A few weeks ago, Maria turned to me and said, "You know, we should just sleep in the day after Thanksgiving and not try to wake up early and chase down some ridiculous sale."
I agreed.
Too bad I didn't stick with that plan.
As you know, we've been in the market for a flat-screen HDTV. I'd decided to follow the advice of many of you and try to buy one online. But then the Day After Thanksgiving ad from Circuit City hit our doorstep. The ad featured a decent 42" Panasonic plasma TV, at a decent price: Even lower than any Internet seller.
I decided to do it. Luckily, Circuit City was selling the TV for that price through Friday and Saturday. In other words, I could still sleep in.
My excitement for the TV was contagious. My brother-in-law, Jason, decided to get the TV as well. He also decided to go online to see what Best Buy was hawking for Black Friday. It was there that he saw our TV -- all 42" of it -- as a "doorbuster" special for $200 less than the Circuit City price.
The catch: Quantities were limited. The online ad said that each store would have a "minimum" of five TVs. Would they have many more beyond that?
We couldn't resist. A 42" brand-name plasma TV for under $1000? We had to try.
So we altered our game plan. After my radio show ended at 2, I'd swing back to Jason's house in Granada Hills, and we'd trek to the Porter Ranch Best Buy. (In hindsight, we decided that another location, such as Los Feliz, would have made better sense.)
We made it to the Porter Ranch shopping plaza around 3. The place was already jam-packed with cars. We saw a huge teeming line in front of Wal-Mart and stretching down the strip. Rabid Wal-Mart customers?
Nope. The Best Buy line was so long, it stretched for big box after big box, in some cases formed parallel to the Wal-Mart line.
We still kept our hopes up: Perhaps these people hadn't seen the online specials, and were simply here to pick up what they saw in the printed ad.
But deep inside, I think we both knew it was a longshot. There were probably at least 1,000 people (likely more) already in front of us. (Another 500 or more wound up behind us.) At 4, Best Buy employees were supposed to hand out vouchers to people in line who were planning on buying the special sale items (just like our TV). The employees never ventured as far out as us, and we never saw any tickets.
People closer to the front of the line had erected tents, pulled out portable chairs and were even playing musical instruments to pass the time. I guess a cheap-o DVD player meant more to them than sitting around a Thanksgiving table.
Meanwhile, as we stood in front of Wal-Mart for what felt like an eternity (in cold weather), what sounded like a fight broke out near the front of the Wal-Mart line. We heard some screams and some shouts, and soon enough the police arrived. The Wal-Mart queue erupted in applause, and soon after we started seeing more LAPD cars cruising up and down the shopping center perimeter.
(The pic above, by the way, comes from Koga at blogging.la, who coincidentally was checking out the Porter Ranch scene at the same time we were standing in line. That shot happens to be close to where we spent a chunk of time standing.)
At 4, the line started to move. Hey, would Best Buy open early? Nah, false alarm. People at the front of the line were putting away their tents (getting ready to rush inside), which suddenly freed up space and brought the line closer to the store.
The Best Buy store opened at 5, and by 5:25 we were inside. We raced to the flat-screen TV department and asked where we could find the Panasonic one. The Best Buy employee just chuckled. Those TVs sold out almost immediately, he said. Vouchers were passed out at 4, and if you didn't get one, you were out of luck.
Damn. Should've known that this was a fool's mission.
But after waiting in the cold for almost three hours, Jason and I were determined. We were going to buy that damn TV.
So we booked it out of Best Buy. Yup, we'd waited in line to spend... less than five minutes inside the store.
Jason and I decided to hit the Circuit City in Northridge and grab the flat screen we had now invested time and given up sleep to procure.
When we arrived, the place was a zoo. But our TV was there, and plenty were in stock. High-def plasma, here we come!
We were directed to a line in the TV department where we could purchase it. The line was long, and seemed pretty slow. But the Circuit City guy said this was the line for flat screens. So we waited.
And waited.
Still waited.
The guy manning the cash register was beyond slow. And he took his time helping each person out. At no time did it dawn on the Circuit City folk to open another cash register for the flat screen purchases, or send in assistance for the beleagured cashier.
Nope, they just made us wait. We stood in the same spot for almost three hours. Eventually, we realized that people in the back of the line had been switching to other lines. We should have done the same... but we were stuck in a catch-22. We were too far up in the line, and had invested too much time in the line, to cut bait and move elsewhere. But by not switching lines, we were stuck.
We finally got to the head of the line. It was then that we found out -- along with the guy in front of us, who'd planned to buy the same TV as us -- that our Panasonic plasma TV, the one that this location supposedly had plenty in stock -- had just sold out.
Yup, while people in other lines, who'd come to the store AFTER us, were able to purchase and bring home the TV, we -- by the sheer unluckiness of landing in the slow line -- were screwed. The guy in front of us was so pissed, he just left -- even after waiting three hours. We weren't going to spite ourselves just to teach them a lesson they'll never understand... so we bought the TVs anyway, on special order.
By then, it was 8:30 a.m. And we were heading home empty. Jason and I could have slept in, avoided the crazy early-morning crowds and simply bought our TVs later in the day. But oh well.
I'll say it now: Next year, I'm sleeping on Black Friday morning.
Postscript: After being treated like crap by Northridge Circuit City employees, I switched my order to the Glendale location.
No comments:
Post a Comment