The Black Friday Survival Guide, Phase I: Planning for Black Friday

4 Comments / Nov 24.08 / Etcetera, Tips / by Worthington

Doing homework isn’t just for 3rd graders anymore.

PHASE I: Planning.

A.    Anti-retard  yourself.

Let’s get one myth out of the way. Black Friday is NOT for smart shoppers. If you had half a brain and even less money, you’d realize that Black Friday is for suckers.

Begin your training after the jump.

No really, it is. A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, maybe Black Friday did have great deals for shoppers. But comparison shopping on the internet changed all that. Now, on any given day even in the dead of July, you can find a good deal on a quality product. Spy sites like fatwallet.com and bfads.net put up comprehensive lists of sale products and scans of BF ads – weeks beforehand. Retailers fear the Smart Shopper, and thus, they’re less likely to offer low priced doorbuster items for Smartskys to pounce on.

“But Worthington, Mega Mart has a GREAT deal on a 1080p HDTV. It’s the cheapest price I’ve ever ever seen for a 50” TV. AND it’s a brand name, so you know it’s good.” – Black Friday Rookie

The cheapest you’ve ever seen, huh? How hard were you looking, Sherlock? Good thing I’m here to call you out on it before you part with your increasingly worthless dollar. That awesome SonSung TV you’re eyeing? It’s what’s called a “loss leader” in the industry. It’s an item that the company is willing to take a small loss on in order to lure customers into the store to buy other, more profitable items. It also happens to be called “a piece of shit”, since those loss-leading items are usually electronics with last year’s parts, subpar performance, and a fancy brand name shell to blind you from the truth.

If you do your homework online, you’ll know that you can get a far superior product for only a marginally higher price. If you’re planning on dropping hundreds, maybe thousands, on new gear, why not get your money’s worth? And then there’s the fact that there’s probably only 3 of them instore, and you’ll have to be the consumer equivalent of Bear Grylls to get it – but more on that tomorrow in Part II.

I spent more than a half hour trying to rotate this picture with everything from Mac’s Preview to Photoshop to every other uploader on the planet. Let me tell you right now, Me + Macs + Nikon = FAIL. In any case, loosen up your triceps to avoid putting too much stress on your forearms while browsing. It may save your life.  EDIT: Problem solved.

B.    Planning is half the battle

“EAT A DICK Worthington, I’m poor and I need those fancy deals. Also, I’m giving them away as gifts so I don’t care if they fall apart / contain cancer-causing materials / are assembled by Indonesian slaves.”

As previously mentioned, Big Bob at Bob’s Buys puts up these loss leaders to lure you into the store, so you can do the bulk of your holiday shopping there (and buying all kinds of other items that make him more money) instead of going to Wally Mall and padding Wally’s pockets.

The internet, however, is the shopping equivalent of Captain Planet. By the nerds’ powers combined, you can save some money!

Use sites like fatwallet.com’s forums and bfads.net to map out your nightmare. If you really want to go for big-ticket, doorbuster items like laptops and TVs, those should be the first stops on your list. Mid-tier stuff like digital photo frames and non-iPod MP3 players (hint: Apple shit never really goes on sale) are next, followed lastly by items such as blank DVD-Rs, CDs, and DVD box sets.

Save money on Black Friday so you can buy expensive Mac computers that can’t rotate pictures. Hell yeah.

Your big dilemma will be deciding between getting one good doorbuster item at Bob’s Buys, or getting lots of stocking stuffers with the great deals on Sex and the City box sets at Wally Mall. Alas, this is a problem that I cannot solve for you. If you value, well, value, then your best bet is to go for the plasma at Bob’s Buys and hope that there’s plenty of Family Guy DVD sets leftover at Wally Mall. Chances are, no one in their right mind will want to buy Family Guy sets (and other, more forgettable items) so your chances of snagging them later are better.

If you want to get as much shopping done in as few stops as possible (and smartly avoiding THE LONGEST CHECKOUT LINES IN THE HISTORY OF THE KNOWN UNIVERSE), then by all means go to Wally Mart first. If you go for the latter strategy, you almost certainly forego any possibility of getting that doorbuster. But you’re going to price compare other, better TVs online anyway, right?

Use this handy Excel list of all known deals to highlight and prioritize your purchases. Check them off one-by-one as you elbow the small Puerto Rican lady out of your way.

C.    Consider alternative routes

Listen, I love a good deal as much as anyone else, but the absolutely frantic nature of Black Friday can put a lot of people off. Are you really willing to wake up in the middle of the night, stand outside in the cold with strangers, muscle around somebody’s mom, and stand for hours in line to save some money? That’s up to you. I’m a bit of a people watcher, so I like going out and getting a bird’s eye view of the madness. If you don’t, then at least you can re-evaluate your needs right here at the planning stage. Consider the alternatives that are available to you.

