Black Friday Shopping: What'd you do today? (1 Viewer)

[Clinton McClure]

I slept until 9 then got up to play with our pom and read the paper. Gonna head out in a bit to return a couple movie rentals to Hastings and grab some lunch on my way to my parents' house to watch the Battle of the Boot (Arkansas vs. LSU).

 

[Radioman970]

Picked up six at Wally World.
($2.96)
A History of Violence (never seen it)
Manhunter
A Perfect Storm (never seen it)
Dreamcatcher (never seen...but I think I'm going to like)

($5.88)
Ice Age
I Walk the Line (a gift for my dad who is a fan I'll borrow...never seen)

Going back in an hour to pick up Mystic River for $2.96 if it's widescreen. I didn't get it the first time and it's eating at me. Shopping is some kind of sickness.

 

[Patrick Sun]

Went to bed around 1 a.m., planned on getting up at 3:40 a.m., set the alarm, went to sleep. Woke up at 7:15 a.m.!!! ARGH!

Was going to try to get to Fry's to get one of those 22" LCD PC monitors for $140 after MIR, but got up too late.

Went by Circuit City first, and noticed that even around 8 a.m. they still had a line of people extending outisde the store, so I quickly drove around the crowded parking lot to another outlet and drove over to Best Buy and was pleasantly surprised that they still have most of the DVDs I had put on my list, so I bought a bunch of the cheap DVDs, still need to go back to get something else I forgot. The checkout line was a 1 minute wait, which was pretty awesome.

Then drove on over to Fry's, and all the doorbuster items were long gone, but I did walk around and browsed a little bit. Went over to the DVD sections and found a handful of DVDs on sale, passed on the HD DVDs on sale, passed on the Spider-Man trilogy on Blu-ray (waiting for better editions of the 1st and 2nd Spider-Man films in BD), and then I saw the line, it was still long as hell, even with over 50 registers working this morning, so I hid the DVDs I had picked out behind some TV season sets on the bottom row and will hope they are still there tomorrow when I go back. So Fry's as a bust for now.

Then headed over to Target, and was mildly pissed at whoever does the ordering of DVDs at Target because they still haven't gotten passed their FoolScreen fetish when it comes to ordering their DVD titles after the 1st week of release (it seems), and I had to pass on quite a few of their bargain DVDs because of their Fool Screen crappiness. I did pick up The Notebook since it had the movie cash for The Golden Compass. Probably bought about 6-7 DVDs at Target.

Needed some gas and food, so I popped on over to Costco and stared at the $1900 58" 720p Panasonic plasma set they had for sale. What a nice deal, but I already have the 50" version, plus mine has all the extras that this 58" model did not have, but I still loved the size upgrade on the 58" plasma. Checked out the DVD/book/CD aisle, and didn't find much there that I wanted to give as presents, but I did note that both the Super Mario Galaxy and the Complete Star Wars Lego Wii games were discounted by about 15%, so I'll go back and get them later in December.

Finally, I thought it would be a good time to try Circuit City again, parked in a separate but adjacent parking lot from CC because it's really hard to make a left turn out of their parking lot due to the traffic on Black Friday, that turned out to be a good decision as my escape from the madness was made much easier. Didn't get the $35 Super Mario Galaxy Wii game (so I'll buy it from Costco later), but did manage to still pick up quite a number of TV on DVD season sets from the $12.99 pile, and also many $3.99 titles and a few $5.99 titles (many of these were $4.99 at Best Buy so I lucked out in getting them there since CC was still congested with lines of people this morning). Almost picked up Guitar Hero II for the Xbox 360 for $60, but after playing the demo, I don't think even a left-handed mode would make me enjoy the game, so I passed on it.

So that's it until I do a little more shopping later this afternoon. Overall, it wasn't too bad a day, just missed out on the main doorbuster specials by oversleeping, but I guess I really needed the sleep after all that food I consumed yesterday.

