A Best Buy Black Friday Shopping Experience

To Our readers: ***This article was written almost four years ago and things may have changed. If you happen to stand outside of Best Buy this year waiting for a Black Friday deal, please let us know if things have changed for the better and we'll be happy to rewrite a favorable black Friday experience.***

My husband and oldest son ate their fill of Turkey and cranberries last Thursday on Thanksgiving and left out the door to go stand in line outside of Best Buy to purchase one of their Black Friday deals. The deal in question, if any of you are wondering, was a Toshiba Laptop. The laptop was a door buster special at $249. Meaning you cannot buy it except for when the doors open at 5:00 am. It is a first come first serve deal. It only makes sense that those who stand outside the longest would get the best deals, right?

When they got there at 6:00 pm there were 14 people in front of my husband. Not everyone in front of him was buying that particular laptop, they were there for other deals; my husband felt assured he would be getting one of the laptops. This made him feel better, since he had 10 hours left to stand out in the cold. Also, this particular laptop deal was ONLY ADVERTISED ONLINE and not everyone in line even knew about this phenomenal deal. I spent $599 for the exact same laptop four months earlier.

By 10:00 pm families with small children begin arriving and the line was extending way to the back of the parking lot. People were putting up tents preparing for the long night. By 3:00 am, more and more people begin to horde themselves into the line. People begin cutting in front of other people. The line was not so nice anymore. The manager of Best Buy came out telling people that they were not allowed to cut in front of people and that he was calling the sheriff. People cut in front of other’s anyway.

By 4:00 am, the manager came out with flyers of all the great deals they had. On this flyer was the $249 Laptop. When people saw this particular laptop deal they started calling up their friends and family on their cell phones. Mobs and mobs of people starting coming, cutting in front of the line where their friends and family had stood all night long.

Around 4:30 am, Best Buy employees begin asking each person in line what they were there to buy. And then he would hand them a ticket for that item. By the time the manager got to my husband and asked him what he was there for, they had no laptops left because now there were 60 or more people (cutters) in front of him!

My husband and son stood outside in the cold overnight waiting for the doors to open inhaling second hand secret smoke all night long in 30ish degree temps most of the night for nothing. Be ready to deal with this same kind of treatment, unless Best Buy has fixed this problem. This article was written four years ago and every year it seems to be the same thing, so we hear from other folks who stand outside all night long waiting for the Black Friday Deals.

What did my husband learn from this experience? Unless you are the first FEW people in line, the Black Friday door buster deals are a scam; almost a bait and switch practice. Only the people who cut in line get the deals that have limited amounts, such as the Toshiba Laptop deal. The principle of the whole thing is those people who came at the last minute for the laptops did not stand in line all night long. No. They stood in line for 1 hour at the most! This is very unethical and there is not much you can do about it.

Later that day, I got online and did some research of my own, and found out that the experience they went through is the same one EVERYONE who stands in line goes through. Last minute buyers show up and cut in the line. Black Friday is not for honest working folks. Black Friday is for the greedy and dishonest people who cut in line.

Here is my suggestion to retailers: They should give out the tickets for the items the minute people arrive to stand in line. That way it ensures the first come, first serve policy and also ensures that principles and business ethics stay in line with ethical standards. But I don’t think the latter is going to happen.

Black Friday lines are only for the mob mentality. Save your money and wait for a genuine sale when they come out. No words could truly put it all together as well as this video did for us. Happy shopping.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=HZJVZ2p223o