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Your Online Black Friday Shopping Questions Answered

Brad

By Brad
in 2014

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Brad

Brad

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Since most of the major ads are out, we're getting a lot of questions about online Black Friday shopping. We realize that while many of us have been doing Black Friday online shopping for years, there are some online BF newbies. To hopefully answer your questions before you have them, here are some answers:

 

- In under a week, we'll launch our Online Black Friday Tracker. This is a single page which will have a schedule for when we believe* the online sales start (* more on that below), the details of the sales for many stores, any additional coupon codes you can use, links to relevant discussion threads and more.

 

- Once the sales start, this tracker will also have links to lists of the Black Friday ad items that you can order online at the sale price at any given time. We update these lists throughout the week to keep things as accurate as we can. Bookmark the tracker and you'll be set.

 

- If you're not signed up for our Black Friday mailing list, do it now (and make sure our emails aren't filtered into some folder you won't see them in). We send e-mails out as soon as the major sales start. Same goes with our Twitter account. We'll tweet when sales start.

 

- There is no way to 100% know which items will be online and which won't. I don't think there's ever been a major store that has put 100% of their ad items online at the sale price. There's always some that are out of stock or the prices never change. Then there will be items marked as in-store only in the ads that will end up online too. You just have to be online when the sale goes live and take your chances.

 

- Along with that, the schedule we post for the sales is very tentative. We take information we receive from the stores, from our affiliate managers, what's printed in the ad and what the stores have done in past years to come up with our best guess, but that's all it is - a guess. Stores have been notorious for doing things differently from what they tell us or even what they announce in the ad or a press release. But...

 

- While you wait for the sales to start online, join us in the soon-to-be-crated Online Black Friday Shopping sub-forum. We'll have threads for each of the major stores where you can ask questions, complain when the sale doesn't start when it was supposed to, post links to the best deals you find and whatever else you can think of related to each online sale.

 

- Want to relive the fun of past years' online sales (and all the complaining about stores like Best Buy who take their sweet time updating their site each year)? See our forum archives. It's also a good way to check what time each store's sale started in the past.

 

- Adding items to your cart ahead of time doesn't work all the time. My suggestion: put the items in your cart if you want, but also have tabs/windows open for each item you are looking for so you'll be ready if you have to delete them from your cart and add them again. Also, some stores have special SKUs for their BF ad items which may not be the same as the ones they use the rest of the time.

 

- Whenever possible, shop through the links you find here on the forum, on the Black Friday site or on the main GD site. The commissions we get from those sales (especially this time of year) are what makes this site exist. We do not get commissions on orders made through retailers' apps.

 

I think that about covers it. If you have a question that wasn't answered above, feel free to post in this thread. Any other similar threads will be merged with this one.

 

And if any online BF veterans have tips, suggestions, comments to add to this, please post them in here for everyone's benefit.

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bigjimslade

bigjimslade

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Here is my big tip.....

 

Be sure you know all of your login info for each site you will shop at.  Try logging in NOW to see if you remember your UN and PW.  Also update your credit card info, email addresses, billing address and shipping address.  Like in real life/in person when the sales start it is a race to check out.  Just becuase you have the item in your online basket it does not mean it is yours. 

 

If you dont have logins for stores you want to shop at it is a great idea to create them NOW.

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magickallight

magickallight

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My tip as a BF veteran - Have LOTS of coffee on hand and forget about sleep if you really want the best deals! They can pop up online at any time and be gone in seconds! Oh - and Amazon has a tendency to sneak items into their BF deals - so keep refreshing to catch the BIG prices matches. Sit back and enjoy the ride! :)

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Brad

Brad

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Also, something minor - if there is something you really want at a store like Target that has free shipping on everything this year, buy it right away, then go back for any other items in a second order. The time it takes you to browse for other items to add to your order might just enough time for the item you really wanted to go out of stock and there's no need to buy a bunch of items at once to reach a shipping threshold.

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irisbee

irisbee

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Practicing refreshing. It doesn't hurt to use multiple devices if you can. 

 

If you are going to be shopping lightning deals at amazon, practice adding stuff to your cart now. You need to be lightning fast if you want to score any of the hot, hot deals. Again, multiple devices doesn't hurt either. The deals will refresh when the countdown is over but they don't always pop up right away. An item could be gone before you even see the add to cart button.

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2chia

2chia

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My tip is more for the Amazon deals. 

  • Know what you want. this is NOT the time to browse through all the category. Check even the Everything Else catagory
  • Set up your 1- clip payment button NOW.
  • Have your mouse over the buy button and click Buy just a few second before it turn to Buy. 

In General:

  • If you are on a smart phone ( If you are a avid shopper you should get one ) make sure you have the store app on hand and know the password by heart.
  • Forget sleep !! Plan your meals and play your day around it. Yep, it sound crazy . 
  • Keep you eyes open, the item you want might be sale at a odd place.
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bpr

bpr

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I wouldn't shop on a smartphone unless you are mobile, such as standing in line somewhere. If at home, use your PC. PCs are much faster and easier to accomplish shopping (IMO). There is a little good news about shopping via phone; if a website is bogged down, sometimes their mobile site will get you through and let you get your purchase (true story). Don't give up if shopping online and plan ahead. You have most of the ads from GottaDeal so search them now to see what is available online. As Brad mentioned, you can't always load your cart now; the reason is that a lot of times items will have different 'SKUs' just for the BF sales. This is also true especially if the item has a gift card attached (I'm looking at you Best Buy).

Edited by bpr
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bigjimslade

bigjimslade

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Here is another tip ot two......

 

Make sure your computer is tuned up and ready to go.  Run all of your Windows/Mac updates.  You may event want to empty your brower cache and cookies.  They can even slow down your connection.  I would ccleaner for this.  It is free and will speed up your machine. 

 

If you have a normal or slow internet connection be sure you dont have anything running on that connection that is a bandwith hog.  This can be rokus/apple tvs, internet tvs, netflix, streaming music services, large downloads, video game systems. 

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2chia

2chia

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It's already up your missing it 2chia, Microcenter is fully functional in stores, should be online as well.  If your waiting your behind, yep I definitely got your doorbusters there.

Nope. Brad mean the online sub forum not the black friday sale on the retailer site.. 

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