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How Well Did You Fare on "Black Friday"?

Posted by Cliff on from the share-your-shopping-anecdotes dept.

Quixote asks: "''Black Friday' is about over now. Though I wasn't among the faithful who queued up to get into the stores, I could see massive traffic jams in the local Best Buy, Target, etc. on my drive in to work. But it looks like the online offerings of some of the retailers are also pretty much slashdotted (I'm downloading a 500KB rebate form from CompUSA rebate center at the blazing speed of 800bytes/sec as I submit this story). So, how many of you avoided the long checkout lines and used the 'net instead? What are your experiences? What 'killer' deals did you get online, that you wouldn't have gotten in the store? And what are your thoughts on this whole phenomenon: why shouldn't the stores just get rid of this 'lets open the store at an unearthly hour' practice, and just move all of the 'Black Friday' sales online?"

3 of 93 comments (clear)

  1. Uh, kind of late, Taco... [1] by 3-State+Bit · · Score: 3, Informative

    I was perplexed, since it's only Tuesday, until I collated this with buy nothing day (more) and realized that November 29th was, in fact, on Friday. (I was out of town for Thanksgiving and wasn't going to buy anything that day anyway).

    So, uh, yeah.

    Robert.
    [1] (Yes, every editor is Taco -- esp. the ones who go by Ed.)

  2. fatwallet strikes back by zonker · · Score: 1, Informative

    dunno who else saw this, but in related news fatwallet 'protector of price and purveyor of outstanding offers' is fighting back at the same stores that went after then. especially walmart. got this newsbit over at arstechnica.

    --

    Large print giveth, and the small print taketh away

  3. attachment sales by jenniferj · · Score: 4, Informative

    I work for a major retailer, and our boss cautioned us that morning, before the doors opened to the customers: if we didn't sell additional items with the "doorbusters" -- those incredible discounts -- then we wouldn't make any money.

    That's the truth in retail, anyway. Often things are sold at deep discounts, knowing the add-on sales will bring in the bucks. That cheap digital camera? Let me sell you some batteries and photo paper and an additional memory card. A free-after-rebate printer? Cable and ink and paper.

    This is true, for retailers like mine, ESPECIALLY on a day like black Friday. We wouldn't have gotten our bonuses if we hadn't gotten those attachments... and people are going to need them anyway, aren't they?

    (for the record: I would never suggestion an add-on sale that was pointless, or continue to push if the customer said no)