Black Friday shopping: How did it go???

[BookstoreEscapee]

Does anyone work places where people lined up outside the night before? (Or was anyone in any of those lines?)

On my way to my aunt's for dinner, I saw people already lining up outside Best Buy near their house ... at 4:30 in the afternoon! Don't these people eat dinner? On my way home around 10:30 I also passed another Best Buy and there was a line from the door to the corner of the building, including 3 small pop-up tents.

[Irving Patrick Freleigh]

The first people to line up outside the doors at the swamp began doing so at about 3:30. I saw somebody pull into the parking lot at 12:30 and they must've stayed in their car. It was pretty cold and windy.

By the time we opened, the line was "as long as a football field," according to the local newspaper.

Our deals aren't good enough to make people wait an entire day for them, but they do show up early in the morning.

[BookstoreEscapee]

Our deals aren't good enough to make people wait an entire day for them, but they do show up early in the morning.

Another good thing about B&N...they don't have "sales" like other stores. The increased traffic they get is really just because people are already out and about. Store2 is at the opposite end of the shopping center from a Best Buy and Old Navy, and Store1 is across the street from the mall, so we always got plenty of people, but there wasn't the extra incentive to get there extra early or be breaking down the doors to get in...(not that people don't show up right when the doors open, but it's not nearly the craziness as other places).

[Rine]

My sister went to walmart at 4 to buy some toy doorbusters and she said that people started to mob the poor associates guarding the rock band (?) bulk stack and it was just pathetic. I mean, to go that insane over material possessions?

People were lining up at my store 6 PM Thanksgiving Day and we had about 350 to 400 lined up (split between four entrances) by 4 AM when we opened. Never had that many people lined up at our store ever...

[ditchdj]

I was surprised to see how cheap the TV's were marked down at Walmart this year. I know now that if I can get a 46 or 50 inch next year for only around 500 dollars I'll be at that same Walmart by 11PM on the night of Thanksgiving to get one!

To me it'll be worth it.

[calulu]

Went into Wal Mart for a skein of yarn around 9 pm last night. They were cleaned out on a lot of the cheaper doorbusters but still had some of the more expensive door buster electronics.

[Irving Patrick Freleigh]

We had quite a few doorbusters left last night. We got to take all that stuff off the floor and backstock it.

The swamp could really stand to cut back on furniture doorbusters. They never sell that well. A lot of that stuff is also brought in specially for the season, so it ends up going on clearance and we sit on it well into the new year. They could offer more electronics instead. We had a lot of TVs on the doorbuster and they pretty much flew out of the place, along with DVD players, MP3 players, iPod alarm clocks, and Nintendo Wii accessories. But this could be because there's no Best Buy or other big-box electronics store in town.

We also had a lot of doorbuster stuff not sell because it was only displayed on back endstands, where nobody could find them. Some of the front endstands were taken up by crap unrelated to the department thanks to our philosophy of cross-merchandising. I really hope this would sound the death knell to that ridiculously stupid idea, but I know better than to expect that.

[DGoddessChardonnay]

Just watch out for a lot of the "big sale" items - many times it is not the same item as they normally sell. TVs might be a lower resolution, lapotps might be missing a couple (seemingly insignificant) or lower quality specifications (bus speed, screen resolution, smaller HDD etc..) to make you think you're getting a great deal when in realiity you might be getting an OK deal, some times even ripped off.

That's what my Mom said she heard about that, so we're increasingly glad we went ahead and got my brother's new Dell desktop PC the week before (when I got my bonus check.)

What I've seen in the Sunday paper really wasn't all that great . . . but then I could say the same for the Black Friday sales I saw on Thursday morning.

Only thing I saw today in the paper was a Toshiba laptop for $449 at Office Max (I think) but the regular price is only $499, so really that's not anything to brag about.

[draftermatt]

First and (hopefully) last year I ever do it.

Got a new TV (50" Sanyo) didn't want to punch anyone, didn't see any spectacularly bad behavior, a receipt arguer and a line jumper.

Got to Wal-Mart at 4:45 showed them my ad and said "where can I find this TV" (because I couldn't find it after walking around a bit) they handed me a strip of paper and said "get in line and we'll check you out at 5"

Then we got some other stuff, home by 6:30. Check out was the longest thing.