(Dead) Best Buy 7 hour sale

[PScherer79]

Not sure if I got screwed by Best Buy...

I was able to order one of the westinghouse 22" monitors for $199 on Thursday at bestbuy.com. Shortly afterwards, it was sold out of their website. I received an email confirmation regarding my order and that my order is "in progress" and will ship in 0-1 days. Today, I received an email letting me know that my order is "in progress" but is currently on backorder. Here is the email:

Dear $#$#$#:

The item listed below is not yet available to be shipped. We expect to ship it within the next 1-2 weeks. We will ship the item earlier if it becomes available.

We apologize for any inconvenience. If you would like to cancel this item from your order or have questions, call us toll-free at 1-888-BEST BUY (1-888-237-8289). For faster service, tell us the order number when you contact us.

If we do not hear from you before we ship the item, we will assume that you have agreed to this shipment delay.

Thank You.
Best Buy Customer Care

This also happened to a friend of mine who order the Samsung 831BW for $129.

Should I wait or cancel my order?

 

[CCityInstaller]

After standing in a line a total of 12.5 hours I was able to get both the HP laptop and one of the Westy 32" LCD tvs. It was a nightmare waiting in line, people kept cutting more and more as the night wore on, and there were almost several fights. After they handed out tickets at 4 am a huge crowd had gathered and tried to rush the doors. Several local police officers showed up in riot gear with Sam's Club size jugs of mace attached to these huge guns. I tried to buy one of the mace guns but the cop didn't think I was too funny 🙂.

EDIT: I just plugged in the HP and am started setting it up. Does anyone hear like a high pitch whining noise that seems to be comming from under the keyboard? It's almost a cross between a high pitch whine and a hum. I am trying to figure out if it is something wrong with my specific one or the model in general.


Josh

 

[xpkwali]

I went by the local BB at 4:30 am this morning the line was pretty dissappointing but I went in just for kicks anyways. To my surprise the 42 inch Panasonic Plasma TV's were still up for grabs while I was in line at their AV section. Talked to the guy at the register who handed me a flyer/coupon for that TV. They had 16 in stock and I got the 10th of that batch. Overall a pretty successful trip. 🙂

 

[Hersh]

Originally posted by: PScherer79
Should I wait or cancel my order?

That depends. If they ship it to you at that price than you would've gotten that 'door buster' deal without even waiting in line.

I got the 931BW early in the morning, now that I am using it now and love it. If I could get another one for $129, I'd order another one so I can dual screen them both.

So the question is, is the 22" worth $199 to you?

 

[Spurst]

I picked up the Athlon 64 X2 lappy with 2 gigs ram. very happy with it. they told me it had the stock intel gfx, but its an ATI Radeon 1150 with 256 Ram 🙂

 

[oCxTiTaN]

Waited from 7:30PM to 4:00am for the vouchers for the HP laptop for my cousin. He was supposed to come with and thinks the laptop is for my girlfriend but really it's from his mom to him and I volunteered to get it for him. Well, he gets mad at his mom for not jumping on the deal and ends up not even coming with me.

What an ungrateful little bitch huh? I was so tempted to just leave when he called and told me he wasn't coming, but I'm better than that and I had plenty of fun without him. I also got a 2GB MS Pro Duo for my PSP and a 2GB SD card for my Wii. Went to Wal-Mart and picked up a classic controller for my Wii and a new Shuffle....God they are tiny!

 

[uhohs]

Originally posted by: PScherer79
Should I wait or cancel my order?

i'll give you $250 for the monitor if it arrives. 😉

 

[imported_wicka]

Story time: I woke up at 3:30 and got to BB at 4 to wait in line. Got inside 5ish, asked the guy if I could get the 19in widescreen Samsung without the voucher (it was $139). He says there is a couple right there (points) and I'm pumped and I get one. 40 minutes in line later we discover that it was indeed not on sale ($239). They had three models, the 231b, 240bw, and 231bw (all conviently similar models, the 231bw was on sale). But I did get a different 19in widescreen at Target for $149...but I did wake up at 3:30 for no real reason (other than $98 worth of DVDs).

