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Sandy Huffaker / Getty Images file
Last year's scene at a San Diego Best Buy store. Expect similar lines this year.
The most hyped and hectic shopping day of the year is just hours away. If you intend to fight the crowds to grab some bargains, you need to have a plan.
A number of major retailers are opening earlier than ever – moving the start of Black Friday to Thanksgiving. Some have staggered the door-buster sales.
The newspapers are filled with special Black Friday circulars. You can see most of what’s available at sites such as bfads.net, blackfriday.com and blackfriday.gotadeal.com.
The editors at dealnews.com analyzed these ads and concluded that some products are being offered at all-time low prices – but not all. For example, you’ll find the best prices on toys not on Black Friday, but instead two weeks before Christmas. Dealnews put together a list of 10 things not to buy on Black Friday.
At least half of all Americans have started their holiday shopping already. The big retailers have taken notice, with some opening their doors Thursday night to kick off Black Friday deals. NBC's Janet Shamlian reports.
Hate crowds? You might be able to shop from home. While some door-buster deals can only be snagged at the store, most Black Friday specials can be found online. Dealnews found that 70 percent of the deals available at Wal-Mart and Target stores on Thanksgiving last year were also available online for the same price or less.
Let’s go shopping!
Here’s a rundown of what’s happening at some of the nation’s biggest retailers (in alphabetical order):
- Best Buy: The electronics retailer starts its Thanksgiving Weekend sale at midnight on Friday. To make things easier, they hand out tickets two hours before the store opens. BestBuy.com is open on Thanksgiving.
- JCPenney: This is the store’s only sale of the year. Prices on hundreds of items (online and in the store) will be reduced for one day only, starting at 6 a.m. on Black Friday. Store employees will hand out holiday buttons that offer the chance to win one of 20 million gifts, including gift cards, merchandise and vacations. This promotion starts on Black Friday and runs through Christmas Eve.
- Kmart: The store’s three day sale is the earliest of the bunch and there are three rounds of doorbusters – both in-store and online. Round one is on Thanksgiving Day from 6 a.m. to 4 p.m. at the stores and 5 a.m. to 7 p.m. online. Round two goes from 8 p.m. to 3 a.m. at the stores and 7 p.m. until 5 a.m. online. Round three, on Black Friday, runs between 5 a.m. and 11 a.m. at the stores and 4 a.m. and 1 p.m. online. Did you get all that?
- Kohl’s: Things get going Wednesday as 500 Early Bird specials went on sale at Kohls.com. The stores open at midnight on Friday. Shoppers get $15 Kohl’s Cash for every $50 they spend in store or online, with no limit during this “Operation: Black Friday” sales event. Kohl’s “Dream Receipts” promotion starts on Friday and runs through Christmas Eve. Every day, one shopper at each store and online will be picked at random and Kohl’s will pick up the tab. No purchase necessary.
- PetSmart: Pet parents will find Black Friday deals online beginning Thanksgiving Day. Some pre-Black Friday items, discounted by as much as 75 percent, are already available online. Retail stores open at 7 a.m. on Friday.
- Sears: The bargain-hunting (both online and in the stores) starts at 8 p.m. on Thursday and continues through 10 p.m. on Black Friday. Sears says it is offering more than a thousand doorbuster deals during its 26-hour sales event broken into two groups. Some go on sale at right away. The rest are available starting at 4 a.m. Black Friday. Check the Sears Thanksgiving and Black Friday circular for a savings pass or online purchase code that gives you an extra 10 percent off when you spend $40 or more on clothing, intimates, sleepwear, accessories, fragrances and cosmetics. “Shop Your Way” members get extra perks for this sale. Check out the deals and door-busters at sears.com/Black Friday.
- Staples: The world’s largest office products company promises savings online and at the store. Early Bird Deals are available on Black Friday from 5 a.m. until noon. Find savings of $200 or more on select HP personal computers with Windows 8. Online orders are shipped for free. A new service this year: you can reserve products online and pick them up at the store, normally within two hours of ordering.
