Will someone put the Black in Black Friday?
BlackFriday.info feeds me all the news I need for that special day of the year, the day after Thanksgiving, that blackest of all days for businesses. This year isn’t so black, however, more like a light shade of gray.
Last year I waited outside of a Circuit City in Greenwood, Indiana to try my luck at a Compaq Laptop. I braved the 25 degree weather for nearly 8 hours to get oh so close to a new $300 laptop. Ruined by people waiting in their cars, ready to pounce into line, that night was worth a 500GB external I got for $80. Though, it was a shame, and I lie awake every night remembering it (not really ;), it was incredible to at least feel the rush and craziness that goes with that oh-so-early morning.
This year, I’m writing not about standing in line for some crazily inexpensive monitor, but about why that monitor is not so crazily inexpensive, anymore. The big question on my mind: Where are all the sales? What happened to the deals? I know for my tastes, they are mostly tech related, so this may not apply to all stores. The deals I see from BlackFriday.info, however, are utter crap. I know this because most of those deals don’t come close to beating Newegg’s everyday prices. Seriously, go take a look. I have seen three things that are worth it: a $350 laptop (notice above last year’s doorbusting $300 pricetag), a $100 19″ bargain brand monitor (usually priced at $125), and a $120 Samsung 19″ monitor (usually priced at $190, a fairly solid deal). The same Samsung was at $130 last year. CD Media seems to be another category that is issuing deals, which isn’t very helpful when CDs/DVDs are a dime-a-dozen. Flash drives, hard drives, and the like are at outlet store prices. Circuit City filed for bankruptcy a few weeks ago, thus sinking their holiday ship of sales. In fact, their ad is the worst of all because they need to minimize losses in this economic climate and their unstable condition.
Frankly, it’s a bit insulting to know that this year I can actually find better deals online (which is true every day of the year) than I can in a brick-and-mortar store. There is an upside to all of this, though; I’ll end on a happy note. I can sleep in the day after Thanksgiving and peruse the online deals to my heart’s content. Eat your heart out everyone-standing-in-line-on-the-worst-shopping-day-of-this-year. 
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