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posted by
cmn32480
on Monday November 21 2016, @03:48PM
from the all-I-want-for-Christmas-is-my-two-front-teeth dept.
from the all-I-want-for-Christmas-is-my-two-front-teeth dept.
Soon to be upon us is Black Friday — the time of year when retailers try and outdo each other to corner extra sales. In recent years, retailers have been springing their deals earlier and earlier trying to get a jump on the other retailers. Some amazing deals can be had if you know where and when to look.
In light of that, what things are you hoping for? New computer? Mobile phone? Tablet? Game?
Alternatively, what great deals have you found (both on-line and brick-and-mortar)?
I think it would be wonderful if someone, by posting a wishlist item here, were able to find a great deal known by someone else in the community.
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Tech-Related Wishlists and Deals for Black Friday and the Holidays
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The last time I saw him he was walking down Lover's Lane holding his own hand.
-- Fred Allen
(Score: 3, Insightful) by requerdanos on Monday November 21 2016, @04:57PM
My girlfriend works for a major regional department store and so never, never gets to take Thanksgiving day off. None of their employees gets Thanksgiving day off. (For comparison, doctors, nurses, and law enforcement officers that I know frequently work every other such holiday; it's just the retailers that go all-in on this nonsense.)
Where I live, this is a traditional day for families to spend time together. Eat a home-cooked meal, watch sports on TV, slow down from the fast everyday pace and look around and be thankful. Thanksgiving is on a Thursday each year, and that day and the next are usually holidays from work to enable the family get-togethers that are important in our culture.
Apparently someone noticed that one of these holidays (the day after Thanksgiving proper, which is always a Friday) is the approximate point in the year where retailers get out of the negative in their accounting and start to actually make money for the year. Retailers found this out and lost their freaking minds. Black Friday sale! Black Friday this! Black Friday That! Black Friday Starts Early on Thursday! Black Friday For Real Please Come Give Us Your Money We Will Have Loss Leaders!
Thus there is a race for retailers to be the worst to their employees, requiring them to work not only on the day after the Thanksgiving holiday, but on Thanksgiving itself because some retailers push the opening time for "Black Friday" earlier and earlier, even into the day before(!), and other retailers must follow suit, crapping on their employees, or lose sales($).
This has led me to adopt the following personal policies:
1. Do no holiday shopping at all at retail/department stores open on Thanksgiving day, a family holiday.
2. Stay away from anything with "Black Friday" in the name, preferring other sources/places to buy whatever I'm going to buy.
The impact of my doing this amounts to no more than a rounding error, I know. But if we all did this, it would make no sense for stores to open on the Thanksgiving cultural holiday, and they'd have to knock it off (or lose money paying so many staff to be in empty stores). That's what I want for black Friday.
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Monday November 21 2016, @05:22PM
Actually, last year, in 2015, the number of people who shopped on Black Friday dropped by 13 million people, or about 15% [thebalance.com] compared to 2014, and even that was lower than 2013's number. So lots of people are starting to figure out that it's more scam than deal, and in any event a completely unnecessary bit of nonsense.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by VLM on Monday November 21 2016, @05:30PM
Or they're just poorer.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 21 2016, @08:29PM
> Or they're just poorer.
Median household income has increased since 2012. [stlouisfed.org] With the fastest growth in 2015. The numbers for 2016 are not in yet, but median wages reached the highest they've ever been last quarter. [stlouisfed.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 21 2016, @09:20PM
It's pretty easy to make the numbers look impressive when you're entirely changing how you determine them: http://www.forbes.com/sites/mikepatton/2015/01/29/consumer-price-index-undergoes-most-significant-change-in-25-years/#7730e8177fd6 [forbes.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 21 2016, @10:35PM
The consumer price index has nothing to do with income or wages.
If anything the household income number is misleading low because the average number of people per household has been decreasing over the years due to divorce and people simply staying single for longer. So the amount of income per person is even higher.
Sorry to be all positive, after all Trump told you the country is losing.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 22 2016, @12:38AM
> sees GGP's stlouisfed link's chart axis in terms of CPI adjusted dollars.
> points out that CPI methodology was significantly altered in 2015.
> gets told that apparently CPI has nothing to do with income or wages.
> gets really confused.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 22 2016, @12:41AM
Same AC here. Just wanted to mention that I didn't vote for Trump, assclown. You might be new here, but not every argument you'll come across on the internet is a tribal "Pepsi vs Coke" issue, brah.
(Score: 1) by zoward on Monday November 21 2016, @05:37PM
I wonder how much of this is because they decided to sleep in late and order from Amazon or NewEgg instead. I routinely go shopping insanely early on on Black Friday, but its because I find it to be fun, not because I expect the Very Best Deals (tm). If you're at a smaller store, you may find an odd sort of comraderie among the early morning shoppers. It's also a good excuse to stock up on tech tchochke's - thumb drives, SD cards, etc - often at giveaway prices.
(Score: 2) by jmorris on Monday November 21 2016, @06:14PM
Yea, Black Friday used to be fun. I never saw the near riot sort of things that seem to happen in the 'urban cores' of big cities. Lots of folks out at 2am in a festive mood. But then they moved Flack Friday to Black Thanksgiving and I said, "No."
