Fighting isn’t bad here and I’ve never seen anyone so much as shove someone else.

I definitely agree that avoiding the biggest and busiest stores is a good strategy. We hit a few stores and specifically avoided Best Buy knowing the line there would be insane. Office Depot and Office Max weren’t bad. We got to the stores at 6am and didn’t stand in lines. We got 2 of the key things we wanted and then just did some general shopping otherwise.

I’m SURE that the extra cost and effort for the stores is very worth while. Black Friday is one of their top 10 shopping days and can be the biggest day. Thats certainly worth paying people for a few more hours work since those hours are jam packed full of business. If the stores were empty then the cost of wages wouldn’t make sense, but when the store is packed full then thats the best time to be open extra hours.

Most stores have some loss leaders. But most of the sales are not for those deep discount items. Plus most items during Christmas season seem to be on sale most of the time anyway.

Jim

I think Black Friday is another one of those marketing gimmicks that works only because things are deeply discounted. I haven’t done the BF thing in years because you can often get just as good deals later on. Sure, you won’t get one of the two digital cameras at deep discount but if you’re sleeping but if you roll up to a store that’s already 100 deep, you probably won’t get it either.

On an interesting note, did you know that in 1939 Franklin D. Roosevelt changed Thanksgiving Day to the Thursday before last (instead of the last Thursday as set by Abraham Lincoln in 1863) of November to extend the Christmas shopping season in hope of stimulating the economy?

On the flipside, their are way easier ways to get deals. I have a method for getting electronics cheap which isn’t particularly clever, but I’ve found that most people still don’t effectively navigate sites like Ebay to get the best deals.

STEM rule.
http://www.theslackermethod.com/?p=50

We got to the mall at 9 on friday. It’s one of the largest malls in the state (granted, the state is Iowa) and it was crowded, but not insane. Certainly, we missed some 4 AM sales – but since I get up at 5:15 on work days, there is no way I’m going to get up that early to shop on a day off.

We went to another mall today about 30 miles away, as well as the Toys-R-Us there (we have a one year old). The mall is one of two malls in the town … and is having serious problems. If it wasn’t for massive flooding this summer which forced county/city offices (and FEMA, SBA, etc) to relocate that mall, very little of the retail space would be occupied (it’s an ill wind that blows no good, I guess). There is a rumor that another anchor may be leaving in a year … if it does, the mall is likely going to end up as office space. It’s black Saturday, and the place was basically a ghost town.

The Toys-R-Us wasn’t particularly busy, either (I don’t think we had to wait in line at all – definitely not more than a few minutes) – but a neighbor who was there yesterday waited 90 minutes in line. erg.

btw, some line psychology to allow you to pick short lines:

- Line 13 is often shorter than the others. I’m not saying that everyone avoids it, but some people do.

- Single men get checked out very fast. Married people and single woman seem to take longer – keeping kids from going wild is part of it, but they also seem more likely to complain about a price. Single guys just seem to be more willing to shrug off a $1 overcharge to get out the door. Maybe I’m wrong about this – it’s not as if I have done a big research study on the topic.

- Try to figure out how many purchasers are in line. There might be 6 guys in a line, but maybe one guy has a small basket, and the rest are just tagging along. Thus, longer lines can sometimes result in shorter waiting times.

Even many of those who stay home to avoid the crowds still start thinking of it as “time to shop” when they see the frenzy.

Me, I never buy anything on Black Friday, but sometimes I like to go to the mall just because it’s so bustling. (Although I’d rather go by bus, because you can’t park anywhere.) That’s actually one of my frugal tips: shopping and buying are two separate activities.

As for not shopping at the big box stores: I become political when times are tough. I try to buy local, or at least from companies I want to support. (I treat each purchase as a donation to the economy — what part of the economy do I want to support?) Sometimes that’s not frugal, but I figure it’s pound-foolish to support companies that drain the economy.

As for the line, well… they had MA’s enforcing and to avert rushes, and they didn’t stop me so… The moral: Yeah, it may have been a little rude, but that’s what you get for being stupid and getting in line at 3am. Either do it at 11pm the night before like the hardcore freaks, or come in after the doors open like the sane people! Either way, it was worth it cuz I got a good brand-name blu-ray player for real cheap.

I think you might have hit the right place (having been at the Pearl Harbor NEX, I can see what you are saying), but you usually can’t hope to walk into Best Buy any more than 8 minutes after it opens and get anything.

I understand the idea of having it because everyone else does, but I think some companies could take a stance and say, “There’s no need for us to lose money on this day” (again if my hypothesis is right and they are really losing money. Yes, they’d take a revenue hit, but their profits would appear to be better.

First, I left early, but not incredibly early. I’ve found it’s not even worth waiting in lines. There may be some awesome doorbuster sales that I missed, but I’d probably miss them anyway unless I showed up @ midnight and camped out. I’m not that insane, and the prices are probably not low enough to be worthwhile. However, MOST of the really good sale items will be there until at least noon.
I got into the Pearl Harbor NEX @ 5am. They opened at 4am, and people were still streaming in from the incredibly long line (probably 2-3 blocks), but I just waltzed right in. It was wall-to-wall crowded, and it took me 30 minutes to walk to the electronics section, grab the blu-ray player that was on sale (and a couple other items), and check out. Minimal lineage. The mall was the same way (I didn’t even try Wal-Mart this year b/c I heard there were fights breaking out)

Second, my conclusion is that stores HAVE to have Black Friday. Why? Because everyone else does. At the mall, every store that is having BF Sales was packed; the rest were dead. I think it started with people over the last few decades trying to out-beat the competition with a sale that much earlier before Christmas, to keep the buying streak going longer. It’s actually starting to evolve into big sales before Thanksgiving now, which is just ridiculous. 10 years from now, you’ll think of “Christmas In July” in a whole new meaning — Black Friday will become the Day After Independance Day.