NSS: Wal-Mart on Black Friday

[kgsilvas]

I was shocked at the availability of advertised specials and the short lines. Lots of purchasers, but every register was open! Got in and out of there with everything I wanted in less than an hour!

[InfiniteNothing]

Show us your booty.

[molecularfire]

Forget that, show us what you bought from Wal-Mart... Just PM IN those other pictures that he wants to see.

[navyones]

My wife camped at Wal-mart last night. She arrived on Thanksgiving Day at 6:00 pm, and she got into the store at 5:00 am. Although she was not there for the laptop, there were only 26 to begin with. The Car DVD set was not available, the two pack of handheld games was not available, and there were several other advertised items not in the store.

I give our local Wal-mart a lot of credit for maintaining order and attempting to organize madness; but I think there are some real problems, when advertised specials were never going to be available.

I think it is sort of suspect, when one of the first ten in line can't get an advertised special. It sounds like Wal-mart used their sale ad as a bait, with no intention of having the items that were advertised.

[kgsilvas]

According to our store's manager, each store got 26 laptops. Our store held a lottery among all interested, so they didn't go to the first one or 26 that camped out. At 5am there were a few less than 100 that indicated they wanted a "ticket" for the laptop purchase drawing.

Lots of portable DVD players and their cases were available. I got 15 different advertised specials, all were in stock and fairly plentiful at 5am. The laptop is the only item that was limited, and a storewide announcement was made describing how the lottery was going to work for that.

I was amazed at the number of people buying large quantities of Cabbage Patch dolls. Seemed like a bizarre flashback. ;)

Apparently it got ugly at other Wal-Marts. http://www.gotapex.com/forums/showpost.php?p=948621&postcount=1

[JesseeezMom]

KgSilvas- What walmart did you go to?? We got to the one off College in Oceanside at 4:30am. The line was all the way to nursery (we were probably 150+) and ended up wrapping around the building along the street before they opened.

I have to agree that our walmart was very well organized by starting at the front of the line and worked their way back handing out a claim ticket for the laptop to be picked up at the back of the store (so there would be no laptop stealing out of carts, etc) While we waited in line Chik-fil-a had a wagon with free breakfast, coffee and coupons for a chicken sandwich. That made it worth while standing in line:winkie:

Inside the electronics dept however was absolute chaos! Sport goods had some of the items but you didn't know where anything was and people behaved like it was a life or death situation.