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| Sunday, November 25, 2007 |
| My Black Friday Adventure |
I have recently returned from my Thanksgiving holiday and looking forward to microwaving some left-over turkey dinner. The best part about being the only child to show up for dinner with my parents - all of the left-overs were sent home with me :)
But enough about that - on to the story I know at least two of you are waiting to hear - my black friday adventure. This was the first time I have participated in this retail holiday and I doubt I would willingly do it again - I enjoy sleep too much to sacrifice it for shopping. But this year I was looking to buy a big ticket item for my parents for Christmas and the black friday savings proved too tempting to resist.
I wanted to get my parents a laptop computer and after watching the sales leading up to black friday I realized some great deals would be available this year. My guess was right and from my research I found the three best deals (price-wise) on laptops:
1) Best Buy - $229.00 Toshiba Satellite with Celeron Processor 512MB of memory
2) Circuit City - $299.00 Compaq Presario Intel Core Duo Processor 1GB of memory
3) Staples - $349.98 Compaq Presario Intel Core Duo Processor 1GB of memory
I was celebrating Thanksgiving away from my home in Boston, and decided to travel down from Northern New England to just over the New Hampshire boarder. This was for two reasons - New Hampshire does not charge sales tax, so the bargain prices would also be tax free! and the greatest number of stores seem to be bunched up along the boarder. I could not find a shopping area within easy travel distance which had all three target retailers (Best Buy, Circuit City, and Staples) but I did find a spot with two out of three so headed there.
I left the house at 11:15 PM Thursday night and arrived at the Best Buy parking lot at quarter to 12. The store had a line of tents stretched along the front and far down the side of the building. I took a quick picture of the scene with my digital camera - hopefully you can make out the people and the tents in the photo below.
The Best Buy website indicated that each store would have a minimum of 20 laptops, but did not say what the maximum number would be. I asked the first person in the Best Buy line how long he had been there and he said since 8 PM. I estimated that the number of people in the line and the numbers sitting in cars in the parking lot to be around 200 (I assume the folks in cars had someone standing in line holding a space for them).
I quickly realized I was too late for the Best Buy deal. Unfortunately the town I was in did not have a Circuit City - the closest would be another hour drive south. But there was a Staples store nearby so I headed to that parking lot. There I found just two men sitting in their car with a blanket set next to the doors to mark their place at the head of the line. When I pulled in at midnight I asked if I was number three - they said no, number five since they are holding spaces for two other gentlemen. I pulled out a small garden bench my Father had thoughtfully placed in the car for me and marked my spot with that and spent the first hour in my car reading a book by flashlight.
At 1 AM number six arrived and she had a beach chair which she used to mark her spot. But she did not head into her car, instead she sat down. At that point I felt I had to go out and take my place in line. For the next five hours I stood in the freezing cold and chatted with number six, then number seven, eight, nine, ten, and on and on. I learned more than I ever wanted to know about past black friday bargain shopping successes of my fellow waiters. Number six shared with me tales of her dead beat ex-husband's many failures both professional and personal. Numbers 12 & 13 chatted about the never ending retirement home building trials they are enduring. Numbers 7 - 11 showed us their CVS shopping bargains (a bag of stuff for pennies) and allowed the rest of us in line to scold them on their lack of appropriate winter attire (college kids all, they wore plastic crocs without socks and one did not have a coat - just a short sleeve t-shirt.) Luckily the more experienced waiters had extra blankets to share with the dorm dwellers.
By the time the store handed out tickets for the big ticket items just before 6 AM I could see that I was at the head of a long line that snaked along the front of the building, down the side of the parking lot, and then extended down out-of-sight along a strip mall. They had 32 $350 laptops at that Staples and I got laptop number 5. By the time the doors opened at 6 AM I was frozen and it was all I could do to shuffle forward with my ticket and pick up my laptop box. Staples stores are not that large and I would say within moments the store was packed with at least four to five hundred shoppers. I had to make my way through the mass of humanity while clutching that box to a cashier to check out. The $350.00 laptop deal came with an HP inkjet printer, but I had to pass on that. No way could I have carried two boxes in that crowd and frankly I did not think the printer was that great. As I stood in front of the cashier to make my purchase a steady stream of people kept coming into the doors. It was the most bizarre feeling - like swimming against a strong tidal current. By 6:15 AM I was back in my car with the laptop safely in the backseat driving north back to my parents.
I can now officially say I have survived a black friday sale and my parents are now enjoying an early Christmas gift. Further holiday bargain shopping will be done from the comfort of my home - bring on Cyber Monday! |
| posted by Boston Gal @ 6:26 PM *
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| 17 Comments: |
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Other than it being tough to carry the two boxes, it might have been possible to sell the printer on Craig's List and get some money for it. Any money made would be profit. Just a thought, 20/20 hindsight.
