Is Black Friday Showing Signs of Gray?

CommanderFrank

CommanderFrank

Cat Can't Scratch It
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For many of you, the first years of the Black Friday were reserved for the electronics/computer minded folk and the contents of the sale were kept under wraps like a state secret. Fast forward to 2014 and now Black Friday is merely the official kickoff for the holiday shopping season. Has the day lost its importance to you?

This is the first year we're not seeing so much of a focus on Black Friday itself," said NPD tech analyst Stephen Baker. "More and more of the market intensity is being driven to Thanksgiving week. Or to put it more bluntly: Black Friday becomes more irrelevant every year.
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I've went to Wal-Mart for Black Friday doorbusters twice in my life, both times I felt like a pinball and both times fights broke out over limited stock items.
Never again, no way in Hell am I even going into traffic on a Black Friday.
 
I was tempted by Wal-Mart having a 50" TV for $243+tax but I didn't feel like hanging out there on Thanksgiving evening to get it. Friday morning Newegg had a 50" for $295 shipped to my door. $30 isn't worth me spending my evening at wal-mart with 400 other people.
 
Might just be because I was at a rural wally world, but getting in on the 1 hour guarantee items was pretty painless. Walk in half way thru the hour, pick up a couple vouchers (no line), check out in automotive/sporting goods (2 people in line).

I do feel like there are fewer stores doing legitimate door-buster sales. As BF has gotten more popular the deals have been diluted, there are fewer huge discounts and more moderate sales...which you can find any other time of the year. I spend less now on BF than I used to and wait for better sales at other times.
 
I used to love Black Friday: Waking up early on Thursday to get the newspaper so I could finally find out what would be on sale and then have thanksgiving dinner with the family and plan for what we would get; Leave home at around 4:00 am and be one of the first in line; Joke around with he other people in line until the store opened; Promise the nice people who brought hot chocolate that we would get an item or two for them; Get our stuff and leave.

Now the deal are crappy and people kill each other. They eat thanksgiving dinner at the store and the magic is pretty much gone.

I bought some things I needed online and that was it this year. Went to the store around 9:00 am to check on a couple items I wanted to see in person and regretted spending the gas.
 
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Our store had a shit load of PS4s left over pallet stacked about 6 feet high....
I knocked them over on accident small corner of them cause it was stacked by idiots like myself without shrink Wrap why it wasn't shrink wrapped was beyond me....

Walmart doesn't even use real shrink wrap they use grocery wrap for all electronics so Dead Pixels ect can happen due to neglect.
 
Given that places have been having their black Friday sale for the last 2 weeks I am not surprised. Stores started taking their black Friday sales to being two days, then 3.. trying to get more sales on the books that they can claim "LOOK WE SOLD MORE" and make share holders happy because black Friday this year made 3% more than last year, never mind the fact that it was 4 times as long. Between the sales being made into weeks long instead of hours and people being able to find stuff online at great deals. Yes I would say it is losing its meaning more and more every year. It used to be that the day after Thanksgiving was the start of the Christmas season. Now come Halloween places are already putting up Christmas stuff, playing Christmas music.... they just kind of skip thanksgiving and start working toward maximizing sales for Christmas.

Comixbooks said:
Pretty soon black Friday will be called UPS Friday
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I didn't think they deliver the day after thanksgiving.
 
Now they are starting on Thursday. Which I think is a douche move by the stores. Busiest time for shopping and now store employees have to work Thanksgiving. How long before they have to work Christmas day to?
 
Everything in most Black Friday ads is pure Chinese junk... Landfill in about 5 years or so.....Some stuff is ok but most of it will be dated and landfill in a matter of year placing tek in the front center is a disturbing trend for young adults growing up.

Ipads in school just drive me nuts.....your eyeballs will be forced to stare at some screen big business went about to provide for your kids who really in the scheme of things don't care about the after effects.
 
Meh. Whatever allure of waiting for that Black Friday sale went out when I heard about people camping out for a week or so for the doorbuster TV special that was feature limited, plus the YouTube footage of the wild animals pretending to be human. I learned a few years ago that Amazon ended up price matching most of the Black Friday ads anyways.
 
Black Friday has become almost totally pointless.

Last year I waited till about noon, then went to the store and picked up what I wanted with no line.

This year I just ordered a microSD card from Amazon and that was the only thing I even saw that really interested me.

Before that, I had done the whole get up early and fight the crowds to get what I wanted... so not worth it. Pretty sure I will never go BF shopping ever again.
 
I ordered two ss for raid 0 and a cherry mz keyboard with us and audio jack for half price. I didn't see a single item of substantial value anywhere other than 50" Panasonic strobing for 200 at best buy that's a killer deal.
 
Stores are realizing they can do better if they don't compete with eachother. WalMart's sales start at 6pm on Thanksgiving day.

Furthermore, the deals just don't seem as good as they once were. Definitely not good enough to deal with the crowds and standing in line.
 
