Worst Black Friday ever?

I woke up at 9 AM today.

First time in a decade that I neither stayed up late and/or headed out early.

By the looks of the boards here, and on other deal sites, I didn't miss much.

It's like holiday shopping in --- egads! --- Canada.

Cyber Monday might as well not happen according to the previews.

But, I'm betting the stores were packed with lemmings this AM. Packlemmings?? Hmmmm....

Hugely disappointing "sales" at my usual stops:
Staples
Tuesday Morning
Home Depot
Macy's
Amazon
Newegg

I was very surprised that WM near me was pretty empty this AM. Of course if not for the $198 laptop, I'd not have been there either. Target was pretty full but we arrived there almost and hour after they opened and many of the "deals" could still be found. Apparently the "deals" were a bit lackluster or an hour after open they would have been long since gone.

CoreyC said: This is the first black friday that I didn't spend more than $500 on toys. Just nothing good out there this year. Black Friday used to be about christmas shopping, and it is turning into "lets buy us a TV/laptop/desktop day" the past few years. Target and WalMart both dropped the ball this year when it comes to toys.

Wal-Mart was ridiculous this morning. At the store I went to they placed the $200 laptop and $248 TV both in the toy section. This section of the store is always crowded enough on black friday without adding lines for 2 hot items to congest traffic even more.

I only spent $220, and that included breakfast for 4. This is the worst black friday I have ever been a part of (been doing this for 9 years now), and I will think hard before going next year.

I agree, the toys were lacking this year. My sister told me the same thing last night on the phone. We mainly bought games for Wii and NDS, along with the $198 laptop for my daughter. The wife did get quite a few of the $3 clothes sets from WM though. I spent about $650 this year and of that $330 was pans,laptop, and Blu-ray player. We spent more on clothes this year than normal, though we did not spend alot (around $60), so $250ish on games and toys (mostly NDS/Wii games).

Retailnever said: I did not spend one dollar on Black Friday 2009. This is unprecedented. I have many GCs to WM, Dell, Sears, Bestbuy, Amazon.. Oh well, I wanted to spend some money but the deals were crap.

By my post it seems like me and the wife spent a bunch when we normally spend in the range of $1000.00, but we pretty much darn near finish Christmas shopping on BF (minus the things there are no savings on). This year, if you take away the $198+$78+$49, you are left with $325 off of the $650 we spent. We don't buy laptops and DVD players on the average BF sale (or pots and pans)and infact this is our second laptop we ever bought. So we spent around $325 on items when we would usually spend $1,000. Our normal BF would mean getting home around noon-1PM. We made it in atleast 3 hours earlier than normal..........just nuttin we wanted to buy.

Pretty lame - just took advantage of a few sales to get items I needed anyway.. but I don't consider that "Black Friday shopping". Didn't camp out for sure and haven't been near an electronics store, target, Office Depot, stables, etc... I keep checking the Hot Deals sections here and on SD and am not seeing anything special at all.

I spent $0. Last year I got 10 flash drives from the geeks...for just about literally nothing. Memory prices doubled this year. RIP BF.

That's right comic book guy, "WORST BLACK FRIDAY EVER!"

I only spent $6 on sales tax for the McAfee Total Protection 2010.

It depends on your perspective. Was a good BF for me since I got to drive by the poor saps camped out at the local BB at 12pm on Thursday, point and laugh at their silliness
Seriously though, there were many kickass deals to be had online - eg. BlackX for $9.99, Uniden phone sets for $14.99 or $29.99, Canon scanner for $29.99, Panny BD60 BRplayer for $80, etc.

WhoBeDaPlaya said: It depends on your perspective. Was a good BF for me since I got to drive by the poor saps camped out at the local BB at 12pm on Thursday, point and laugh at their silliness
Seriously though, there were many kickass deals to be had online - eg. BlackX for $9.99, Uniden phone sets for $14.99 or $29.99, Canon scanner for $29.99, Panny BD60 BRplayer for $80, etc.

In previous years, this stuff or similar would have been FAR or very close to it...

No free DVD-Rs
No free CDRs
No free photo paper
No free stuff like Circuitous City used to do (laptop cases, camera cases, etc.)
No free CD cases
No free wireless phones (granted, they were not digital)
No massive amounts of free software (even some useful stuff used to be had)

Walgreens didn't even have any deals, and are using their crappy, extremely time-limited cash register-generated coupons (unlike CVS' program) for their quasi "free specials." Now, that's saying something.

