For you cheap bastids *The Official Black Friday Post!!!*

Camped out with my buds at Best Buy at 8pm!!! Wasn't planned, but one of my friend's dad saw people waiting, so he saved us some spots. I just did it for the hell of it and maybe get some cheap stuff...not into the whole bargain computer thing. Got season four of 24 for twenty bucks. I also got a 512 mb stick for twenty dollars straight up. I got a gig stick as well, thinking it was gonna be forty dollars like the paper said...turns out, there was an even better special, since there was a mail in rebate on top of the instant rebate...so 1 gig for 20 bucks=not bad.

Was it worth it? Of course not. I got stuff I could've gotten just by walking in right now. But I just wanted to hang out with my friends that I hadn't seen in months, so that was cool.

 

Ok.. I've never been shopping on Black Friday before I knew that it would be bad, but I wanted to try to get a cheap LCD for my workout room from Wal-Mart.. So the sales start at 5:00am and I get there about 4:45 and cant even find a spot to park I shouldn’t have been a dumbass and tried to find a spot to park, I should have known that the 75.00 dollars I was going to TRY to save was NOT going to be worth it.. Well, after telling myself I'm already here I should at least try I make my way into Wal-Mart...

After finding a spot and walking in not seeing any carts and see an older person scurry across the entrance like it was a scene from aliens I knew I was in trouble.. When I make my way into the store it's like a made house, I have NEVER seen Wal-Mart this busy NOT even for Rita..

After trying to walk toward the electronics and getting ran over by a bunch of ladies with a TRAIN of shopping carts full of what looked like HUGE remote controlled toy Hummers I know there is very little chance they have any TVs left, but I press on.. When I get to housewares (POTS/ PANS cooking stuff) it gets even worse, I see two ladies talking smack to each other because one has two of a last sale items in her cart when "There is clearly a one item limit per customer"

After now getting through a few more comedy shows that were taking place every few steps toward electronics I finally make my way into the department and what do I see, a scene from Jurassic Park.. Little kids are running all around like wild animals while their moms and dads are yelling at each other to "grab" this and "buy' that.. I finally make it toward the place they had the LCDs and surprise surprise there are none left..

On the way out I got to see a few people talking ugly to a person that worked there about a laptop that they wanted, it was just sad to hear what they said to this person over a laptop.. I can see how so many stores make sooo good profits, people seem to have gone crazy while they tossed ANY crap into their carts thinking they are getting a good deal, sure they save on the few sale items they buy, but the store gets their money back on the zombie shoppers..

Long story short, I was a dumbass for thinking I had a shot to get that LCD for my weight room, my family and the woman told me not to even mess with it and it wont be worth it, but I like to chalk this one up to a learning experience.. Will I ever go shopping again on Black Friday HELL NO, but at least I got a few kicks out of it.. Next year my ass is sleeping in..

 

decided to go to fry's at 5.15 after seeing the rush at walmart... got there around 5.30

got myself a hd for free(after 50 MIR) and a dual core 64 processor w/ MB for 270 something...

and almost got a bluetooth Headset for 9 bucks, but decided ill just go to radioshack and do the MIR instead of looking for it under all the chinese people hogging the wireless area.


im happy, but tired as crap(esp since we were up all night makin fun of the ppl in lines) and probably gunna screw up my sleep schedule for a few days...

 

Just got in from a looooooong night. I tried to get some sleep at 10pm, but stayed away till 1:15. I woke up at 1:50am. Got at wallysworld at 2:30. I was #7 out of 25 laptops. It went very smooth. $404.xx after taxes! woot! This walmart was very orginized. We had to line up at customer service and before you could even touch a laptop, it had to be paid for or layawayed. about 4:00, management did a handcount and *tried* to run off everyone after 25 count THREE TIMES, but the idiots STAYED in line that ran all the way out the door. There was at least 250 people in line. Needless to say I walked around WallysWorld for another hour with my laptop in hand a smile on my face while the rest of the entourage continued shopping. It really amazed me how people who showed up after 4am got pissed because they could not get their items.

