Black Friday

Unlike last year, I did not go to Best Buy 3 in the morning to buy the items on sale.
I realized the futility of such effort because I knew that I won't be able to get any of the items on sale unless I camp out outside Best Buy the day before Black Friday.

So, I did most of my shopping this year on line. I was actually quite productive. I pored over all the deals on line for three days and I decided on purchasing several education games for my nephew. And then I did myself a favor by buying a TomTom One 3rd Edition GPS. While at it I bought one more for my brother-in-law's Christmas present.

I thought I was done with my Christmas shopping, but this morning I had this urge to buy 24" LCD monitor. I checked out on line deals, but I settled on Samsung 24" wide screen LCD monitor.
It was $439 plus tax and recycling fee, however it came with $120 rebate. So, I decided to purchase it and pick it up at a nearby Circuit City store. Unfortunately, there was no store in the vicinity which had the monitor in stock, so I ended up driving down to Fremont to purchase the monitor. As soon as I arrived at Circuit City, I walked toward Customer Service desk. There were several people waiting in line. I waited for about 20 minutes and then it was my turn to give my confirmation printout to one of the desk workers. The desk worker inputted the order number to the inventory software and it turned out that there were no monitors in stock.

The lady at the desk apologized profusely, but I told her that I did not come down to Fremont to get a refund. I was very firm that it was the fault of Circuit City that I had to drive down to Fremont despite the indication from their website that Fremont store had the item in stock. I then instructed her to check out the Circuit City website to see whether I could still buy the monitor from their website. It turned out that the monitors were sold out and now there was no way for me to purchase the monitor at a discount.

By this time, the lady at the desk got a bit tired of my insistence and pleaded me to get a refund rather than demanding her to get the monitor. So, I ended up talking to her manager and the manager's manager. Meanwhile, the lady at the desk found that the Dublin Circuit City store had several monitors in stock. So, after haggling with the desk workers at Fremont Circuit City, I drove to Dublin Circuit City. So, there I was able to purchase the monitor at discount.

As I was driving back home, it got me thinking. Was this worth it? Was it worth 4 hours of my time haggling and driving to get $120 discount on $440 monitor (well including tax and recycling it was nearly half-grand). I am not sure whether I would be doing this again next year. Although I have recommended to a very dear friend of mine that he will be able to get steep discount and best deal on Black Friday (surprising he bought 50" Samsung plasma TV for $900 which was a great deal!), I wasn't so sure anymore.

I told myself that I will never do this again...but I am not too sure whether I would be able to restrain myself from making an impulse buy sometime next year...