The last few years BF was a good day to buy SSDs, now they are on sale at the same low prices all the time. Newegg really overused BF with a month long sale.

The only thing I found was a couple of Samsung Galaxy S5 phones to upgrade our ancient phones and they were $1 each (from Amazon) on a 24 month contract with my Mobile Share ATT plan. Last upgraded my phones with ATT in 2007! :rolleyes:
 
amdgamer said:
As a Korean, I find nothing offensive as it is true. I can verify that many Asians have no concept of personal space which I hate.
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Depends on the type of asian. Japanese often find Americans annoying as hell for not respecting personal space and being obnoxiously loud in public. But they hate the Chinese more, because the Chinese don't even grasp the concept. To them, as long as they aren't inserting anything into your body, personal space hasn't been violated. So short of surprise sex or having a stranger put his finger in your mouth, just gunna have to deal.
 
Yes it's all bullshit now .... I've seen companies also throw around Cyber Monday and actually saw them list toys and board games and perfume with the term.

Honestly, I did see some good deals and I bought them ( good deals to me ) so there were a few. I took my GF, myself and a few friends, bought them breakfast and we went out and I was able to buy 7 of those 40" HDTV's from Walmart for $115 each. Also bought 6 PS4 games all for around $30 - $35 each, new titles.
 
Yes, online there were not epic sales i liked, except getting Senn HD598's for $99 but that was it.

All these SSD sales arent exciting because come Jan those prices will be normal anyways.

And everything else is...meh!

i hate how Amazon Cyber Monday sale started today and yet most of the crap is just the same crap that didnt sell on their BF sales.
 
Ducman69 said:
Depends on the type of asian. Japanese often find Americans annoying as hell for not respecting personal space and being obnoxiously loud in public. But they hate the Chinese more, because the Chinese don't even grasp the concept. To them, as long as they aren't inserting anything into your body, personal space hasn't been violated. So short of surprise sex or having a stranger put his finger in your mouth, just gunna have to deal.
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You are absolutely correct as I forgot about the Japanese. Many Koreans also hate the Japanese as well because of what they did during their occupation(Korea was always occupied by someone), but they have deep respect for that culture because they are based on tradition, honor(lets forget Pearl Harbor for this argument), and politeness.
 
I can say based on my experience this year the best deals happened before black Friday. And that is disturbing because it means that they are trying to push more people away from actually spending thanks giving with their family and more to getting into stores. It seems now the companies are testing the waters before BF and then marking prices UP not down on the actual BF. 500GB class SSDs went up 10 to 20$ on BF. All other deals I purchased were either cheaper before BF or the same price.

That said this is the first year in many years that my purchases from newegg totaled ZERO for this entire season. Even when it was in vogue to hate newegg here they still got more sales from me. So unless cyber Monday actually does something I would say BF is pretty old and grey if not dead. And based on the fact everyone is already claiming they have cyber Monday deals today I highly doubt shit will happen on Monday. Even more disturbing is that as bad as it was and even with prices increasing I see things selling out. People are falling for the old stock market trick where you drop the price then pump it back up and all the idiots are buying in gong OH NOES the price is going to go up.

The woman went the mall twice and came back empty both times. The deals were no better than any other time of the year. There is also this new stupid and useless trend of trying to break up BF into multiple segments, like the early deals, mid deals and late deals. lol yeah like I am really going to go to your shitty store 3 x in one day. The irony of this is all these stupid trends are probably just pushing more people online and away from brick and mortar stores.
 
rudy said:
I can say based on my experience this year the best deals happened before black Friday. And that is disturbing because it means that they are trying to push more people away from actually spending thanks giving with their family and more to getting into stores. It seems now the companies are testing the waters before BF and then marking prices UP not down on the actual BF. 500GB class SSDs went up 10 to 20$ on BF. All other deals I purchased were either cheaper before BF or the same price.

That said this is the first year in many years that my purchases from newegg totaled ZERO for this entire season. Even when it was in vogue to hate newegg here they still got more sales from me. So unless cyber Monday actually does something I would say BF is pretty old and grey if not dead. And based on the fact everyone is already claiming they have cyber Monday deals today I highly doubt shit will happen on Monday. Even more disturbing is that as bad as it was and even with prices increasing I see things selling out. People are falling for the old stock market trick where you drop the price then pump it back up and all the idiots are buying in gong OH NOES the price is going to go up.

The woman went the mall twice and came back empty both times. The deals were no better than any other time of the year. There is also this new stupid and useless trend of trying to break up BF into multiple segments, like the early deals, mid deals and late deals. lol yeah like I am really going to go to your shitty store 3 x in one day. The irony of this is all these stupid trends are probably just pushing more people online and away from brick and mortar stores.
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Someone called out Newegg on Facebook. They saved a desktop in their wish list a week ago and it was $150 more today. Jives with what you say.
 