It was pretty packed, but IMO, christmas eve is much worse. We also did Toys R US ... and the worst part was NO SHOPPING carts. All they handed out was plastic bags.

 

My friends and I camped out at Fry's at 9:30pm, we were about tenth in line. It was pretty fun out there, until towards the end when people tried to cut in line, and then when we found out that they weren't handing out vouchers. We were told we'd have to just "run and find a salesperson." Encouraging chaos - is Fry's stupid or what? I ended up buying the $400 HP laptop with a free-after-rebate color printer/scanner/copier, as well as an 80gb Hitachi hard drive free after rebate, but I was lucky. Some of my friends were told the wrong place to go and almost didn't get the digital cameras they wanted until they complained later. Another almost didn't get the laptop because the salesperson was trying so hard to sell him other things.

I hate Fry's!

 

have some sympathy for the ppl working at fry's . it was like a zoo, they cantcater to your needs and bend over backwards bcoz you didnt get a camera or you didnt get a voucher for standing in line since 9... the store opens at a certain time and everyone that enters the store is eligible for an item. not just the nocturnals...end of story...

i seen some of the morons at frys today, they were totally rude and abusive towards others and even the employees just to get a fuccking memory card for 50 dollars or a bluetooth headset for 10

ppl like those should be forced to watch all the texans games start to end.

 

I can't believe how crazy and angry people get by just trying to save a few bucks on things that they don't really need.

 

http://dynamic.cnn.com/apps/tp/vide...=R00&hi&swbell.net&73&usa&618&77001&44&-&-&-&


these guys really wanted laptops...

 

i went shopping on black friday for the first time ever. worked out fairly well.

started by going to CompUSA at midnight for a $10 512MB flash drive. showed up at 11:55, decent line, but they opened and we went right in. then we stupidly didn't ask where the flash drives were and looked around for about 5 minutes. when i finally asked, the lady pointed to a place about 10 feet away, and as soon as i saw the numbers 512, i lunged and grabbed the last thing off this stand, not knowing if it was actually the 512MB flash drive or an mp3 player or what. luckily it was the flash drive. unfortunately, it was the last one and my sister and i both wanted one. then we were in line and they had all of one register checking people out. looked like about a 30-40 minute wait ahead. all of a sudden, a guy opens a new register about 10 feet from where we are and i take one huge step right into the line, and get there 3rd so we're out in 5 minutes.

then we go back and take a nap before going to best buy, which opens at 5. we get there at 4 and the line is 300 people long. my sister assumes they will be all out of the mp3 players and wants to go but i make us stay. amazingly they start letting people in like 20 minutes early and we actually got in before 5 a.m. well we get in there, and unlike CompUSA they have plenty of everything. and since they let people in gradually, it wasn't that hectic. i got "arrested development" season 2 for $15, my sister got the mp3 player and then got one for herself after looking at it a little more. then i figured we should check flash drives just to see if they had any good deals, and we find some 512's for 20 bucks and are about to get it when my sister checks the other side and finds 1GB for $20 (which someone mentioned earlier). i wasn't even gonna get one (since we had the 512 from earlier) but while in line i decided to and ran and got it and just decided to return the earlier one at a later date. all in all, we only bought stuff on sale and only spent about $160 on 2-1GB flash drives, the AD dvd, 2 mp3 players, and a CD. pretty damn good deals. and we were home by 5:30, which is before i even thought we'd be in the store. got a nice nap before the UT game, got good deals, spent a small amount of time. so my first black friday went about as well as i could have imagined.

 

This was my first year doing the Black Friday thing. I left the club last night around 2:30 and didn't have to work today, so I figured I would stop by the Wal-Mart off Post Oak & Bellfort just to see how things were looking. I got there around 3 and there were around 20 people in front of me. Waited till 5 and when they opened the doors there were suddenly around 35-40 people ahead of me (folks were letting friends cut the line before the cops came). I missed out on the lap-top by like 7 spots. The line behind me was wrapped through the parking lot to Luby's, back down the lot again (into a second lane) and down slightly into a third lane.

