jongela.com » black friday

Black Friday 2011

jon — Mon, 28 Nov 2011 08:08:49 +0000

Wal*Mart traffic

Another Black Friday has come and gone, and we have some stories to tell. The in-person Black Friday shopping was disappointing, but we got some sweet deals online (I’ll talk about those at the end of this post). We wanted to buy some things from Wal*Mart, but apparently so did everybody else. The freeway was completely backed up from everybody wanting to go Wal*Mart. We were stuck in traffic for almost two hours. By the time we finally got off the freeway, we decided to just skip it. We were already an hour late for the store opening, there wasn’t a single parking space in sight, and we didn’t want to interfere with the rest of our Black Friday plan.

Crazy line for Best Buy--this picture is taken from the middle of the line

Our next stop was Best Buy. There must have been at least 1500 people in line. We were half an hour early and the line wrapped halfway around the building, through the parking lot, and all the way to the back of the Home Depot nearby. Again, we decided to ditch this plan and go on to our next store.

We went to Target where the line wrapped completely around the building and ended just about where the entrance was. We decided to stick this one out. Angela got a $15 leather jacket, some holiday tees, and cheap DVDs **cough**New Moon**cough**. I didn’t want to be left out so I got some washcloths.

Black Friday equipment

At Kohl’s, we used a 15% off everything coupon to get a thermometer already at 50% off, slippers at almost 70% off, and some more clothes. We finished up at 1am and then headed over to Sears. Since Sears didn’t open until 4am, we took a quick nap. Wow, did it get cold! We were prepared with hand warmers, beanies, blankets, and gloves, but we were still freezing. I guess we’re getting weak in our old age.

When Sears finally opened, we got a free Christmas ornament, a jacket for $29 that normally sells for $150, and a snow man tie to go with my red pants!

Black Friday 2011 Loot

At Sports Authority, we got $20 of free gift cards. I got a new jacket and Angela got some snow pants for when we learn to snowboard this winter.

At Michael’s we got free Godiva chocolate bars, 70% off ribbon, plus we had a 25% off stackable coupon. At Joann we got a bunch of yarn.

Half Price Books gives out free $5 gift cards every year. We used a gift card from last year, our gift cards from this year, and a 40% off coupon to get a book for only $3 that retails new for $50.

The stores’ opening on Thanksgiving day really hosed us! It was way overcrowded and all the stores opened at the same times. Hopefully they don’t do that next year.

Angela's new laptop

Our pre Black Friday and online deals on the other hand were great! Angela got a new laptop for $270 and Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows for $4. We got a $200 xbox+Kinect, a $100 router for $50, and a Sony Blu-ray player with Google TV for $100 (normally $200). Also, I just ordered Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare for our xbox for $7.

If shopping were a sport…

jon — Sat, 27 Nov 2010 05:35:18 +0000

Our Black Friday loot!

It’s that time of the year again–deal time!! We decided to do a warm-up run before Black Friday just to brush up on our skills. Then we did our infamous Black Friday series; and we even added some more deals that we don’t normally do: food! We actually didn’t have anything we really wanted to get on Black Friday, so our main motivation was to maintain our reputation and to entertain our blog readers. Or because we’re crazy.

Target Warm up
We went to Target a few days before Thanksgiving, just to scope out the store’s floorplan and to get some early buys. We ended up getting four pairs of jeans for $9 (50% off), 12 packages of various sorts of candy for about $1 each, and 20 pairs of socks for $18!!!

Warm up purchases at Target

Waiting in the Walmart line at the back of the store

First Black Friday stop: Walmart
Walmart lets you enter the store early (but you can only make your purchases after midnight), so it wasn’t too insane. I went straight for the end of the line, which happened to be in the nethermost corner of the store. Meanwhile Angela went to scavenge a boatload of DVDs (including the Bourne series, the Lord of the Rings series, I am Legend, and others) for $2 each, a $50 sewing machine (50% off), and a $20 safe (60% off). They were all out of carts so we had to carry all of our loot. We waited in line to check out for about an hour and a half. But it was okay, because there was plenty of Justin Bieber paraphernalia all over to keep us occupied.

Front of the line at Kohl's!

Waiting in the rain for an hour at Kohl’s
We were rained on for most of the 1.5 hours we waited in front of Kohl’s. But at least we were fifth in line! We got a slow cooker and a wallet and we were the very first people to check out.

Maneuvering through the swarms at Target
As expected, there were swarms of people buzzing throughout Target. I think Target was the least organized store of the day. There was a line to check out, but no employees or even signs to indicate which side was the entrance. As a result, tons of people were unknowingly (and some knowingly) cutting in line (we almost did too, until we realized that there was a line). After checking out, the exit doors were locked. When we asked an employee, she said it wasn’t an exit; so we had to walk across the store to go to the other doors. As we passed by the original doors, we noticed that they had opened them and were then allowing people to exit.

