Anyone Go Out On Black Friday?

[bubba]

I went to Wallmart get a camera for the boy and a Wii, wasn't on sale, but I was there so what the hell.

While in the crowd to get to the consoles I got to talking to a guy who had got there a 1am for the Xbox guitar hero combo that was a walmart exclusive. Come to find out all they had was 16 of these combos. This was at 430, 16 Xboxs to the left and about 100 Wii's to the right. They guy I has been talking too was first in line for the Xbox, but the crowd behind him was just nuts. About 80 people to the left for the Xbox, 20 to the right for the Wii. Closer it got to 5 the worse people got. 2 ladies, well maybe not ladies... people of female persuasion.... took to swinging on each other OVER A @!#$ING XBOX cops walked over arrested both of them.

Granted the Xbox looked like a good deal, the xbox, wireless guitar, Guitar Hero, something like 17 arcade games... all for 190, but I was there for a Wii... the one thing my kids specifically and most important repeatedly asked for. I should have grabbed one I was right there OH WELL

After that strolled back up to the camera area got the camera for the boy and a mini tripod for him.

This was the first black friday that I went to in years, highly entertaining, but not sure why some people get the way they do

[Apoptosis]

If you did what did you buy and if you didn't why not?

[KnightRid]

Nope, wife had to go to work and sell wiis at 4:30 this morning and I really didnt see much advertised that was worth running out into the madness for.

Maybe the south park dvd sets for $10 but those can be gotten online with free shipping anyway.

Mike

Oh and she might have sold half the wiis they had by around 8am, so they seem to be catching up on production finally.

[FZ1]

I was up until about 1am last night...bought a few presents online. Been looking at new LCD TV's but I haven't decided if I want to drop 2 grand right now or not.

[Skippman]

I gotta work today. So nope. I didn't see anything that was super discounted this year anyway. Well, other than my new Jeep. I think retailers are nervous about thier bottom line this year so they're not offering as many "door busters" as they have in years past. What I love is that Best Buy puts the iPod in thier add every week like it's on sale or something but its always full retail.

I did look at the New Egg sales but didn't see anything that was particularly cheap. I saw that OCZ RAM but it's not the stuff I need for my board.

[hercules71185]

Yup I bought a 450 dollar laptop, 4gb DDR2 320GB hd, 15.4" glossy screen, HP. I knew it was worth at least 600 and could sell it for 500, 13 digital cameras under 100 bucks. Nothing was TOO good of a deal but, I put an ad on craigslist called Black Friday sale and already sold 4 cameras for 130 each. I wanted to try it out and see if it would be worth it next year.

As for me personally I didn't really see anything I would like or really that good of a deal. But, I know people eat up the high mega pixel cameras even though they aren't very good. If I make more than I paid for everything I'd be shocked, whatever I don't sell I'll give away for xmas so it will be worth it either way.

[DaIceMan]

I usually go out for the "mania" of the day, but I just wasn't as into it as usual. My wife and daughter went to a movie last night and came by Best Buy on the way home around 10pm and people were already lining up.

I personally didn't see anything I HAD to have, and the couple of things I saw that I might pick up are on sale for the weekend and online (though out of stock atm) anyway.

[stev]

Got two of the Samsung 19" Best Buy monitors for $129.

Son got the Office Depot Acer Desktop for $229. He's got a $150 mail-in rebate to deal with.

NewEgg just sent a ULTRA-SECRET BF sales deal. A person can use up to 5 promo codes per order as well. One per sales item.
The two big items deep discounted are an AMD X2 3800+ for $29.99 (EMCBBCJAF) and Crucial 2Gb DDR2 667 PC2-5300 laptop memory $15.99 with free shipping. (no promo code needed.) Here's the linky to the rest of the stuff. http://promotions.newegg.com/NEemail/No ... -Clickhere

[Apoptosis]

I felt like I was doing something wrong today since I wasn't going out for Black Friday, so I headed up to the Walmart, Kohls, Best Buy shopping plaza in my town. The parking lot wasn't full all the way, so I easily got a parking spot at 8:45am and went into the store. I was looking for Live Free or Die Hard (Blu-Ray) and that was pretty much it. The Best Buy here had a Stake & Shake booth set up on a card table in front of the store serving coffee (not sure if it was free or not), but no one was taking advantage of this, so I went inside. Much to my surprise the store was pretty empty.

Here are a few pictures inside my Best-Buy at 9am this morning...

bestbuy3.jpg (55.83 KiB) Viewed 483 times

All the $6.99 movies are still in stock as well as the $16.99 Blu-Rays. All the $5.99 CD's look untouched and as you can tell no one was even looking at them.

bestbuy4.jpg (37.52 KiB) Viewed 483 times

The picture is blurry for some reason (don't walk and take pictures, but the microwave, vacuum and digital photo frames also aren't selling

bestbuy2.jpg (45.91 KiB) Viewed 483 times

Doesn't look like more than one or two of the printers

bestbuy.jpg (45.45 KiB) Viewed 483 times

The $79.99 HDMI cables aren't selling and neither are the $29.99 mice that they had in these crates. They also had the $49 802.11g wireless routers and those were untouched...

If this is a sign of things to come it is going to be a rough year for retail sales. I picked up my $16.99 copy of Live Free or Die Hard and left.

[FZ1]

I hope retailers do better than expected to help get the economy out of the crapper.

[stev]

Nate,

Ditto here on the low traffic and what people grabbed.