I did pick up a digital camera for $80. I have no idea if it's worth it or not, so I'll do some on-line research on it today and see.

 

Ehhh. I went to Fry's around 8am and bought Call of Duty 2 for $22, and got a free portable 7" DVD player with the renewal of my TMOBILE cell account.

 

I wonder if any MBAs have done studies on people waiting in line. If time is really money, they're giving up their diginity along with working for that good deal on their day off...

 

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10204961/

Web sales expected to spike on ‘Cyber Monday’

Online equivalent of ‘Black Friday’ comes when consumers return to work

Reuters
Updated: 5:27 p.m. ET Nov. 25, 2005

LOS ANGELES - U.S. online holiday sales are expected to hit nearly $20 billion this year and should take off on Monday, when consumers return to work and their fast Internet connections after the long Thanksgiving weekend.

“Cyber Monday,” the term coined for the Monday after Thanksgiving, comes on the heels of the busy “Black Friday” shopping day when many brick-and-mortar retailers begin turning a profit.

The good news for online shoppers this year, is that “Cyber Monday” is becoming the Web shopping equivalent to “Black Friday” when retailers launch major sales and discounts to drive traffic, analysts said.

Consumers are seen spending $19.6 billion on non-travel goods on U.S. Internet sites during November and December, up 24 percent from $15.8 billion during the same period last year, according to comScore Networks.

That accounts for less than 5 percent of total holiday sales in the United States but excludes large corporate purchases and sales on auction sites like eBay Inc., the most popular shopping site on the Web.

“Most people who shop online do it at work, not at home,” despite rising rates of high-speed home Internet connections, said Jay McIntosh, Americas director of retail and consumer products at Ernst & Young. Work connections tend to be faster than those at home, he said.

While companies like Amazon.com were first to make a splash selling online, traditional retailers have helped to drive sales with investments in their own Web sites and by offering consumers the chance to return Web purchases at physical stores, McIntosh said.

Concerns about returns and the inability to touch and feel items are major issues now for consumers who in recent years had listed security as a top Web-shopping worry, he said.

While today’s Web shoppers are wooed by conveniences such as avoiding store lines and driving costs, as well as price-comparison tools offered by Shopping.com, Shopzilla, Yahoo Shopping and Google’s Froogle, a survey from online retailer association Shop.org said the biggest draw was free shipping offers.

Jupiter Research analyst Patti Freeman Evans said consumers will be more concerned about prices this year due to higher home heating costs and added that many shoppers believe they can find better deals online because there is more choice.

“Pricing online is competitive. Sometimes you can get better deals online, sometimes you can get them in stores with sales and coupons and rebates,” she said.

 

A friend of mine at work goes people watching every Black Friday. She doesn't buy anything but just goes to all of the stores to watch people act stupid trying to get a deal. She said the best place this year was Toys R Us.

 

LOL, thats what we did...

but the best was definately at BB...

 

ive been doing BF for the past 3-4 years and really dont have any complaints, other than you have to get there earlier and earlier every year.

I ended up going to Circuit City by my house (I-10/Uvalde). My dad came with me to score on a Phillips 51' Projection HDTV in which he was able to get. I scored Friends Season 9 for $15, Simpsons Season 6 for $15, Arrested Development Season 2 for $13, and Cinderlla for $8. It was fairly quick, but had to wait in line for about 30 mins cause I was waiting on my dad to make sure they didnt screw him over with the TVs.

 

Went to the Galleria about 5:00 PM. I was walking like Rain Man all the way through because it was so crowded...

 

Which Toys R Us? My brother works at one and had cart duty all day.

 

this was in NC

 

I saw some Steve Madden shoes today for $40...casuals in brown or black...I was thinking of buying some but I already have alot of shoes and I thought they sort of uncomfortable around the ankle collars.