Why are there all these people waiting at Sports Authority?!

Surprise deal at Sports Authority
I wanted a $10 exercise ball at Sports Authority. Since we didn’t anticipate exercise balls being a hot item, we planned on taking a nap in the parking lot. When we got there, we noticed an unexpectedly long line to get in. So we did what any normal person would do: forget about sleeping and get in the line before it got any longer! After we got in line, we found out that the first 85 people would get gift cards for $10-500 (randomly distributed). What a sweet deal! Free money! Angela and I both got the $10 cards. So I essentially got my exercise ball for free, and Angela got a swimming suit that ended up being a total of 58% off.

Wild times at Michael's!

Boogles of ribbon at Michael’s
I was too afraid of the crazy crafters to even go in to Michael’s, so Angela braved it alone against the 6 other people who were in line at opening. It’s okay because I had to defend our loot against the ferocious mice who wanted our movies. We got a bunch of ribbon at 78% off.

A casual stroll at Old Navy
Since we went to Old Navy hours after they opened, it was pretty empty. We bought jeans, pajama pants, and camis for 50-80% off. Piece of cake.

Quick freebie at Half Price Books
As we do every year, we line up at Half Price Books and they gave us each a $5 gift card. We didn’t bother to look at the books since we can use the gift cards another day, and we have much more important things to do!

Winding down at Jo-Ann
By 7am, everything was starting to die down. We went to Jo-Ann to get a spatula at 50% off and a gingerbread house making kit.

After Jo-Ann, we were pretty tired and were done for the day. We headed home and went straight to sleep. When we woke up, I noticed people were posting on Facebook about their shopping. WHAT!?!? People are still out there!? We had to get in some more deals, so we decided to do food.

Finishing off the day with Baja Fresh and Slurpees
We got a buy one, get one free deal at Baja Fresh. Woohoo! I love burritos! $7 for two big burritos and all the chips and salsa we could want. Then we headed over to 7-11 to get free Slurpees.

Baja Fresh buy one, get one

Free Slurpees!

Deals, deals, deals! Deals all over the floor!

jon — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 08:35:50 +0000

We had an uber-successful shopping season this year!

24 inches of pure High-def recipe enjoyment

About a week ago, we found a 24″ LCD full HD monitor for $170 with free shipping on the Dell Outlet website. Thanks to Twitter, I found a $20 coupon. So we got a humongous 24″ monitor for watching movies and viewing recipes while we’re cooking in the kitchen.

On Black Friday, we left for Old Navy at 2:20am. We bought 13 items including 50% off jeans. We got in the checkout line when there were four people in line and were out of the store in 20 minutes total. By the time we left the store, the checkout line had grown to about 30 people.

After Old Navy, I waited in line to get in to Target while Angela went to Kohl’s (which was already open) to buy a bunch of $3 board games and sweaters. Kohl’s gave us a $10 gift card for shopping there (woohoo!).

Our Black Friday treasures

Target was the best store of the day! As evidence, the line was about 1000 people long by the time the store opened. Since we knew that perfect execution would be critical at Target, we shmoozed with an employee and got a map of the store. We also found out that we didn’t have to waste time grabbing a cart at the entrance because there would be carts spread throughout the store. We planned our route and were able to beat the 50-100 people in front of us in line to the good stuff. We got one of the four piano keyboards they had stocked, a bunch of DVDs, and tons of clothes. As we were leaving the electronics area, there were swarms of shoppers like ants swarming around their kicked anthill. I wanted to snap a picture but was afraid of being trampled, so we fled screaming and clutching our prizes. Finally at checkout, they gave us a $10 gift card!

At Staples, I grabbed four $10 webcams that were normally $50. When people kept taking them, I had to try hard to resist not taking more. My heart sunk when an employee told me that they only allowed one webcam per customer. I decided to try to check out anyways and we were particularly nice to the employee. We found out that she was sick the past week and consequently missed all the Black Friday orientation meetings. And she let us buy our webcams! We also bought some other good stuff like speakers, a GPS, and 8GB USB drives.

We headed over to Half Price Books in hopes of randomly winning a $100 gift card. Unfortunately we didn’t win. But they did give us $10 in gift cards.

Ikea loot

After we finished out our critical early bird steals we headed to the mall and Angela went to JCPenney while I waited in the car. She got a bunch of $9 sweaters and Christmas gifts for the Moomers. After that we headed to Joann’s to pick a rubber stamp set for the giving tree at Angela’s office. We got all the stamps for over half off!

Black Friday was a success! We got every item that we wanted to get that day. But wait! That’s not the end of the good deals! On Saturday, we stopped by Ikea and found a hidden clearance section! We bought 14 plates for 99 cents each (normally $4.99 each). And rubber gloves for 10 cents each.

What a great year for deals!