Best Buy #281 – The Night Before ‘Black Friday’ originally uploaded by David Haines
Last week’s poll asked what the best part of Thanksgiving dinner is for everyone. We ended up with the same result, much like the previous impromptu poll posted by the Minneapolis Farmers Market, with sides winning by a landslide. What was surprising to me, however, was that the turkey was a distant third losing to even wine! Now that’s something I never would have suspected.
This week’s poll has to do with holiday shopping, how you do it, and if it has changed this year. We never get into the Black Friday crap much but last year we did stand in line, for a long ass time in the cold, to get the door buster deals at Half Price Books (Sank believes that Half Price Books and Wal-Mart had the best deals this year which you can read in his Black Friday Report). This year, however, I was smart and used Jason DeRusha’s Black Friday blog post to help me find what I was looking for online.
With a baby on the way we have been buying a lot of shit for him so our budget has been limited but we definitely needed a new computer for the house. We have an aging PowerPC based Mac (circa 2005) and two work laptops. My wife needs something a little more mobile and I wanted something with a built in camera so that we can do easy video conferencing (Google Talk’s video chat client is fucking awesome BTW) with my parents and me (when I’m at lunch at work) after the baby is born. A netbook was the obvious answer due to the low prices (I snagged one from Dell for $266 including tax) and the fact that they run OS X so the need for maintenance is low for me (spyware, viruses, etc). Thankfully after refreshing Dell’s site about 50 times between 9:30 and 10:30, the door buster deal popped up and I was done Black Friday shopping by 10:45 on Thursday.
On Saturday we went out to Home Depot to see if they had any .99 poinsettias left (they didn’t) but we picked up two anyway–which is what they wanted you to do (one for home, one as a gift) and then promptly ended all holiday shopping for the year. The only things that people are going to get from here out are the holiday cards that will go out in the mail tomorrow (sorry folks–we’re poor).
According to online analytics powerhouse Coremetrics, online sales were way up in 2009 over 2008 and showed that people were willing to spend more but use external sites to find their deals (look ma, I’m a statistic!)
Holiday Shopping?
- Not yet (44.0%, 20 Votes)
- Online (29.0%, 13 Votes)
- I'm a Grinch (11.0%, 5 Votes)
- Black Friday (7.0%, 3 Votes)
- Cyber Monday (7.0%, 3 Votes)
- Thursday (2.0%, 1 Votes)
Total Voters: 45
Loading ...So, I’m wondering how you went about your holiday shopping this year. Have you already started? If so, did you go out on Thursday to those stores that hate their employees or did you wait for Friday like everyone else? Perhaps you joined me and the growing legions of people who preferred to diss “Cyber Monday” and instead do your Black Friday shopping at home from your couch? Perhaps you haven’t done any holiday shopping yet and prefer to wait until the crowds are down a bit before you do. Whatever you have to say about holiday shopping go ahead and comment on as I’d love to hear what you think about this one. After you comment please be sure to vote and then feel free to check out our expired polls in the archive or read through the previous posts about polls here.
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November 29th, 2009 at 8:04 am
Holiday Shopping Poll: http://tinyurl.com/yjb3bno
This comment was originally posted on Twitter
November 29th, 2009 at 11:51 am
Holiday Shopping Poll | Bill Roehl: My wife needs something a little more mobile and I wanted something with a .. http://bit.ly/6MbjUk
This comment was originally posted on Twitter
November 29th, 2009 at 12:42 pm
I admit I became one of “those” people racing to a store to get a toy. I ended up getting these zhu zhu pet toys for a friend that has 3 kids. Society and news stories have told me that if I care about these kids I must get them this year for christmas.
It’s the first time ive been in that group. I actually got very lucky. The sad thing is seeing and hearing parents rushing around for a $7.99 toy and these kids have no clue how much work parents are putting in to get their hands on them
November 29th, 2009 at 2:11 pm
My wife and I have done most of ours already online. We still have to run to stores for a couple things that we don’t want to pay shipping on, but other than that and a couple more online purchases, we’re good to go.
November 29th, 2009 at 3:57 pm
My wife and her 6 sisters tend to make an event out of it, hitting the stores when they first open at 4am this year. Though my wife dropped out this year as she was scheduled to work at 8am friday. Not sure why they like to do that. I usually try to figure out anything I want or should get for anyone prior to that day and then do online shopping for deals. This year I actually bought a couple things the week before black friday. A new router and 23″ monitor. Neither of which were on sale this weekend.
The last time I stood in line, early in the morning for something was for a Nintendo WII that my sons really wanted. Note this was a year after they first came out and they were still impossible to get. We got a line on Toys’R Us going to have 10 at each store. So my youngest son and I head over to the Burnsville Toy’s R Us at 4:30 am to wait in line on like the 4th of jan. Surprise, it’s cold, and no one has climbed out of their car to make a line, but there are about 6 cars already in the lot. About 5:30am someone decides to start the line, which means everyone gets out of their car and makes a line. About 6:30 someone in the store lets us stand inside the main door, but not into the store yet. They also check stock and hand us “receipts” for each of the Wii’s they have. they had 20 and we got one. After the line got to 20, no one else bothered as we, the line would tell them no more.
My kids now are old enough, they can wait in the line on their own. Something my oldest did recently when some WWE Smackdown game came out.
November 29th, 2009 at 4:13 pm
Holiday Shopping Poll | Bill Roehl: My wife needs something a little more mobile and I wanted something with a buil… http://bit.ly/53Sq5w
This comment was originally posted on Twitter
November 29th, 2009 at 10:45 pm
I’ve done quite a bit of our shopping online and purchased a few items in stores. I stayed far away from all retail establishments on Friday (I worked). I still have a few things to order from Amazon, and we need to plan out the Christmas sweets we’re going to make as gifts. Decorating will happen over this week, so fun, I LOVE Christmas!
November 30th, 2009 at 7:47 am
Typically, I do most of my shopping online, for less personal items. If I am shopping for clothes or jewelery that I need to look at in person, I’ll go to the stores. Tech stuff, or little cute stocking stuffers however, generally come from online, because I really dislike the mass of bumbling idiots who can’t park, walk thru the mall in a shopaholic daze and are just annoying to be around with kids running wild.
December 1st, 2009 at 1:24 pm
ok, i’m just going to throw this out there…
if you bring a tent and plant it outside a store the evening before it opens… you’re a dork.
:)
December 13th, 2009 at 7:37 am
[...] Last week’s poll asked if you had done your holiday shopping yet and how you went about doing …. It would appear that the majority of you are procrastinators as most people responded that they had not yet done their holiday shopping. Based on the way the media portrays the kickoff to the season you would be led to believe that everyone is done by the Monday night after Thanksgiving–obviously not. [...]