Ya, i have warned many people to use camelcamelcamel for thing, cause many things are NOT the list price they say, great example was an electric shaver they claimed the list price was $399... which it had not been since 2010 when they got the item and hadn't gone over $220 since 2012....

Such BS, but i am sure they can get away with it because in the past the list price was $399 even if it was yearssssssss ago..
 
I'll admit, I bought 3 things on Friday. But they were software which I could purchase from the luxury of my home. I wouldn't go out if I didn't have too, and can't comprehend the mindset of people who view spending money they don't have on things they don't want.
 
I did one early morning "stand in line" at Sam's a couple weeks ago, and that was the extent of it for this year. I did an actual Black Friday about 6 years ago to get a $399 HP laptop at Wal-Mart. So far those are my 2 actual B&M holiday experiences. Online, $10 at the Egg for a couple licenses for ESET, and $300 at Adorama for a camera.

Agree with above that the best deals were before Black Friday this year. Be curious what next week will hold, still looking for another SSD.
 
After perusing the posts I had to respond with my happenings.
We always.. always shop second hand / Black Friday. Anyone not wanting to save 30% - 50% off of items is nuts, wealthy, not wanting to deal with crowds, or just plain not interested.

I went to Walmart yes the traffic was Crazy! No the stress is not worth it.
Anyways at 5:46 I walk in Gobs of people standing by their products of choice.
I walk to the 32" inch TV line 6th in line. The 50" TV's I wasn't planning on getting one already had plenty of TV's. There were 3 aisles full.

Apparently the 32" TV sale started at 8.. I was like O' Crap. But at 6 they handed out wristbands. So at 6:13 I walk up to the 50" line like maybe I should grab wristband just in case. The line was empty but I snake up the three aisles casually stroll past the guy and say do you have any 50" left. He handed me a ticket labeled #114 out of #120.

So long story short 32" TV for daughters bedroom (she had an older 32") and new 50" for the Master Bedroom (we had an older 37") Both older TV's were Westy's. and the upgrades were had for approx. $338 or so. I sold both old TV's today for $170 total. Circa 2007 - 2009? and the upgrade was had for about $168.00 not bad.

The traffic to pickup the TV's were crazy people had 5? of them in their trucks?

Would I do it over again - maybe? I agree black Friday is less and less and online sales are more and more. It depends on what you need? As I continue to gather deals I need less.

And a lot of the same deals could have been had online.

Secondary to this I agree some of the tech deals are better off season, everyday, and in January. Don't feel pressure to 'buy' In my case tho' a 50" at $218 or w/e it was equaled a no brainer.

Yes I know its an emerson, yes I bought a 32" for my mom (being the nice son I was at $200) you know what the picture was good and its lasted. So not the main home theatre tv I wouldn't do it. Surpisingly the 50" was 120hz Bonus.

Sorry I went off its been a crazy weekend lol and I'm in the market for a 3DS for my daughter.

Happy Hunting everyone and Happy Holidays. I hate the fact they are ruining Turkey Day with the deals. I do hate ii and I miss traditional black Friday.
 
I avoid it like the plague. I hate the crowds and you generally don't save a lot of money. With internet shopping, I can get deals pretty close to what I might get at a store.
The other major issue I have is now Thanksgiving is a shopping day. That's pure greedy turkey shit.
I'm sure the employees generally hate working that day. It's bad enough opening at midnight. Now, it's all day long. Why even have the holiday?
 
I don't go out early. I think the "doorbusters" sucked this year regardless. Amazon surprised me, they picked up the game on the quality of their lightning deals significantly, I've gotten many items from that. Stocked up on USB 3.0 flash drives - 32gb for $10 and $64 for 20. Yes though, I think the companies are the ones ruining it by starting earlier and earlier. Start at 0600 across the board so the crowds at each store are split up. When it's staggered it's just a clust at each store's opening time.
 
steakman1971 said:
It's bad enough opening at midnight. Now, it's all day long. Why even have the holiday?
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frabz-You-know-Sheep-stuff-a7979f.jpg
 
Black Friday - Cyber Monday... call it what it is: Clearance Day Y'all. Really, it's stuff they couldn't sell all year. ;)
 
I'd rather spend the day with my family.
Really.
Black Friday is B.S. starting at 5pm on Thanksgiving?
I didn't just spend 18 straight hours smoking turkeys and hams for everyone to run in, snag a quick bite and run out the door to try and make a sale. The second that starts I'm not doing it anymore.
 
Ducman69 said:
Depends on the type of asian. Japanese often find Americans annoying as hell for not respecting personal space and being obnoxiously loud in public. But they hate the Chinese more, because the Chinese don't even grasp the concept. To them, as long as they aren't inserting anything into your body, personal space hasn't been violated. So short of surprise sex or having a stranger put his finger in your mouth, just gunna have to deal.
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The Japanese are an odd bunch. They demand personal space yet have you ever ridden a busy subway in Tokyo? Holy shit, personal space my ass.
 
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