It is like most things, if it is good they think more is better. So now it is Black November, the best deals are on Thanksgiving and nobody is happy. But the pendulum is actually swinging back now, something I didn't expect to happen. Retailers are figuring out that if they kill Thanksgiving by being open and preventing those millions in the retail sector from being able to celebrate, it has side effects; it kills Black Friday.
I have worked retail, so I try real hard to avoid going in a store on holidays when they outta be closed. But on the other hand, I still remember as a teen working in a small grocery store. There were two in town and they would collude a bit, one would open on Thanksgiving and the other would take XMas, open till noon to serve folks who forgot something and pay the employees overtime for it. I'd always volunteer for that and then go home and feast, that worked out ok.
(Score: 2) by AthanasiusKircher on Monday November 21 2016, @06:46PM
Yea, Black Friday used to be fun. I never saw the near riot sort of things that seem to happen in the 'urban cores' of big cities. Lots of folks out at 2am in a festive mood. But then they moved Flack Friday to Black Thanksgiving and I said, "No."
Agreed. I always tend to avoid Black Friday, and the move back to Thanksgiving Day has been disturbing. A few years back, I actually did go out on Thanksgiving night to get one particular item. We ended our dinner early, so I had nothing else planned. It was a rather outrageous deal (saving a few hundred dollars) on something that a member of my family really wanted, and I knew I couldn't really justify the cost in my budget at normal price.
Online inventories suggested that the local store was out, so I drove about 30 minutes to the one in the next town. The feeling I got walking into the store was just disturbing... it felt like some sort of disaster had happened (or was going to happen) -- stuff strewn about the aisles, half out of shipping boxes, cages set up around the more expensive items (making it all feel even stranger), people wandering aimlessly about, seemingly dazed and confused. And sipping sodas -- I don't know why I remember that, but it seemed like an ordinate number of people were walking around with drinks in their hands for a store. It's almost like we were all stuck watching some weird movie that somehow became real; I was waiting to see someone munching on popcorn in the aisles.
And of course they were out of my item already anyway (at like 9:00 on Thanksgiving night, having opened an hour earlier or something). There was this odd feeling of depression and desperation coming off of many of these people... were they folks without families to spend Thanksgiving evening with? Poor folks desperate for some deal on an item they really needed, so they were actually torn away from their families on this holiday? Were they folks used to the excitement of early morning or midnight openings on Black Friday, but they showed up and it was all a bit of a "bust"?
I felt bad even going in the first place for reasons others have mentioned. But partly I wanted to get an item, and partly I was curious to see what it was like. I wasn't that disappointed by failing to get the item -- but I came away depressed from the general feeling around the store. A terrible way to end a holiday.
Never again.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Monday November 21 2016, @08:28PM
When was Black Friday ever fun? Even in the 1980s, I remember going to the mall one Black Friday at opening time - parking lot was full before the doors opened, people parking in the grass and up and down the highway - not much in the way of camraderie there, more like war stories.
In the late 1990s, I ventured out late one Black Friday into a Macy's and it looked like bombs had gone off, all the clothes were in piles on the floor, staff was beyond shell shocked.
The only motivator I've ever heard for participating in this madness is "Great Deals." Personally, I think shoppers enjoy the mayhem for its own sake, but nobody will admit to that.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Monday November 21 2016, @11:30PM
Does that differentiate between online and on-site shopping?
Surely with easy online shopping these days, a lot of people have finally figured out that getting up early and fighting traffic and crowds for some sales is just a big waste of time and gasoline. Why bother with that when you can just go on amazon.com or wherever and buy stuff there with some mouse clicks?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by DeathMonkey on Monday November 21 2016, @06:33PM
Conversely, consider supporting those business that have pledged to stay closed on Black Friday. [forbes.com]
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Monday November 21 2016, @08:18PM
The major grocery chain in Florida (Publix) used to be closed on Sundays (in the 1970s) - family owned company, family values. Nobody starved. By the mid-80s, they "had to" open on Sunday for "competitive reasons." Yeah, like they were already running all the other major chains into the ground, but to seal the deal they had to take their Sunday business away too - but, being a "family store" they acknowledged the sacrifice that people were making and paid double time on Sundays. Which reduced to time and a half by the late 1980s, which reduced to time+$1 by 1990... I don't know if they even acknowledge Sunday as "family time" anymore, but they've effectively taken over 85%+ of the grocery business in the state, so now we've got a virtual monopoly player that sets their prices as they choose, plus bit players that are all priced higher because they don't have the distribution logistics and volume to compete.
Oh, but don't worry, the story is the same in the shopping mall - somewhere in the 1980s a single conglomerate managed to acquire almost every major department store chain - they kept the separate branding, but now control the selection and prices in all of your stores from a single profit center. Ever wonder why all the shoes in the mall are such crap, even though there are 6 "different" stores to choose from? Yeah, that's why.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 21 2016, @10:10PM
a single conglomerate managed to acquire almost every major department store chainHey, at least they'll close on Thanksgiving.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Monday November 21 2016, @08:24PM
Maybe I'm just an old coot, but I found an even easier solution: don't shop in the mall, ever. I take the kids to the mall as a "social education outing" about 3 times a year, and we usually just buy food. I think the only thing I've bought from any department store in the last 10 years is 2 pair of pants and some socks.
We've got a hell of a cardboard disposal problem at my house, but the mall parking lot doesn't have to worry about paving spaces for my car to park in.
🌻🌻 [google.com]