based on how things have been getting worse and worse with each year. A 2 day sale shouldn't have such a low amount of stock that it only lasts 10 to 15 minutes. I know there's those who think hanging out in front of the store for the full year before the sale is the way to go, but I think they should set a time that forming a line is allowed. Basically anyone that wants to hang out has to stay a certain distance from the door until, I'd say 12 that night. This year was just too crazy. It doesn't make me look forward to next year. It makes me want to rethink how I will shop the next Black Friday. I didn't have much fun, and it was the fun that used to make it worth doing.

I'm up for the night. I won't be going to bed at all. I slept til 10 this morning on purpose so I wouldn't feel tired tonight. Trouble is I won't be going until almost time for the stores to open thanks to people freaking out and going way too early. I don't necessarily mind waiting in line or the deals, but I don't care to fight the crowd. It's never been this bad in the 8 years I've been going out.

I might try Wal-Mart before I go to the other stores. With luck everyone else will be camping out at the other stores and I will have a better pick at Wal-Mart. Of course there are the people in electronics killing each other over a celeron laptop, hehe. Those things just are not worth all that.

The tickets are only for the front page items. The other items are said to be "in enough stock that you should be able to get what you want". If you don't have a ticket due to them running out, that means they ran out of the item. You will not get the item.

If any store has them, it'll be very random. I was in store Wednesday and found a guy I know working at Best Buy. He said they just sold their last PS3 just before I got there. He didn't think there would be anymore for the big sale. I hope there isn't really It's mean to say that, but it'll teach the Ebayers a lesson.

I want an SD card, one of the other systems further back in the ad, and the speakers. I might get the webcam deal if they have enough too.

Ah that sucks! People here in my town have found the site and will be even worse to deal with! Hehe. I'm thinking about skipping Best Buy this year and give Circuit City a try. They have a few things I'd like to get. No doorbuster items so I hope I'll be ok. The past 3 years I've gone to Best Buy here in Shreveport, I got there about 3 in the morning. There were already a bunch of people there. More with each year. It seems each year that goes by, more people are getting out there. Even if there isn't really much of any deals.

They've been pumping the idea of sales here. It'd be nice if they would announce it to be "national sleep in day". So many people act like they go by what the news tells them to do. It would be great to be one of only a few people in line. I remember when I started doing these sales with my wife 8 years ago, there really wasn't that many people out. We got in every store we wanted to go to and got everything we were looking for.

I took my wife to Wal-Mart to get her a Wii. One Wal-Mart was so messed up and there were too many people there, so we left. The next Wal-Mart was very organized and had a sign in list. You still had to wait in line, but if your name was one of the 20 (for each system they had), you got a Wii. We were #18. They had 19 copies of Zelda, which was the main game she wanted. 3 people total didn't want Zelda out of the 20 systems sold, so they had 2 left. Naturally they sold to others standing around that got there too late to get a system. Those people were told there were at least 19 more systems coming next week.

It'd be kind of crazy if people fight over the Superman figure. It just sat there for quite a while and has even been on clearance. Granted it's not going for $15, but it has been $25. If people haven't picked it up already and are willing to fight over $10 extra off from a movie based Superman, people need to find something better to do with their time. I figure it'll mostly be the electronics that does it like usual. Plus if any store happens to have any of the new game systems, that will also cause some fights. Doubt they'll have them, but there's always those people there looking.

I'm wondering if this and the Superman will be online. The only trouble with that is being able to get into their server to get the deal.

Yep. By some of the posts, it shows. Personally I could care less. I'm not there to be patted on the head, hehe. I'm there to shop. A generic Happy Holiday, Merry Christmas, or Have a Nice Day, isn't important to me out of them. Just give a decent attitude, don't make me mad, and ring up my stuff when I'm ready to go. How about an article that says "Wal-Mart will have all registers running through Christmas to make checking out easier" instead of 4 out of 30 registers open.

I don't like Circuit City. I go in and no employee knows where anything is. If it's a new item you have to know how to ask if it's come in and if maybe it's in the back and hasn't been put out yet. There's too many hoops to jump through just to do business with the store. Then when you are ready to check out, of the 10 registers sitting there, nobody is at any of them. You have to track someone down and ask how you check out. You are told "Oh you have to check out at customer service" Ok, that's not what the customer service desk is suppose to be for that I know of. Last year for Black Friday, almost as soon as they opened the door, the unorganized crowd rushed in. fights started and the general manager ended up getting punched. The police had to go and everyone was ordered out of the store. They're just not a store I want to bother with. Every so often they have an item low enough on sale that I go ahead and go, but that's rare.

Well I tried to post a link, but they have it blocked on this site. This site will probably have it up pretty soon though.

Unless it's something new, Target in my area doesn't have it and I'm in Louisiana.