Black Friday Tell us Your stories

Tell the members your stories of Black Friday 2005. Your successes, your failures. Stories of parking, long lines, any fights you might have seen along the way, anything else of interest, and of course what you brought home.

dude, i am heading out in a few, i wasnt getting there early, so i am going for the scraps lol

Arrived at Staples at 5:45, door opens at 6:00, walk briskly to hard drive area only one on shelf (display) tuck under arm and walk to checkout. In and out time ten min......Hootal

5:00am still sleeping
8:00am woke up but sleep again (loud kids playing games with our guests)
9:00am checking this thread

oops, wrong thread.

Got to Office Depot at 4:45 AM, number 5 in line, at 5 AM they passed out the vouchers for the desktop, laptop, and monitor. At 5:30, they started letting people in 5 at a time and at 6 Am they opened the doors to everyone.
I got the Sandisk Sansa 1 GB MP3 player for $59 after MIR, the Sandisk SD 1 GB card for $29 after MIR, then went to Radio Shack and got the Sirius reciever for $29 after MIR (from Radio Shack not Sirius). Got all the toys at Toys R Us we wanted. Got the live Christmas tree at Lowes, then got home at 8:30.
Best Buy is next door to Office Depot. The line was 3/4 of the way around the building by 5 AM, two police cruisers at the front door. At 5 AM they were letting people in 20 at a time, I thought "I'm glad I'm not waitng there."
One guy tried to break in line at best Buy, the police put him in the back of the cruiser and apparently were going to make him sit there until 10 AM. We all said "yeah!" and waved to him.

I stayed home.

My wife tried to go to walmart to get the HP Desktop they had on sale for $399. With her employee discount we would have paid $300, but needles to say I should have gone myself. She said she will never do it again. lol. said something about getting pinned by some fat guy and his basket and she seen a women grab one and just sit on top of it and hold on.

Kinda funny though, my wife gets mad because I was laughing at her.

I just got up at 11:45. Stay home. Shop online. You have at least a couple weeks before you need to start shopping online, you'll have everything in time for Christmas.

I got up a 8am, drove briskly to Sears and bought a washer/dryer. Was out in no time.

well i got to best buy after they opened, got 2 things, call of duty 2 and a 512 flash card

stood in line almost 2 hours


i knew i wasnt getting any laptop anywhere (could get to any store on time) so i waited till they all opened, decided after bb i knew other stors would have had smaller lines but nothing i needed or really wanted besides the laptops, oh well, frys always got deals so i aint to worried

Best Buy had the Lite-On LVW1101 recorder on sale for $70 (after MIR) - thought it would be great for wife to finally dump the VHS tapes she uses for soaps. Opened at 5am, and I got there at 6am on the way to work. They had a few, so I stood in line for almost 2 freakin' hours to check out! But I was happy I got it. Then stopped by OfficeMax for some blank media on sale -they had a Lite-On recorder for sale at the same price, but the flyer did not state the model number and I had just assumed it would be the same as BB. Shoot if it wasn't the LVW1105 instead! Damn - bought that one and headed back to BB (figured the return line couldn't be that bad already, not when BF sales were just getting started . . . WRONG). At BB, the checkout line was almost gone, but I stood in the return line for ANOTHER hour!!!

Oh well; glad I was on the bike so I didn't have to fight the parking too . . .
Goose

Went into Office Max to get a LiteON LVW1101 also, and discovered the LVW1105 also. Couldn't believe my eyes. Thinkin of goin' back for another one.

Waited until 9:30am and went to Office Max. Got the Seagate 250gb,16mb, external one touch HD. After coupons and rebates, it will be $70.00. And I didn't have to wait in line...

I just got back form Officedepot took 15 minutes to get in got Maxell DVD+R 8X made in Japan in pack of 25/$4.98 no rebate and Keyboard/Mouse wireless from Microsoft for $19.99. It was surprising to me because Officedepot ad says the KB/Mouse is $109.99 with $55 instant rebate and $35 mail in rebate and final cost after these rebates is $19.99 but some how when I got through cashier she said there is no MIR and the price is $19.99.lThese two buy are really worth saying BF sale.

