"Black Friday" - The Day of deals is officially dead. It has become a phrase now!!
 

With Kohls starting Black Friday from Wednesday morning, and many others starting Black Friday on Thursday morning to 6pm-8m-10pm and few others doing a week long Black Friday, it appears the term Black Friday(The word to mean the Day of Deals) is now dead :( and it has become a phrase (to mean a hyped sales week with no real deals) now..

Need more proof ? Here you go : Walmart releasing its ad 15 days in advance on its website...Many others sending their ads directly to sites like bfads.. most ads are just as a good as their sunday flyer (if not worse)....and much more !!

Bottom line : Black Friday - The Day of deals is officially dead. Only the phrase survives now.

I was pretty much thinkin the same. We're going to see more and more phrases like "take advantage of our black friday sales early!" and "black friday prices still in effect!". Pretty soon black thursday and black saturday will become common as well.... :yuk:

based on the ads that are out i'd say theres bigger BF things to worry about than just the day moving around, pretty poor deals this year

Black Friday savings have declined as more and more people have hopped on the bandwagon. This can be traced to the start of the recession when people starting coming out on Black Friday in larger numbers. With record numbers of shoppers, there's no incentive for businesses to offer amazing deals.

I'll miss the old days.

Black Friday deals have been steadily declining for the last few years. This year's "deals" are by far the worst of all time!

I have considered it way less interesting about 3 years ago or so. Not so much because it starts on earlier days but because the deals got worse.

By that I mean there are more sales on things that kinda suck (likely excess inventory) vs. hot items. It was never 100% hot items but the ratio of great deals to OK deals has declined.


I think a much better strategy is to research what you want and set up a deal alert for it. Look up some old deals on it to get an idea of a price bottom and pick your price. I see threads all year round with people saying "wait till black Friday". Noobs :shake:.

Most people arent SDers. They arent gonna be able to tell what is a good deal from a bad deal.

I will be sitting back at home online like always up from 8 PM till 5 AM thanksgiving evening. plugging away.

Most SDer used to approach BF like "i dont have anything to buy..but man, that one is a steal, so I'm gonna hunt for that". But for this year, there is not one damn thing which is really a steal.

No you're a towel OP

I agree. There's nothing I want to fight the crowds over this year. I'll do all of my Christmas shopping on Amazon.

Best Buy Golden Black Friday years were in 2005-2007...PERIOD...
 

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I remembered back in Black Friday 2005, a complete eMachines desktop PC set went for $149.99. Today, now $499.99 starting price.

Also, Black Friday 2006 had another eMachines desktop PC set for $189.99 (slight increase because of LCD monitor).

Black Friday 2007 also had a Toshiba laptop with Canon AIO printer for $229.99 (or $179.99 for laptop itself and $49.99 for printer). Today, now $187.99 with no printer. Most people that got one returned the $50 printer and kept the laptop for $179.99. This one was by far my most favorite, and Best Buy probably peaked their highest in 2007 for doorbuster deals.

Also consider that computers were a lot more expensive back then, so savings were much larger. Reselling profits went through the roof.

None of the deals today can match these items above. Well, at least I saw my Best Buy Golden Black Friday years. None of these items above required waiting earlier than Thanksgiving Day morning. You could be #1 in line starting on Thursday, Thanksgiving morning. Today, now you need to arrive here on Sunday to be #1. How times have changed.

When Black Friday 2008 came, oh man, it now went downhill. Best Buy increased the cheapest laptop, a HP, to $249.99 with no printer. I stopped lining up at Best Buy since. I now mostly go to Wal-Mart since 2009.

So a 32" LCD isn't slick at $97? Or a 42" Plasma for $198?
PS3 with Infamous 1 + 2, and Uncharted 1 + 2 for $199 isn't decent?

While I'll admit there aren't many amazing deals, but there are some decent ones no doubt.

Kind of like "Clearance." That word is totally meaningless now. Heck, Target's Halloween clearance, or any clearance for that matter, gets wiped out at 25 percent off and never gets to 75, except for the gross candy corn bags.

The items disappeared at 25% level not because ppl bought them! They were just being hidden somewhere inside the stores for later purchase when the price had gone down to the 70% or above level!

If you buy a clearance item at Target at any level less than 70%, then you're still a Target amateur shopper!

sssshhhhh ;)

That was 2005? Wow, that's nuts. Didn't they also have the Gateway laptop for $300 that year too? I remember being 14 and seeing those deals, and I couldn't stop telling my parents how crazy of a deal that was, there was no way that's true, etc. I agree with you, those years were the best BF years.
Anyone remember how Rex Electronics did double coupons for BF? They always ran like $300 off TVs prices between a certain point, so it was the same price as Best Buy, but for BF they did double coupon to make it $600?

Trust me, I don't. I was talking about the people I saw with carts, checking out. Yes, some of it is hidden in the store, but where I was, the vast majority went out the door on the first of Nov. No skin off my back if they want to pay too much, though!

Yep, for $149.99 gets you a new PC plus a CRT monitor. In fact, that deal just got better.

There were stories reported online by people returning the CRT monitor itself valued at $99.99 (it shows separate on receipt as a bundle for two items), and they ended up getting this new eMachines PC itself for only $50 (I KID YOU NOT).

Now who sells a new $50 PC?

Prices aside, and this years are relatively bad, starting the deals on Wednesday and Thursday night is ridiculous. The only thing I see I would really go out after goes on sale at 8pm Thursday night. WTH?!? I'm not even going to be done with dinner by then!

