Quoted from dnaman:
Why cram all of these deals into one time a year?
If vendors can provide these discounts now, why not at other times?
Why try to compete with everyone else for someone's money?
So many questions...
I appreciate the pinball sales from Comet and the others, which are generally good deals.
The whole Black Friday thing is mostly diluted out these days. There was a big thing at one time which was pretty much strictly happening on the Friday after a Thanksgiving. There were real crazy deals but in general you had to work to get them by getting out early, waiting in long lines, etc. Things I remember going out super early and waiting in a long line for: computer video cards, N64, GameCube, big TV, etc. I think the idea was to offer loss leaders to get people out and shopping so they would spend more money on other stuff that wasn’t on sale. This was all happening before the internet, eBay, Amazon, etc grew to what they are today. Then the BF day started to stretch out, going earlier and earlier in the morning, then falling onto Thanksgiving, and now here we are, BF deals have been running for days now and will stretch onward to Cyber Monday and beyond. Now the internet has changed things. I monitor prices on a lot of stuff and realistically you can get a deal as good as BF pretty much any time during the year these days. Use camelcamelcamel and you are good to go.