Demontooth

It was pandemonium this morning. There have been people camped out at a Best Buy around here since Tuesday. People are INSANE. This was my last time going out and I wouldn't have went this morning but we were trying to score a Wii at EBGames.

cornflakeguy

I don't understand why the above post was made in a forum called:

H O T D E A L S

tasha99

I went to the Best Buy in Springfield, Oregon at 5:30 after Thanksgiving dinner, thinking I was insane and would be standing alone in line, in the rain in the dark, till other people joined me after midnight. Not so--I was 20th. I thought it was a lot of fun, though. People set up shelters and shared, so no one up front got too wet. One guy made a Jack in the Box run, brought back tons of food, and wouldn't even let anyone pay him for the burgers.

At about 3, some people started trying to inch up the line, but the first people in line had made a list--so we knew by name who the first 80 people were. When the Best Buy employees showed up, they had us line up in list order and passed out vouchers. When the doors opened, people from the back were kind of pushy, but I'm not sure why since you couldn't get any of the doorbusters without a voucher.

I got a desktop with lcd monitor and canon printer (emachines, but better than waiting till I got my taxes or worse, charging it), an mp3 player, an Ipod dock/speaker set, and a 1 gig flash drive for around $280. I thought it was completely worth it, and I plan on saving up so next year I can get some laptops and a big screen tv.

Jimmy James

A lot of it is about greed. There is also a lot of stupidity at play. I know I pass up $350-400 notebook computers about once a month just scanning a bargains site. Is it worth saving $100-150 if you have to spend a minimum of 8 hours in line to do it? To some people, it's an obvious yes. To some people, I admit the effective $15-20 an hour savings is worth it. That's fine, as long as those people aren't torturing themselves doing it. It's the same if people just do it for the thrill. I was going to pop over at the Best Buy at around 3:45 AM to see about getting the $250 Toshiba mostly for the thrill. I didn't when I saw the 100 folks in line at 9 PM, and I hold no ill will toward them. I hope they enjoyed themselves and got a bargain.

If they did sell notebook computers for $250 with regularity, they'd sell plenty. There would be plenty of people (perhaps like you) who would be looking for that $150 notebook computer, though. Again, I can't blame people for that. Be it because of money, thrill, bragging rights, or whatever it's pretty clear that it's just human nature to want a bargain.

TheKobra

When it comes to Black Friday I look at my time vs how much I will save. It it cost me more to stand in line versus paying for the item at full price. I will pay full price.
Lest say you make $23.00 per hour and you stand in line (the the guy above for 18 horus) 18*23=$414 of your time or we could even say you earn $11.50 per hour, it still would cost your $207.00 of your time to sit in front of the store. I guess if you can not afford a Laptop at the normal price this is for you. But hell if I plan on waiting outside of a store for anything or even in the rain. You guy/gals have what it takes to get the job done...and maybe some extra time on your hands.

Demontooth

My time, overnight sitting in the cold, is worth at least $75 an hour. Add some rain and 1,000 insane people and we are getting up in the hundreds.

tbwmp88

D.Pham5GLTE (>60GB)

well, i bought a 1gb memory stick and cordless phone from CC, with free shipping. bought a bunch of dvds and a razor from BB and had to pay 15-20 shipping, which is well worth it for me, so i didn't have to wait in some crazy lines

The Reaper

davethomasowns

I went out at about 1:30 pm on thursday (bestbuy) and was number 4. I picked up the 42" panny plasma and the $250 toshiba notebook. I also picked up the Wii!

At about 5pm we counted over 100 people and at 1am it was well wrapped completely around the shopping center!

namlook

Funny thing is many similar discounts as the BF prices have shown up on the various Hot Deals forums throughout the year. I just sit back and laugh at the camping out.

tasha99

Not to be Pollyanna, but waiting in line this year made me understand why people DO camp out for things like this. I remember a DVDTalk member getting mocked a year or two ago (say it isn't so ) for saying he liked waiting in the Star Wars movie premiere line. I get what he was talking about now--it's not just about the prize at the end--actually waiting in line and shooting the breeze with some people you wouldn't normally meet otherwise is fun.

namlook

For a few hours it might be fun but not for 24 hours+ sleeping on concrete.