 

[Elizabeth S]

I don't usually take off on Black Friday, so I'm at work. Last year, I hit CompUSA and Office Depot before work for several items, but I just wasn't up to any instore hassles today. I would have liked to check out the cheap DVDs at WalMart if I'd been up to it. I'm envious we don't have Target here yet.

I did get price adjustments on the Toshiba A-3 I'd purchased on Sunday from Amazon, so it ended up costing me $159. I received it Wednesday, but have been too busy to actually sit down and watch anything yet! (I was having a heck of a time burning the ISO firmware on CD to update the machine -- the player wouldn't accept the disc. I'd done a similar update on my Oppo, so thought I was doing it correctly. I finally figured out that by stretching out the ethernet cable and the A-3 to the center of the room, I could do a direct update.)

 

[DaveF]

This year was middling. Like Patrick, I was frustrated by Target's overstock on Fullscreen DVDs--likewise for Circuit City. I found a few movies I wanted.

I got Half Life 2 Orange Box at Best Buy, but then found today that my BootCamp Windows install is messed with the upgrade to OS X 10.5 so I can't install it yet.

My wife found a good price on a digital picture frame. We got it home and discovered it was really low resolution. We'll return it tomorrow.

We did get some new sheets at Target

Circuit City, as usual, was a wreck. They need to visit BestBuy and learn how to manage busy shopping days. Best Buy, to my annoyance, had separate, unmarked lines for Computers; I wasted 30 minutes standing in the wrong line when I thought I was in a checkout line. But BestBuy again shows much better management of crowds.

 

[Radioman970]

Return visit to Wally World:
($2.96)
A History of Violence (bought another, for my nephew for xmas)
Mystic River (never seen)
Zathura (never seen)
Sleepers
Spanglish (never seen)

This has been a great opportunity for blind buying! If it's no good...only spent $3.

I nearly got Stuart Little II but it was $5.88. Still a decent deal but I'll get it some other time with the other 2 in the series as well.

Total of $40 spent. Got 11 flicks. Damn. Just. Damn.

 

[Radioman970]

Thanks for posting this. I was thinking of getting my parents one fo those. I'll be careful.

 

[Stephen Orr]

Got up around 8:20, watch an ep of Bionic Woman and last night's CSI off the DVR while I ate breakfast and drank my coffee. Edited the Thanksgiving eve service our church had, made DVD and web files of it. Updated our church website. Took the Christmas stuff out of the attic. Made a Christmas themed slide show for the home theater room to play when we're not watching TV. Found a couple of streaming christmas music sites, and started playing them over our audio system. In the middle of putting up the music room tree, and will be decorating it and the home theater room tree later on. Taking the family (wife and nieces/husband/fiance/sister-in-law) to Red Lobster for dinner, playing Scene It over coffee and pie later this evening.
Shopping? Strictly online, and mainly computer stuff from Newegg.

 

[Will_B]

My Circuit City was frustrating as usual in that they did not put prices on their bins, so you could not tell which titles were $8.99 and which were $3.99 (or was it $2.99?). If they'd identified the prices I'd have bought a couple -- though the titles were mostly rental-fodder.

Even though I arrived after noon, I found season 2 of Weeds in an endcap. I knew it was on sale for $12.99 but their signage still said $29.99 or whatever it usually goes for. Bought it for $12.99. Same price as Amazon.com but faster.

Almost got my car creamed by another car headed home -- distracted drivers out there today.

 

[TravisR]

My sister went out and I had her pick me up the three seasons of The Wire at Best Buy for 50% off. She was going out anyway so why should I suffer in line too?

 

[Richard Gallagher]

I stayed home but picked up Season One of Big Love from Best Buy for $47.55, including tax and shipping.

 

[Adam Lenhardt]

My dad's recovering from open heart surgery, so I spent the day running errands that he isn't fit enough to do yet while I'm home for the long weekend instead of shopping this year. Just as well since I definitely didn't feel like getting up that early.