- Target: Black Friday starts at 9 p.m. on Thursday. That’s the earliest Target has ever opened on Thanksgiving Day. Also new this year, additional doorbusters will go on sale at 4 a.m. on Black Friday. Shoppers who spend $50 or more on apparel, accessories or home products between 4 a.m. and noon on Friday will get a $10 Target gift card to use on a future purchase. Target says its website will have exclusive discounts starting Thanksgiving Day.
- Toys R Us: The fun starts at 8 p.m. on Thanksgiving. Look for the Thanksgiving weekend circular in newspapers on Thursday. Those sale items will also be posted at Toysrus.com. You can see some of the deals right now on the company’s Facebook page. The first 200 customers in line when each store opens will receive a free “Great Big Goody Bag” filled with stocking-stuffers and valued at $30. For those who don’t want to give up their Thanksgiving to shop, Toys R Us and Babies R Us will offer a new selection of doorbuster deals at 5 a.m. Friday morning.
- Wal-Mart: The doors open at 8 p.m. on Thanksgiving night, two hours earlier than last year. This is just the first of three Black Friday sales at Wal-Mart. The electronics event begins at 10 p.m. and the third wave of door-busters starts at 5 a.m. on Friday and lasts through the weekend. Something else new this year at Wal-Mart: the “1-Hour In-Stock Guarantee” on Thanksgiving night. Customers who are inside the store or in-line between 10 p.m. and 11 p.m. are “guaranteed” to get super-low prices on the Apple iPad2, an Emerson 32” TV and LG Blue-ray player. If any of these items sell out before 11 p.m., and the customer pays for it before midnight, the product will be shipped to that Wal-Mart store for pick up before Christmas.
Your iPhone or Android is probably in your pocket no matter where you go, so why not take advantage of it during your shopping trips? NBCNews.com's Rosa Golijan shows you how.
(You can print a simple list of Black Friday 2012 store hours at Cheapism.com)
More Black Friday Resources
- ConsumerMan: How to snag door-buster deals
- 10 Tips to Bag a Bargain on Black Friday
- Black Friday diehards will do just about anything for a bargain
- Target, Wal-Mart, Kmart: Who has the best deal?
- Tips on how not to bust your budget over the holidays
- Gift cards are popular, but beware of fees on some
Herb Weisbaum is The ConsumerMan. Follow him on Facebook and Twitter or visit The ConsumerMan website.
If you're ready to begin the holiday shopping blitz, TODAY contributor Elizabeth Mayhew has tips on what to buy this month, including the best deals on electronics you'll find on Black Friday and Cyber Monday, as well as low prices on cookware and kitchen appliances.
Leave a Comment:
This year I won't tolerate any abuse from anybody in any store.
Black Friday is an absolutely do not shop Holiday for me.
My family tradition is to let shopping Darwinism take its place. The people who shop on Black Friday are doing me a favor by not being around on the days it makes sense to shop.
As a tribute to Obama, I am not spending a dime for Christmas. Ha, ha, ha
Or, should that be Ho, Ho, Ho
My black friday plan- stay home and eat leftover turkey :)
Ha ha, yeah, HELL NO. You couldn't PAY ME to go out in that mess! Go online and get most of those "deals" from home. I'll save the few bucks and get the SPECIFIC things I ACTUALLY WANT.
I already finished my Xmas shopping, just need to get a few stocking stuffers. I hate going out to the malls between Black Friday and Xmas Eve. That was my motivation to finish.
You can also get discount coupons for many online retailers.
Free printable grocery coupons are available online too.
I use Coupon Corner
I am totally prepared to stomp on pregnant women to get 10% off a plasma TV!
Know someone who smokes? Don’t let them stand outside in the cold this winter! Hot deals on electronic cigarettes right now at Basic electronic cigarette kits are only $15.
Where?
Thanksgiving should be about family, not shopping. It is yet another sign of corporate greed and crass consumerism run amuck. How do we turn the tide? Certainly we can boycott Target and other stores that insist on being open on Thanksgiving. On the other hand stores used to be closed on Sundays too so people could have time for God and family. Not many people talk about that these days. However, I would argue that
if we kept Sundays for God and family, we wouldn’t be talking about “Black Thursday”.
