Black Friday shenanigans
So there I was, sitting on the sofa, reading the paper and watching the news about all the people standing in line all night for Black Friday early store openings and thinking, "Wow. What a bunch of crazy people."
Then I found out my nephew was one of those crazy people. I'm only telling you about my incredibly handsome, smart but insane nephew because he had such a great story to share. Here's his tale:
We went to Staples in Bel Air to get this year's big ticket item, a GPS navigation. We got there around 2 am and were about 20th in line. The people towards the front said they had been there since 6pm the night before. The main ticket item was a Navigon GPS system for your car. It was on sale for 99.99 and there were limited quantities. When we got there, most people were talking about some sort of laptop or some TV so we figured we were set. Just in case, though, our second choice was a TomTom One 3rd Edition GPS reciever which was 125.00. The TomTom was a little nicer but also a little bit more expensive.
It was around 32 degrees that night. After about a half an hour of waiting in line the cold began to to take a toll on us. I let Amanda go into the car and we switched every 30 to 45 minutes. Around 430am I overheard a lady say that Staples would be passing out vouchers at 5am for the big ticket items.
We figured there would be no problem getting the Navigon since it wasn't a front page item on the advert. As the manager came down the line, we found out he didn't have vouchers for the Navigon but was passing out vouchers for the TomTom so I grabbed one of those. The manager said all the Navigon vouchers went immediately and that there were only 10 per store.
(photo courtesy of HSN)
As it got closer to the 6am opening time, we started to see a lady toward the front of the line start to sell some of her vouchers.
She walked down the line saying, "10 bucks for a TV voucher, 10 bucks for a TomTom!" She apparently had 10 friends or family members with her so that they could grab up as many vouchers as possible."
I never got a chance to say anything because the Staples managers came out to talk to her. They told her she couldn't sell vouchers and that everyone had been waiting patiently for them. She yelled at him and said she had friends waiting fair and square and all the vouchers were hers. She also said she was passing them out for free and not even selling them!
The manager said they weren't stupid and knew what she was doing. They told her the limit for the items was one per customer and she wouldn't be able to redeem all her vouchers. She argued some more and this went on for another half an hour until the police were called.
The police came as the managers told her to give the vouchers back. She eventually gave in. To my surprise, she had something like 6 Navigons and 10 TomToms, as well as 10 TV vouchers! Who knows how she got so many? After she gave back the vouchers, the manager began to pass them out to the remaining customers. We didn't get one of them, but... Justice!
When they finally opened the store, people crammed their way into the front to grab as much as their greedy hands could take. We, of course, were grabbing, too! We had a plan. All the sale items were on tables in the front, so while I got in line to pay, Amanda grabbed everything we had planned on buying.The day was a success! We didn't get the Navigon we originally wanted, but both of us got a nice TomTom and all the other items on our list (can't spoil everyone's Xmas surprises!). We saved a bunch of money by almost freezing our butts off (the TomTom came with a $20 gift card so it was only really $105, which was an even better deal), AND we almost saw some lady get arrested.