Did Circuit City keep their tradition of sucking 10 times worse than Best Buy at crowd management this year?

 

[DaveF]

last year, in Rochester, CC was at least 15x suckier than BB. This year, in Memphis, TN, CC was about 7x suckier than BB. Don't know if this was a fluke improvement in total quality, or they've learned a bit. Part of it was that BB had unlabeled secondary lines for Computers; I wasted 30 min in the wrong line with no indication that I was in the wrong place. When I asked, I was told, "they're supposed to give you a map when you enter." :rolleyes

But CC continues to have too few lines and a grossly inefficient register / computer system for checking people out.

 

[Scott_J]

Got the Toshiba laptop I wanted from Best Buy without even leaving the house. I was able to order it Thursday morning on their Web site. Sure, I had to pay $24 for shipping but the convenience was well worth it (and it, apparently, already shipped). Also ordered a bunch of cheap DVD sets from Amazon and buy.com

The only actual BF shopping I did was going to CC this afternoon for a wireless router. Got out in about 20 minutes (would have been quicker if it rang up at the marked price the first time).

 

[Buzz Foster]

I had too much to drink and slept in. My partner got up and went to Gamestop at 7am. I never knew he'd left. I woke up later with him back in bed asleep, went downstairs to make coffee and saw a big box labelled "Rockband" on a table in the living room.

We had Thanksgiving today and lots of friends over. We played "Rockband" until all were tired of it and I had sore, numb fingers (got to quit pressing the fret buttons like they are actual strings). I had to go to three stores: went to a liquor store for beer, no "black friday" crowds there, Albertsons for cheesecloth (ditto), and Wallyworld for new guitar batteries about 8:30pm with no lines at all.

There again, our Christmas limit is $250 per person, and the only thing I have on my list so far is a banana case (yes, for actual bananas). It's $6, and not on sale.

 

[Viper]

We got to CC around 3. There were probably 60-80 people in front of us. By 5am, there had to be another 100-150 behind us. We scored one of those 50" Samsung DLPs, a Zenith DVD/VCR, and a few movies. I actually forgot The Descent, so I ordered from CC online for the extra $2 shipping. :frowning:

Went to Boscov's next to look around, then to Best Buy. By then, there was on line outside, but the line to checkout inside had at least 100 people lines up around the isles and toward the back of the store. Sad thing is, all I wanted there was Las Vegas Season 1, but I stood in line anyway.

Walmart was my last stop. I was pissed when they only had the fullscreen edition of Eragon, but I got it anyway. I also like how they don't bother to put price signs on any of these huge displays that are sitting out. idiots.

Once I got home, it occurred to me that I had gotten LV season 1 from BB and season 3 from CC, but noone had season 2 on sale. Good thing DD's 20% sale is still running. I ordered Las Vegas season 2 for $16 after the discount.

 

[Michael_K_Sr]

I went to neither, but one of CNET's reporters posted a story that the Circuit City he went to was far more organized than the Best Buy he went to.

 

[David Stone]

Slept in a bit (I'm getting too old for 5am door buster shopping) and started out at Wal-Mart. A few of the items on our list were sold-out, but I got super-lucky and found them all when I looked through some shopping carts of merchandise being sent back to the from the front lanes for re-stocking.

I think the 2GB USB drives are going to work well with my Philips DVD player with USB port and I know my son is going to love his new Special Edition Gold Nintendo DS with Zelda cartridge.

Next stop was Target where I was also very disappointed with the majority of their advertised DVD assortment being foolscreen-only DVD titles. There were a few wisescreen titles left, but I already owned them all, so I walked out of the store without buying anything. Seriously, why did I bother? This was the 3RD YEAR IN A ROW Target advertised super-low prices on "titles vary by store" assortments of DVD's on Black Friday. For the most part, the pictures of the DVD's in the print ad are so small that it's difficult to tell the format of the titles. Only when you get there and look at the selection do you realize just how bad you've been suckered. Bait'n'Switching Bah Humbug indeed!