 

[slightlyhuman]

i was the first in my town, made the news. me and my friends went at 3:30pm thursday. we grilled out all day and even cooked eggs and sausage at 2am. had guitars, frisbess and DS's. i had a blast and it didn't even seem like 14+ hours.

got the toshiba lap teezie, $189 desktop among other things.

we're making it an annual event, it was a lot more fun probably due to the fact that i had friends with me.

 

[imported_wicka]

I thought it was sort of ridiculous how many people were at Best Buy. They had good deals on DVDs and amazingly cheap laptops and stuff but people started waiting there so early you couldn't get anything; the line to checkout was 40 minutes. I remember waiting for Target to open last year at like 6am, and there were a handful of people at the door. I'll probably skip on BB next year.

 

[Monyet]

It lined up, and it was damn awesome.. 😵

 

[virtuamike]

Didn't wake up till 10am, got to BB at 11. Stocked up on DVDs which is what I really wanted so I'm glad I slept in.

 

[clange50]

Originally posted by: wicka
I thought it was sort of ridiculous how many people were at Best Buy. They had good deals on DVDs and amazingly cheap laptops and stuff but people started waiting there so early you couldn't get anything; the line to checkout was 40 minutes. I remember waiting for Target to open last year at like 6am, and there were a handful of people at the door. I'll probably skip on BB next year.

At our place they were checking people out EVERYWHERE. We only had one person in front of us at the customer service counter when we finally checked out around 5:50.

 

[Shimmishim]

you think best buy was bad... you should've seen circuit city. those guys were SLLLLLLLOOOOOOOOW.

we waited in line to check out for an hour and the line was 4x shorter than the line at best buy.

it sucked so bad. so so bad.

 

[minguskhan]

My parents waited in line at 4:30 AM and got 1 of the panny's - they said most people didn't know about it and were going for the Westinghouse instead. They were pretty happy

 

[Lanyap]

Originally posted by: wicka
I thought it was sort of ridiculous how many people were at Best Buy. They had good deals on DVDs and amazingly cheap laptops and stuff but people started waiting there so early you couldn't get anything; the line to checkout was 40 minutes. I remember waiting for Target to open last year at like 6am, and there were a handful of people at the door. I'll probably skip on BB next year.

I think Best Buy was more popular this year because most of their sale items had instant rebates versus multiple mail in rebates at Circuit City, Compusa, Office Depot, etc. I waited until 9am to pick up my few, small items at BB. I was able to get everything I wanted at a good price and do not have to mess with MIRs.

 

[tealk]

Damn Skippy!

 

[bloodthirster]

I paid a bum $10 and a pint of jack to stand in line for me at 5pm turkey day. Suprsisingly when I came back at 3:30am he was still there. Got the e-machine for my parents. The laptop for my father in-law and the kodak camera for the wife.

 

[coomarlin]

Originally posted by: Lanyap

Originally posted by: wicka
I thought it was sort of ridiculous how many people were at Best Buy. They had good deals on DVDs and amazingly cheap laptops and stuff but people started waiting there so early you couldn't get anything; the line to checkout was 40 minutes. I remember waiting for Target to open last year at like 6am, and there were a handful of people at the door. I'll probably skip on BB next year.

I think Best Buy was more popular this year because most of their sale items had instant rebates versus multiple mail in rebates at Circuit City, Compusa, Office Depot, etc. I waited until 9am to pick up my few, small items at BB. I was able to get everything I wanted at a good price and do not have to mess with MIRs.

Yeah you are right. Big props to BB for all of the Instant rebates they offered. Thumbs down to Office Depot. The worst MIR offender of all time. I walked in OD the other day just to kinda heckle them. A guy asked me if I needed some help and I told him no because I wasn't planning on buying anthing do to all of the MIR. His response was, "Yeah I aggree, they suck". 🙂 I don't think OD sold a single BF item that didn't require some rediculous MIR.