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Perhaps, but honestly I was not going to jeapordize dropping or otherwise losing the $350.00 laptop I had frozen my %$@ off to get for a $70 HP ink jet printer. At least the laptop box was small and I could hold it clutched against my chest with both arms crossed over it while working my way through the crowd to the cashier. The printer box was a large rectangle box and just was not easy to carry given my arms were already filled with the laptop box.
Plus I was so cold and tired all I really wanted was to pay for the laptop and then get out of there. I had a 45 minute drive to look forward to once I left the store to get back to the house where I was staying.
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Well, that's a good deal but here in the south we have thise things known as "buggies", (that's "shopping carts" to the rest of y'all) which might have come in handy with the printer. I was not so successful. Two years ago I arrive about 45 minutes before Staples opened. I was the third person, but the first to go up and get in line. I got the Acer laptop for $500 (a deal at the time). This year I went to Staples about 30 minutes before opening and there were probably 60 people in line. No GPS for me, but I ordered at Staples.com for the same price, but , alas, no free $20 gift card. Congrats on your first/last Black Friday sale.
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So, you drove about 1.5 hours and waited in the cold for 6 hours; how much did you saved for that laptop?
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That is a very good price for a laptop. I do not think, I would be able to do what you did. I am glad this worked for you.
Out of curiosity I checked the retail price of the same machine (Compaq Presario 1 GB memory with Intel Core Duo Processor) in Turkey at an online store. It is USD 1,061.- tax included. So, that sure is a bargain.
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Nice work BG, and thanks for the well-written account. It is unlikely I would ever brave such lines, at such an hour. Though now I wonder if they have any more left for my mom...
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Hi James,
The Staples did have shopping carts and the four men in front of me each grabbed one (they had tickets for the laptop deals plus the 32" & 42" flat screen TVs and the GPS systems and digital cameras...) They were grabbing one of each deal - I assume to resell later at a profit. But once they had the carts they could not move - the crowd surged around and ahead of them. I was actually the first person at the laptop counter to get my box - even though I was holding ticket #5.
The tickets said you had until 8 AM to redeem them - so two hours (if you did not get the item then it was released back to the general public for sale). When I first read that outside I thought it was a bit funny. Who would wait outside all night, secure tickets for your items, then wait until later to pick them up?
But now I realize if you were going for more than one or two sale items it could take you two hours just to criss cross the store among all those people and get your boxes and then make your way to the cashier. The press of people was just that many.
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some "resourceful" people may also try to resell the tickets to other customers. also depending on the
proximity of other stores that they wanted to shop at, they may try to hit another store for the doorbusters before returning to the staples (or maybe a starbucks for gear up for the rest of the morning :) )
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You are a braver woman than I! Nice work!
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Huh, I had not thought about selling tickets inside the store. I had a few people approach me just before they handed out tickets asking me to get them a laptop ticket. But since that was the deal I was going for I obviously declined. I don't know what I would have done if someone had offered me money for a TV or GPS ticket at that point. Likely I would have said no, I kind of bonded with the people standing in that long cold line and I would not have wanted to take money and shaft them out of an item they had suffered in the cold for.
Did I mention it snowed on us in that line? Most of the folks who got the tickets at least for the laptops (which seemed to be the big draw at Staples) were there since 3 AM. That is when Best Buy handed out its tickets - so many of the folks who joined me in line then had already been waiting for hours in the Best Buy line only to learn they missed on that laptop deal and made their way over to the Staples line.
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Oh, to answer an earlier question. The Staples circular said the Compaq Presario laptop retails for $750.00. So you could say I saved $400.00 by standing in that line.
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That sounds insane!! I enjoyed reading your account but it makes me appreciate that my parents just want gift cards for the holidays.
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I did something on a smaller scale a couple of times. I just waited two hours. I thought I was going to get frostbite despite looking like the Michelin Man with all the layers. I have to say that it just wasn't worth the deal.
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I think you got a deal. I mean, you were in line about 6 hours and you saved about $400 and that comes out to about $66 an hour. You actually probably saved less since they probably normally have it "on sale" for less than retail. So, even if you go with a $300 figure instead, you saved $50 an hour.
Of course, I live in South Carolina where it is comparatively warm. I dunno about sitting in the snow all night. :)
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Insane. I don't get it at all ... just to save $400. I just value my time, sleep, and warmth a little more than that.
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BG-
I would love to see a post with a thorough analysis of whether it was worth it to do this. Taking into account what you could get that laptop for now (after doing some shopping online), the complete time it took (door to door) sounds like 9.5 hours plus the cost of gas to drive back and forth and any miscellaneous expenses (coffee, etc..)
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Bronx Chica- Congrats on scoring a laptop! I had to work on Black friday and just caught some sales the next day. Though if I had the day off, I'll be sleeping.
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Other than it being tough to carry the two boxes, it might have been possible to sell the printer on Craig's List and get some money for it. Any money made would be profit. Just a thought, 20/20 hindsight.