While waiting in the Best Buy line for 45 mins, (doors opened at 5am) I had talked with several people in-line. They are only running in, getting their deal and leaving. Nobody wanted to look for other items outside their specific budget nor were tempted with the $14.99 8-Gb jump drives, wireless devices or mice.

Basically, people are very tight with their money like you were for a certain item and like I was to replace a dying 19" CRT with a 19" flat LCD. I got two since I knew how old the other computer monitor is and how the wife would take over the computer with the flat LCD.

Yes, it will be a tough time for retailers all around. Having the gas prices drop may have helped with more people getting out to the stores early on.

[hercules71185]

That is nuts, here in Jacksonville we had people parking at barnes and nobles, walking across 6 lanes of traffic and walking to best buy to get there. Walmart seemed to be pretty empty as usual. I think it's because there is 5 of them.

[FZ1]

Some guy working at a Walmart in NY was trampled to death when they busted through the doors. I hope it was worth the $20 you saved...

[FZ1]

So I found a killer deal on an LCD TV at Fry's - nearly $200 less than I can find anywhere else. Makes me a little suspicious, could be a typo or they have the wrong model # listed. I have never ordered from there before and there are none anywhere near here.
How is their customer service if I order it and find out it is the wrong one or something?

[Apoptosis]

I just bought my 52" LCD 1080P TV from them a few weeks back and no issues with them at all and I got the TV 3 days after I ordered it from a freight company. I've never had a problem with Fry's and have bought some big ticket items from them. I got no tax, free shipping (3-day at that) and used my Gold Mastercard, so I doubled the 1 year warranty for free... I'm happy

I also bought several memory kits from Fry's with rebates and they came in under 6 weeks - about17736.html

[FZ1]

Which model did you get? The 52" is what I am looking at as well. The wife is in Florida and I texted her about and she said not to get it but I still might

[hercules71185]

The only thing I got from frys was a memory card. It was an 8GB SD card. To my knowledge anything over 2GB was considered HC or High Capacity. Well, it's not. It won't work in my camera that supports SDHC. They told me that can't do anything about it. I wrote back again and talked to a human and they told me it was no problem and I could do 1 of 2 things. Either send it back and for an additional 20 dollars, (the card was only 20) They would give me a Class 6 SDHC. OR I can keep it and they would refund the full price. They credited me my total 19.99 and I didn't have to return it. They told me sorry for my inconvenience and left it at that. I was 100% satisfied with that outcome even tho it does me no good other than a storage device to add to my collection of them. Newegg has done me better than that many times and I stay loyal to them. But, compusa/tigerdirect is much more convenient with their stores. As for Fry's they seem pretty good.

[Nobahar]

I just got back from the mall, I didn't go early as nothing worth going early for. Honestly, when the economy is in the crappers the retailers should give better deals than what they had this year. This day isn't particularly special, unless you are keen at hunting for a few items.

Macy's had pretty good deals, most of the mid-level clothing was 30-50% cheaper than the normal SALE price. The mid-high level stuff like Ralph Lauren and such were about 20% off the MSRP. Anything higher than that, like stuff you'd find in Nordstrom or specialty stores wasn't on sale at all. Interesting how stores with no sales were completely empty when every single parking space around the entire mall was full with people following pedestrians for parking spots, bad business is all I can say unless they don't need to have sales ever (Burberry).

Some of my other regular places weren't that great, Banana Republic had 40% off most things, but half of their inventory was already on sale before black friday. They just removed the sale price, then changed it to the 40% off everything. The bonus was the cashmere sweaters that weren't on sale were also 40% off, so that was a good deal- but IMO cashmere is overrated.

Department stores were pretty crowded, and anywhere else that had sales. Only electronics I ordered was a Sandisk 4GB Clip (mp3 player) that was an online-only deal at bestbuy for 35 bucks for my brother, everything else was a disappointment this year.

I was expecting to see a better deal on movies and music but I noticed even some raises on music album prices, and no free shipping deals on cds and dvds so far? I really don't get how they expect to increase sales if they aren't going to be more aggressive about it. Overstock has no free shipping on books, music, movies and games (essentially everything I buy from them), Buy.com has nothing other than their normal weekly specials, Amazon has nothing (still 25 min for free shipping).

I'm going to be real surprised if they profit at all this season.

[Dragon_Cooler]

I didnt have a lot of money this year, and most anything i wanted was more money than i had like blue ray players and tv's. Our first and biggest stop was frys, which did have some bad ace sales like the Sony blu-ray for 179. The other great deal that i had in hand was an LG sata blu-ray player for 89. After looking at my torn up and worn out shoes, i put it down along with the 1TB WD Mybook that was 119. So all i walked out of frys with was a Motorola H12 bluetooth headset for 40 bucks. However we did hit up a lot of and I MEAN A LOT OF different places though. Lowes, petland, petsmart, Conns, barnes and noble, and others I cant think of. Prob spent more in gas than actual products. LOL Overall I just wish i had more money.

[Sporg]

We didn't go out until 10:30am-ish. Just ran to Target and picked up a wagon for lil man and some bedding for one of the wife's sisters. I honestly didn't see any deals this year that jumped out at me, no reason to blow a bunch of cash either. I think we're going to have a round of layoffs shortly after the first of the year, so not in any hurry to spend.

I will say that Target was pretty busy. Lots of rude women who think the middle of the main aisles is for talking with friends or just a good place to abandon their carts. And then the wild children running around screaming. Yeah, public is awesome...
And yes, I'm wearing my +15 Scrooge hat.