No, that was actually a Toshiba laptop for $399.99, and it was the lowest-price you could get during Black Friday 2005. Next year in 2006, they had another Toshiba laptop again for $249.99, and then in 2007, it dropped to $229.99 ($179.99 laptop after returning $49.99 printer).

After years of creating false consumer perception, Black Friday is now a retailer's wet dream.

I don't see the big deal really. The average person is still pleased, so the ebay resellers can't make as much of a killing. I don't blame them for trying to keep people in the store by staggering the sale items. Makes sense. Some of the excitement of waiting outside at night might be lost though, but best buy will always be packed with a line for something. Of course I've only ever bothered going to wal-mart and maybe officemax on black friday, nowhere else.

Cyber Monday, and the weekend before it is def way better than BF or my opion

Yep, that was it. I knew it was a stupid low price. I mean, looking back at the specs we'd laugh to pay that much but at the time they weren't bad deals.
It was around that time when the major stores broke the $100 price for portable DVD players and everyone thought that was a huge deal as well.

That always had me scratching my head as well, when you could get the same candy on sale the week before for less, and you had a greater selection too.

lets face it retailers know 90% of consumers will spend money on black friday even if the same sh*t was a dollar less the week before.

the tv deals arent bad, get over it resellers that you cant stand in line this year and peddle a laptop on ebay on that friday night. be happy, spend money and boost the false consumer confidence :)

BF is still a huge deal and always will be because as mentioned on the first page... a lot of people don't really know what a good deal is. Example? Well I live in a city of 50,000 and there were well over 200 people in line at Best Buy last year at 10:45pm. What in the world are you going to get when you are #214 in line that you can't get later? I don't get it it. Target was even worse, the line wrapped around the building and far off into the darkness beyond that. Walmart was so packed that people were parking roughly 1/4 mile away in parking lots of other stores that didn't open at midnight.

There are some bad deals, no question. I really can't believe the Target ad for one. But as also mentioned in this thread... look for deals on what you want and go get it.

At some point, they are going to have to retire the term "Black Friday". It no longer exists. What used to be Black Friday is now just a day of wrapping up all the Thanksgiving Day sales. I'm not seeing any stellar deals this year. Good deals, yes, but nothing making me want to shop on Thanksgiving. Can't wait until they start messing with "Cyber Monday".

i dont know whats going on at your target but this tuesday I got 12oz bags of name brand candy for .80 per bag. 26 oz bags for 2.29...everything was 75% off.

I miss when stores would open at 5am on Friday. I hate that they are trying to take away Thanksgiving by opening at 8pm (and earlier) on Thursday.

Due to Hurricane Sandy, the Targets near me were closed for a few days. When they reopened, they went right to 75 and 90% off everything. One of the few bright spots in an otherwise awful 2 week span.

I think this year is still good for people looking for new TVs. There's a 47" in 3D that's less than $600; seems pretty good to me. The only thing I want is an SSD though.

The best deals will only be obtained by the smart shoppers all year long.

Search sites like Ebay for sellers with discounts because they are running low on monthly bills. If you want a product research everywhere online, then search google for coupons for that site.

Finding the best price is a waiting game, black Friday is for impulse buyers and the stores know it.

I start my xmas shopping 6 months early. i always find better deals in June than i do Nov and Dec. Stores need sales during those slow summer months.

Having looked at the leaked ads for the majority of players I can only say I'm on the 'pretty disappointing' side.

Some of Lowe's BF deals are the Skill table saw for $79 and the Werner work platform for $17. Those were BF delas last year as well and I could have sworn for less.. (I purchased both online on wednesday night.)

I agree that you can find better deals the rest of the year if you keep your eyes open. So far, I think this BF I will be sleeping in and leave the standing in line to those not knowing better.

I think a lot of the reason for the lack of BF deals is the lack of B&M retail competition, at least for consumer electronics. Since 2007-2008, so many brick and mortar stores have closed down. The only OfficeMax in my area went out, the only Office Depot as well, Circuit City went under, CompUSA went under, 6th Ave Electronics gone as well. Now Best Buy is basically closing up most of their stores in the next couple of years. Pretty soon it's going to be Walmart/Target and Amazon for everything else.

With that said, I'm pretty sad about BF going downhill. I haven't gone out since 2008. I miss getting up at 3-4 am to go drive with my brother (who is a fellow SDer) and some friends. We would find laptops, printers, TVs, etc for dirt cheap, then get McDs for breakfast and head back home. So many good memories...

I think people need to understand that sites like slickdeals and others allow for people to share info about deals and mistakes retailers make have had an impact on the deals we find. Price matching and all the other ways we have learned to manipulate the system were bound to force them to change how they operate. They were bound to adjust and limit the hit they take as the info gets out and people start stocking up on the best deals.

There are no more $19.00 dewalt combo pack days anymore. I bought at least 25 of those in college. They were one of the top 10 slick deals ever, but once word got out, they were gone.

On a side note the economy has something to do with the level of deals you will see. As income goes up, I no longer have to hunt like a madman to find the items like I once did. My time is worth far more than the savings.

$10 for a 1600 MS Points is a pretty good deal that I plan on trying to scoop up.

Yes, just like department stores have weekly "Biggest Sale Event of the Year". Black Friday is just a jargon, hype, marketing gimmick.

If someone enjoys early wakeup and standing in the cold/rain/snow, lost time waiting in checkout lanes, traffic headade around mall areas, the agony of finding parking spaces in overcrowded malls, then Black Fridays might worth the hassles. Most of SDers can find their best deals on any day of the year, not just on Black Friday!

Happy bargain hunting.

here we go again...