I was at Best Buy at 4am, then Circuit City, then CompUSA, then a different Circuit City, then HHGregg then WalMart then the first Circuit City again. Bought one 51" HD-TV, a DirecTV HD receiver and a HDMI cable(for my mother). The girl at BB forgot to ring out my HDMI cable. I asked one of the managers where I should go to get rang out, she told me the front would be the fastest. I walked up there to notice the line was already close to being an hour long so I promptly went back to the video department and found the supervisor. He was the one that got the stuff together for me and he was also kind enough to open an extra register long enough to ring me out I was in and out of BB in 20 minutes. I also bought 2 Maxtor 300GB internal drives along with external enclosures from CompUSA and a new dish with the triple LNB for the HD stuff as well as a 5-8 multiswitch All in all the day was fun.

Scored the laptop at Walmart. Had to get there at 2am and there were 16 people in front of me (Walmart employee said they had 24 laptops). They were kind enough to provide us with chairs to sit down. By 4 am all the laptop slips were handed out and rest of the people stayed put just in case someone decided not to get one. Walked out of the store at 5:30 am with a laptop .... this is a gift for a cousin of mine who is going away to college in January.

OMG where are you located, it was 25 last night and windy.

I didn't go anywhere. The "sales" they had around here were for nothing I needed, nor was there really anything on "sale" in terms of a real price reduction. Around here, they just labelled everything "sale," but it was the same crap they put in the weekend circulars.

My wife went to go get the desktop. What sucked was at this walmart they didnt hand out the slips. If they had we would have had one and my wife would have not got pushed around. They had them all sit back and then said go for it. She got there around 3:30 and there were only a coup le people there but they had them sealed up and opened them up right at 5:00am.

Other then that it was more of Rebate Friday instead of Black Friday.

I decided to stay out bf this year....as I have allergies with rebates. LOL

first stop staples...no burners left at 6:30am (i overslept this morning). the guy was, however, kind enough to find the last box of canon photo paper in the back for me and give me first grabs at it before he put it out on the shelf. the line there was non-existant. I walked right to an open checkout and then left for best buy.

my mom got in line while I shopped at best buy. when i asked about an epson picturemate 4"x6" photoprinter they had in the ad the moron handed me the wrong one. I even double checked with him that it was the one in the ad and he said yes. I got to the checkout and it wasn't. they were sold out of the one on sale. I got both seasons of arrested development for $30 though. the line at best buy was VERY impressive. they had a separate line for computers and teh checkout was moving so fast. we walked into best buy at 7am and were out by 7:30...quickest black friday best buy trip EVER.

i then hit a variety of stores and malls (i was out for 15 hours straight).

Around 9pm I decided to check out my local officemax as a last resort for the printer that was out of stock at best buy and wouldn't you know it the 139.99 photo printer was on sale for the same price (79.99 AR) and office max had like 10 left at 9 pm. go figure.

i alo went to kohls during the day (early enough for the early bird specials, but not especially early) the line there was probably the worst I saw all day. the jewelry counter was nice and organized and I spent about $500 on a variety of stuff including $191 including tax for 1/2 carat princess cut diamond earrings. BEST DEAL EVER.

did i get any christmas shopping done? NOPE. did i get any "me" shopping done? HELL YEAH!

Lawrenceville, GA.

I went to circuit city at 6:30 am in the morning and with the help of the cops they were only letting in about 4 or 5 ppl in at a time every 4 minutes or so. Now bear in mind that the store said doors open at 5 am and it was about 30 degrees outside. Ok so I went to staples and came back about 40 minutes later. There was no police barricade anymore and I got in fine and went to get a camera and some supplies. Well get this. They made ppl who wanted camera/video equipment wait on a 100+ person line which I latter realized was only manned by ONE cash register! I didn't leave the store for another 3 hours. It was not worth it. Needless to say I'll never go to that CC anymore.

Zanos, welcome to CDFreaks I faced the same situation here with CircuitCity and avoided going in. Got pretty good deal only at Office Depot.

Got 40 DVDs for 3.44 each minus my wife's discount and $3 30X56 towels, 7.47 carpenter jeans!
However, the big news is some of the sales starting Sunday! Office max has some killer deals.