Black Thursday is a symptom of a larger problem. We have lost our way. We need to rediscover the moral compass that will return order to American society. An excellent place to educate ourselves and begin the discussion on how to return our society to order can be found at ReturnToOrder.org Check it out. I highly recommend it. Our children’s future may well depend on where we go from here.
The reason for the season.??
Why beat yourself up when on any other given day you can buy the exact same thing. Yes it may be a few dollars more but a least you won't get stampeded, shoved, verbally abused, have to stand in endless lines, listen to all the other people bitch and whine, etc etc. I do my Christmas shopping throughout the year and lo and behold I'm already done. Now its just time to sit back and watch the entertainment that is black Friday.
Nope, millions of us well not be shopping at all this year. Enjoy the madness of trying to sell your wares.
Check out this site.Some great online freebies there:
Happy Holidays!
Check out this site.Some great online freebies there:
Happy Holidays!
Awww, Christine! You tried three times and can't seem to post your SPAM link?
Stuff it - turkey.
An article the other day said that 45% of shoppers would like to skip Christmas altogether, due to financial concerns and stress. What fools we are. Christmas - whether observed as a religious season or a secular one - is about friends, family, traditions and celebration, none of which hinge on BUYING STUFF. Gift giving is great, but big business has turned the holiday on its head, conspicuous consumption has become the norm, and many of us take cues from corporations and put holiday decorations up the day after Halloween because stores do. People camp out in tents on sidewalks so that they can be the first to grab as many huge TV's as they can carry, and parents live in fear of their kids, who just NEED to have piles of crap under the tree in order to know they're "loved".
Stress? We do this to OURSELVES. Christmas could be what it once was and what we want to MAKE it be, yet the season gets pushed back earlier every year by greedy business, so that greedy lemmings will have more time to trample and elbow each other in their quest for the most stuff. This ain't Christmas folks, never was and never will be. This is a peon to greed.
It's nothing less than disgusting that wallyworld thinks they (and Target and Sears) think they have to open their trashy stores on Thanksgiving. People who can't wait until it's actually FRIDAY to shop really need to get a freaking life. How many people have family or friends in from out of town for a limited time and have to miss visiting with them because other supremely selfish people think they need to SHOP on a holiday!!! Give me a freaking break. Your greed can wait... and while you're reading this, think about NOT crossing the wallyworld picket lines. Wallyworld is notorious for shoddy made in China poison pet food not to mention tainted baby food and children's toys with toxic lead paint. I sure as hell wouldn't EVER buy one thing for my grandkids from that dump... I love them and will pay a few extra cents for better odds of safer products from a reputable retailer.
The media have taken a perfectly good holiday, one of the best, Thanksgiving, and are wrecking it with all this mercenary hype.
Its one holiday that really doesn't involve any religion.
Happy Thanksgiving Everyone
Personally, I think it stinks stores are opening tonight, Thanksgiving is being with family, and friends being thankful not working for companies that careless about you and only profit.
Actually the companies do care about "you". That's why they're opening tonight. Do you think they'll be open if there were no customers?
I am not crazy! I have been one of those nuts standing in line, to get the best deal. Guess what? Not worth it. People act like psycho's and people have been hurt. I did it when Cabbage Patch Kids were NO 1. Yikes, Nope, no, never again. And actually them opening on Thursday, is good. By the time they open most of your celebrating is over, people are thinking about Black Friday, and this is one way to work off all the turkey, mashed potatoes, cranberries, sweet potatoes, and all that stuffing. It also gives you energy to keep up with the person next to you vying for the same toy, tv, camera, or whatever. I wish all shoppers the best, good health, and please have good manners in your shopping.
Do the EXACT OPPOSITE of what the Mega-Corporate Malls want you to do on "Black Friday","Cyber Monday"-----DON'T SHOP !!! Do yourself a favor and SPEND Quality time with your Family,Friends, And yes, Even yourself !!! TURN OFF the Consumerist Coercion !!!