Jimmy James

One big reason I haven't ever done BF (at least since anybody has been calling it that) is that I don't really enjoy meeting strange people IRL. That's what the Internet is for in my book. If there are a bunch of people who really do enjoy it, maybe I should set up a line ride like on that South Park episode.

Barney1234

I'd rather pay the going rate, and use coupons, pay slightly higher than BF prices, than wait in line and fight crowds. Glad I don't have/need/want to do this type of shopping.

Sweet Baby James

Maybe in Oregon, not in Connecticut(no offense to Rogue and speedy).

John-In-VA

Fixed

tasha99

Yeah, I can handle the rain but not the cold. It was in the high 30's and rainy, but with tents/pavilions/and tarps, it was pretty comfortable. The people in the next shelter area had set up outdoor heaters, which I think would be a necessity if it got below freezing. I don't think I'd wait 24 hours, but 12 or so wasn't bad at all. I think the people in tents brought air mattresses, and a lot of people just slept in their chairs. I didn't sleep at all. Only part I didn't like was the portapotty since I think they're gross, but at least there was one.

big whoppa

Standing in line for a couple of hours is one thing. Standing in line for several hours and camping out is another. It's gotten too extreme. I think a lot of this madness is caused by ebay.

RichC2

My first Black Friday was 7 years ago (1999), we got there around 4 AM, the line started at about 11 PM. That was still the longest line I'd ever seen - stretching 5 store lengths, crossing the parking lot, and hitting the restraunts down the strip (was at a Best Buy)

And that was before they did vouchers, it was absolute chaos. Though, the people in line preping to kill those that were running across the parking lot was absolutely priceless, and would have been an utter mess if the cops, who were called in at around 4:30 AM, weren't there.

And this had absolutely nothing to do with eBay, but did have everything to do with Videocards at $200 under cost (as per employee pricing).

I drove by on my way out of town at around 4:00 am this time, the line was long but not to the same extent. I will never attend another Black Friday sale at Best Buy though, nothing could get me to stand in those checkout lines *shudder*.

Havok83

I camped outside Best Buy at 11:30 for the 22 inch Westinghouse LCD widescreen monitor. There were about 100 people in front of me and easily over 800 by the time I left

GetrDone

I camped at best buy starting at around 5 pm. there were about 40 people in front of me. I got the westinghouse 32' lcd tv and some other stuff. everyone there around me were extremely friendly and even offering each other food and drinks that they brought along with them. this was my first time ever camping for an item and it was alot of fun. I also got interviewed by the news so that was an added bonus =)

kenbuzz

I wanted one of the same items to wall-mount in our exercize room and slave to a DVD player. Got up at 3:30am Friday morning, drove to the Bloomington BB and was in line by a little after 4. The line was two store-lengths by that point, and it grew to 3 by the time the doors opened at 5am. I had no problem getting the 22, a $30 2MB SD card, and a pair of $30 2MB USB drives. Yeah, I spent an hour waiting outside the store for the doors to open, an hour in the store in line waiting to get into the computer section, and a third hour in the checkout line, but a lot of people spent a lot more time and came away empty-handed.

I wish I had stood in line at the next-door Staples... they opened at 6am and ran out of the $150 Mio C310x GPS units within minutes. The BB still had 22" LCDs in stock when I was checking out at 7am. If I had done the stores in a different order, I could've gotten both. Oh well.

Shoveler

I got in line at midnight, with about 70 people in front of me. When my friends arrived at 2, the line had grown to about 200 people, and when they started handing out the "tickets" for the hot items, there had to be about 500 people in line. Between 4 (tickets) and 5 (doors opened), the line grew to exceed 700 people, and went out of sight so that we couldn't tell how many were there.

I got the eMachines desktop bundle for $189, and got ticket 18 of 20. I also got one of the $129 camcorders for my daughter to record her classes (she is a student teacher in music ed, so the crappiness of the camcorder will not detract from her use to review her conducting). I also got a couple of those 250 GB external harddrives, 4 digital picture frames, lots of DVDs, memory cards, flash drives, etc.

When our estimates for the line exceeded 400, we had to start wondering what would compel those people to stand in line for more than an hour that they actually believed they had a chance of getting! I was practically in the front of the line, and wouldn't have gotten a laptop if that had been what I was after!

This is the first time I've stood in line for any length of time, and I only did it because the weather was fairly mild on Thanksgiving. Still cold during the night, but no where near as bad as in past years. Thanks global warming!