Thanks Giving shopping in US – a horrible experience

All I want to suggest is, please don’t sacrifice your sleep for the so called Black Friday deals in USA. The chances of getting a good (or best) deal is 15/600 (= 1:40). Tougher than cracking a medical entrance in India!!!

If you don’t know what Black Friday is: In US, its the day after Thanksgiving day, which is one of the busiest shopping days and all retail stores offer special sales on that day.

First time, I am in bay area during this Thanksgiving time. Lot of my friends told me that I am lucky because I get very good deals and can buy many things at cheaper price. I also thought the same and didn’t buy anything before Thanksgiving and eagerly waited for this Black Friday. The day has come and I saw at least 100 page news paper on Thursday and it took 2-3 hours to go through all ads in the news paper and the web. The hot deals were:

$299 Compaq laptop at circuitcity
$298 Compaq laptop at frys
$400 Sony laptop at bestbuy

All that you save from these deals is $150 (you can easily get same product on a different day from same shop for 150 bucks more, if you keep an eye on local news paper).

I decided to go for Sony. Bestbuy advertized that it issues tickets from 3am (you are reading right, its 3am) on first come first serve basis and opens the doors at 5am and there are minimum 15 laptops available through the deal. Whoever has the ticket should get the item by 9am, otherwise it will go to general public.

I and my friend started from hotel at 2:45am and reached bestbuy at 2:55am. I told my friend in the car that since it is very cold outside, we will be the first to reach there. We thought we will definitely get a ticket. My calculation was something like this: In US minimum wages (even for a laborer) is $9-10 per hour. Per day earnings for a laborer is $70-80. I don’t expect a laborer buys a laptop and I thought anybody who wants to buy a laptop get more than $200-$300 per day in bay area. The greatest deals on this Black Friday is not a big saving for them. There is no need to wake up in the early morning after having a delicious turkey dinner the day before. So I was very much sure that I will get the ticket. We were planning to visit other shops (frys and circuitcity) after grabbing the ticket from bestbuy. For a visitor like me, $150-200 savings is Rs 6000-8000 which is a great amount, so I can wake up early in the morning to catch up the deals.

We were shocked to see the crowd at bestbuy (Sunnyvale) at 3am. There were already 500+ people in the line. We were told that people stood in line from 3pm-4pm, the previous day!!! People got tents and there were mobile shops selling coffee and cookies!!! Yes, all this happened in USA.


OK. We know that there are 15 laptops available on the deal. But being little optimistic, we stood in the queue. The temp was 5C. You know what, there were at least 300-400 people piled up behind us by 5AM. At 4:30am, they started giving tickets for various items (TVs, DVD-players, GPS etc). Nothing reached us. At 5am, when they opened the store, imagine the situation when 700 people are inside the store picking things and wanting to pay the bill. I was upset and disappointed.

We were able to grab few small things, though they are not good deals. We stood 2 hours for the billing after that. Then we went to Frys at 11AM thinking that the crowd would have reduced and we can grab some things if any are left. I got few small things and went ahead to stand in the queue for the billing. You believe it or not, it was at least 1/2 km length. There were 60+ counters, but still it took us 3 hrs to reach a counter.

It was a nightmare for us on the Black Friday.

If you are in US, during thanks giving period, don’t think that you will get best deals. The fact is, there are only few deals and grabbing them is tough.