The Black Friday Blog (What you missed by sleeping last night...)

I swore I was going to tone down my Black Friday shipping this year.

I lied.

Since I own a PC repair shop, I decided shopping at hours only a vampire could love would be a way to get some extra stock for the store at prices below my normal wholesale. If I could turn a few hundred bucks profit off the deals I got, it might be worth it.

If you missed out on the fun puke), here's the diary of a nighttime from Hell:

* 3:00 PM Thursday - Driving back from my dad's house (Thanksgiving dinner), I noticed the line to get into Fry's (which didn't open until Midnight) had at least 100 people.

* 5:30 PM Thursday - ABC News leads off with a story on the Black Friday mob lines. Their picks for the best deals? The 40" Sharp LCD TV @ Best Buy for $199 and the Mr. Coffee brewer at Fry's for $4 ("less than a large coffee at Starbucks").

* 7:30 PM Thursday - Went to bed unusually early - planned to get up around 4:30 AM and hit the 6 AM sales at Office Depot and OfficeMax.

* 1:00 AM Friday - Woke up, could not fall back asleep. Decided that starting shopping now would be more interesting than watching the 10th rebroadcast of "Pumpkin Chunkin'" on TLC.

* 1:20 AM - Pulled in Fry's parking lot. Mobbed. Needless to say, the $248 (read: crap) notebook PCs that went on sale at Midnight were long gone. Found a PS3 bundle ($199 sale) someone had abandoned on an aisle and tossed it in the cart. Cooler Master 460w PSU (reg. 39.99) on sale for $15 less $15 rebate = free. Ten HDMI cables at .99 each. Checkout line was about a 500 foot serpentine through the store; however it moved surprisingly fast with about 60 registers open.

* 2:30 - Finally got out of Fry's. Went to the 59 Diner on Southwest Freeway and had either a really late dinner or really early breakfast. Surprisingly, it was quieter than the few other times I'd been there after Midnight.

* 3:15 - Went to Walmart, strictly out of curiosity. It looked like it had been hit by an EF3 tornado. For giggles, looked at the notebook PCs. Only the displays were left. It appears idiots who couldn't get one of the $248 HP paperweights decided to upsell themselves to the $398, $488 and $588 models that were also sold out.

* 4 AM - Hell, no point in going home now. I have to find a halfway decent cheap notebook PC for a friend on a $300 budget. Drove two blocks to Office Depot; only 4 people in line. I became the fifth.

* 4:30 - 5:45 - Chatted with others in line. Heard several war stories about the mob scenes at Best Buy, Target and Fry's midnight openings. Fry's was starting a second wave of specials at 6 AM - a few customers in the Office Depot line said they'd abandoned Fry's since they estimated between 500 and 1000 people were already lined up for the 6 AM specials.

* 5:50 - Kudos to the staff at Office Depot. They went down the line and handed out vouchers for the hot sale items - first come, first served, no mad rush to get in the door.

* 6:00 - Had my voucher for the $300 Gateway notebook (remember, it's for a friend on a tight budget). Grabbed one of the 2TB Seagate externals for $79 and a few other sale items.

* 7:00 - Finally got through the checkout line. Hit Starbucks on the way home. The cup of coffee may have cost more than the coffeemaker on sale at Fry's; however it was worth it: There weren't 500 people in front of me at Starbucks' drive-thru.

If you slept in last night, this should make you feel good about doing so. If you were a bad consumer like me; however, please post and share your horror stories with the group.

 

Although I buy most of my stuff from two large local wholesalers, there are many cases where Black Friday deals are much lower than wholesale. As an example, the notebook PC I got for $299 @ Office Depot is currently $369 at my wholesaler that carries Gateway/Acer product.

 

You lucky Americans! Checked yesterday Best Buy in Canada and no cut throat sales here. :cry

Walmart Pepper Spray: Woman Injures 20 Shoppers waiting for Black Friday deals at Los Angeles store.: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/...ck-friday_n_1112548.html?ir=Canada&ref=canada That's more than just getting in a frenzy eh?

 

I decided to stay in and avoid the madness, however online shopping was just as bad minus people trying to tear you limb from limb :-D

Spent almost 2 hours on walmart.com. Spent about half and hour to pick two things and the other hr and 20 minutes (literally) checking out. Each pages took about 30 minutes to load before you could finally place your order. It was madness I tell you.

I did finally get the 2 VTech toys that I wanted for my nephews at $10 each, which is a great deal, so the wait was worth it. They should be glad I like them because I was tempted many times to give up LOL

 

Our local WalMart had electronics giving out the items for sale at 12 at 10. This created mayhem at the registers. Many were heard to state, "My last time at this place with rude people. Next year I will only shop at Target."

 

Yep I'm glad I was sleeping. :cool

 

Maybe she was an undercover cop and mistakenly thought the mob was an "Occupy Wall Street" crowd that was ignoring the eviction notice. :-D

I've joked about this before; however now I'm serious: Black Friday is turning into a blood sport.