Friday Shopping Madness: U.S. Version
If you don't live in the United States, you may not know about the day after Thanksgiving. It's insane, basically, and it's a huge shopping day as Christmas shopping officially kicks into highgear.
It's totally unnecessary, of course. Most retail stores stay open extended hours for the month leading up to Christmas, and places like Wal-Mart are open twenty-four hours a day. That and online shopping mean there's no need to shop when it's crowded, but people do it anyway.
Other people. If I ever get in a crowd, it means I made a wrong turn at Albuquerque.
It's not just Thanksgiving weekend shopping now. Retailes have started creeping up on Thanksgiving-day sales, believe it or not. Sears had something going where you could get a special 'preview' deal on Friday's sale items by shopping on Thursday. Within another five years, retailers are going to have huge Thanksgiving night sales.
Here's something else the retailers do. They offer some truly unbelievable deals on the day after Thanksgiving. because the competition for customers is absolutely fierce. Most of the deals are
limited quantities with no rainchecks, but they're still pretty amazing. I opened up the paper this morning and saw a Fry's ad for the following computer:
--AMD Sempron XP 2200+
--128MB DDR Memory
--40GB hard drive
--52X CD-ROM
--Integrated Graphics
--10/100 NIC
--56k Modem
--USB Ports
--Lindows 4.5
Now I know that's a lightweight system. But it was being advertised for $99.99! Are you kidding me? That's practically an impulse item.
It was limit one per customer, no rainchecks, etc., which means they probably only had a few to sell at that price, but still.
Here area a few other things Fry's was offering today:
--120GB Ultra ATA/100 hard drive for $29.99
--Progressive Scan DVD player for $14.99
--3.1 Megapixel Digital Camera for $47
--512MB PC2700 DDR Memory for $39.99
Those prices make me want to buy all of that and I don't even need it.
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