Sucky through and through. Even on line.

Last year I went out to the mall, this year I stayed at home and shopped online. Amazon & Overstock.com have amazing deals. I agreed on BF sucks this year!

I got everything I was going to buy online before BF and I've never actually went to the stores. The only thing I couldn't get online was the Rigid shop vac for $20 at Home Depot. This year I actually went out at 6am. The Rigid vacs at The Home Depot store were gone before 6am. Mainly, because they let people buy four or six or twelve at a time! You mean they have no quantity limits? First (and last) trip to Home Depot on black friday for me. It was a ridiculous zoo and I thought Home Depot would at least be safe at 6am.

You guys said the same thing about Bf last year too!

daredevil1 said: You guys said the same thing about Bf last year too! This year sucked worse.

I agree that there was nothing compelling (for me, anyway) to get up and go anywhere for this year. That's too bad. A BF to forget. I did end up spending a good chunk of change on my cable bill, however.

Edit: I wish I could have caught that Roku HD XR box (the one with Wireless N) for half price at $65.

i usually spend $5000 to $7000..... most gets resold. this year i did not do any lines. i spent $0 so far. well i did help my sister buy a samsung tv for $400 plus 10% back through bing but that was it, it was her money. a bit disappointed with this year stock. might still buy some ps3 stuff through Dell... bing has them and HP at 20% CashBack.

Yes, you can officially say this is the worst black friday ever!!

I hope stores like Best Buy view this thread and do better next year. Best Buy was the biggest disappointment EVER!! Not a single item worth getting.

Funny how everyone here has some stories to tell. I haven't got anything else to say as I've come up empty. PC Connections 32" HDTV deal had gone bust, the wife drove me and the nephew to WalMart around 5am, which was a huge mistake. There where more customers in the store to grab the $198 laptop, $78 blue-ray and the $248 32" LCD HDTV which were gone by 5:15am. 120 of those $248 sets, I don't even know how many of the blue-ray nor the laptops were available. Laptops were the first to go I heard. I had seen people hurting each other just to get through the store. The wife wanted to try it again and drop 12 miles to the WalMart Supercenter which is where we should have gone first. Then we would have got all 3 sales items. First some strange reason that store was empty unlike the regular WalMart that had over 500 to 1,000 customers trying to get the 3 big ticket items.

I have to say I did say up to grab that $189 laptop off Newegg which had turned out to be $209 and it wasn't even ready yet. Now it's sold out! Not going good at all..

2009 BF a Bust!

I thought this thread was going to have videos of stampedes.

pixelious said: After waiting four hours in line for Target to get $60 1TB External Hard Drive, and later found out that Amazon had the same deal at 1am, I feel very very stupid to come out and wait in line.

At least you learned a lesson for next year, don't feel too bad.

amazing how people scramble because of the price. Thing's only 720p and a shitty 2500:1 contrast ratio, which I'm willing to bet is dynamic too. But OMG it's $248! Gotta get it!

Anyway, easiest yet worst one for me this year too. Woke up at 5:15, hit Kohl's online and grabbed some clothing. Piece of cake there, checked out in about 30 minutes. Drove over to Staples which is <10 minutes away, got in line before 6, maybe 70 or so people? Announced the cheap notebook/netbook/whatever it was was gone, but amazingly no one left..lol. Once in though, plenty of the doorbusters and all were on center tables. In and out of there in about 20 minutes.

Good price on that monitor, but just didn't need it this time around...everything else was reasonable enough to get. But as said above, no more free CD-R's (I guess $5 for a 100-pk is the closest), free paper, FAR this, FAR rebate that.

The only other mad deal was next door @ Ocean State Job Lot with Guitar Hero for $20. Those didn't last of course. Total spent I think was about $250...add the other hard drives I got on Wednesday and it's $450.

If numbers are OK again, then it'll be business as usual. The problem is the people like us on here KNOW what we want and HOW to get it OK. The dumb masses are the ones keeping things afloat, stampeding over cheap TV's, netbook's, etc.

You guys don't like the fact that the economy is taking a second dump after this tax season?