Be sure to pick up a newspaper on Thanksgiving day to get ahold of the actual print ads. There may be deals listed on the physical ads that managed to escape the ever-prying eyes of the Internerds, and you may have to re-route accordingly.

But there are other other alternatives. You may also spot ads for smaller, local retailers that are also having sales that Internet forums either don’t know or don’t care about. This is especially true for specialty stores and boutiques that simply can’t offer the same kinds of deep discounts that Big Box Retailers can. Their discounts may not be as extravagant, but they make up for it usually by offering better products; more knowledgeable sales staff; discounts on premium, rarely discounted items; extended warranties or upgraded accessories; and most importantly, no crowds or lines.

Like any good athlete, the key is to stay hydrated. It’s scientific fact that mouse fingers have upwards of 3,000 individual muscles, all of which are prone to injury during marathon clickfests. Be safe, people.

And don’t discount the very real fact that MANY of the best bargains and doorbusters are either also available online, or are ONLY available online. Large retailers like Best Buy, Staples, Circuit City (who are going out of business, by the way, so look for good deals from them), will put deals online as early as midnight (Eastern standard time, of course), so you can shop with one finger and mop up some gravy with the other. Beware, however, that any deals online will compleeeeetely bog down the site and your chances of getting the item are almost completely out of your hands. Your internet connection, their servers, and the sheer volume of people visiting their site will all have an impact.

Finally, there’s Cyber Monday. A relatively recent development, Cyber Monday was engineered as a sort of response to the internet’s response to Black Friday. Some retailers with online storefronts know that not all people are going to want ruin their holiday by getting up early, wait in the cold, and fight hordes of other idiots just to get a My Dream Barbie. So they came up with Cyber Monday – tons rof deals, only online, usually at nearly the same discount as Black Friday. Perfect for you desk jockeys on Monday morning who want to kill time as you wonder where your holiday weekend went.

Here are some tips to maximize your ability to score online:

-    Stretch, make sure you have easy access to leftovers and/or snacks and drinks, and throw in a good DVD to keep you entertained. If it’s Cyber Monday and you’re at work, make sure your privacy screen is on, and keep the Excel sheet opened. If your boss happens to come your way, quickly switch to the Excel sheet and it will look like you’re doing actual work.
-    Dress comfortably, you might be here awhile. Catheters optional.

Stretch to avoid injury. Oversized athletic clothing is only somewhat necessary.

-    Use the Excel sheet to find the product numbers of the item you want, BEFORE it’s time to shop
-    Open up multiple tabs on different browsers, and find all the items that you want. MAKE SURE it’s the correct item that will go on sale. Because TC-X74 costs a couple hundred dollars more than TD-Y74, and one of them will decidedly NOT be on sale.
-    If you haven’t already, create your accounts, enter your billing and shipping information, and if you can, place the item in your online cart.
-    The point of the previous three steps is to ensure that when the sale starts, and you refresh the page, you’re able to purchase the item right away while all the other suckers are still filling out their Visa info.
-    When the time comes, begin refreshing your browser. You can use the “F5” key in most browsers and save your mouse finger some stress. I’d generally start constant refreshing about 2 or 3 minutes before the start of the online sale, just to account for clock inaccuracies. If you’re a real nerd, you can use the Atomic Clock as your measuring stick and work from there.

By now, you should have an Excel sheet with all the items you want, a prioritized list of places to go and things to buy, and backup plans to buy gifts on Cyber Monday if anything goes awry.

Keep survival supplies in close proximity to avoid missing any good deals. Avoid anything that’s actually healthy for you.

Congratulations, you have a Plan. You’ve passed Phase I of the Survival Training, and all of this information is necessary for you to move onto the next training lesson.

Coming up tomorrow, exclusively on The Steel Closet: The Black Friday Survival Guide, Phase II – Prepare for Black Friday.

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Comments ( 4 )

i usually have my sa put the stuff i want for me already. i never go in on friday.

savvymode sg added these pithy words on Nov 24 08 at 4:48 pm

Holy smokes this is AMAZING! Lol I wish we had a black friday in London!!!

dapper kid added these pithy words on Nov 25 08 at 8:27 am

AJ! My mac doesn’t rotate my pictures, either. Or if I do rotate them, they unrotate when I upload I find uploading to flickr first reduces the hassle.

Anyway, I am enjoying your Black Friday genius. Too bad I am working that day.

ici added these pithy words on Nov 25 08 at 4:50 pm

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