 

[rmrfhomeoops]

Originally posted by: bloodthirster
I paid a bum $10 and a pint of jack to stand in line for me at 5pm turkey day. Suprsisingly when I came back at 3:30am he was still there. Got the e-machine for my parents. The laptop for my father in-law and the kodak camera for the wife.

I feel sorry for homeless people when I first started lining up yesterday in the cold rain and decided to call it off because I was just at the edge of the store cover; it gets kinda wet there. Did you paid him in advanace? It's worth it to hire a homeless for $20 + some alochol/food/old blanket to stay in line for that long. Another thing too is that people around him kept his spot when he has to go. Did you pick him up and drop him off at the store?

 

[Rivulentt]

Ya know, it would not have been such an unejoyable experience for myself if Best buy had a more organized system. Getting there at 6 pm the day before, being 20th in line, didn't have too much matter since skipping was rampant. Mobs literally formed threatening the skippers and calling them out as they tried to skip. It was entertaining, but overall the night was frustrating, suspenseful, and overly serious.

Camping out for the 360 last year, on the other hand, was much better. That was at compusa, and the manager been there over night making sure people who could not get the system didn't have to wait all night to find out.

Best buy, however, has a rather stupid "ticket" system in place. Reading some posts here I see that it varies store to store. But this store set up a system where, at 4 am, employees went down the line asking each person what they wanted, and gave each their ticket. There was a limit one item per person, but no limit on how many tickets a person could claim. So, people at the beginning of the line literally took one of everything and went back to the people who didn't get what they wanted (presumably because the people in front greeded them), and sold them for $20-$100.

To make matters worse, when it came finally to us in line, the 32" were almost all ticketed out, and a lot of people wanted them. It become a cluster-f*ck of people with their hands up for the remaining items. My best analogy is the stereotypical New York Stock Exchange floor with people rushing to buy and sell.

The three following things attributed to BB's overall miserable experience:

1) Lack of organization.
2) Teetering on violence throughout the night (with many threats made) and overall hostility to save a few dollars.
3) Best Buy Policies which don't limit how many items a person can claim. A few problems could have been solved if only Best Buy had Limited the number of tickets to 2-3 per person. That way the first few schmucks wouldn't have been able to get 15 tickets each and sell them to the people behind em.

I got what I wanted, but damn, it was not enjoyable. Not doing Best Buy again, and I'll be damn sure to ask management on how they set up the way they handle BF beforehand, whichever store I might do next year, if I do it next year. Oh, and I was number 121 by the time I got in the store. Even with the mobs, for every 1 person who was in front of me the day before, 5 others cut. Justice.

 

[coomarlin]

Thats what I heard happened here. The people that were near the front took like one of every ticket. Even if they didn't plan on buying the item. Maybe BB should limit people to two tickets each. That way there is enough to go around for everyone.

 

[zinfamous]

I didn't catch this deal until the morning of; but quickly convinced myself that procuring one of those panasonic plasmas was essential to my happiness and well-being (i usually lock myself indoors on black friday to prevent such thoughts from entering my head)

I walked down the street to the "micro" Best Buy around 8 am and asked about the line of boxes containing the panasonics. They had just sold out, but the HT rep said that they're slapping the 999.00 deal on the samsung: My new Sammy

I'm such a Samsung whore, so picking one up was barely an afterthought. On top of this, they included a free $200 Install and $100 off the Set if you agree to upgrade to Comcast HD service (no contract necessary). They quickly removed this from their deal; I think they cut it off after 3 people agreed to take one. The price was back up to 1400 after I checked an hour later.

I wheeled the 90pd panel the half-mile or so back to my apartment and hooked it up. Happy so far, can't wait to see what it can do when I get HD hooked up.
CNET prefers the Panasonic; but it also seems they prefer oversaturated colors. I'll have to judge for myself.

I haven't followed the sound/video tech stuff for so long, and was holding out for a more standard LCD; but I guess I couldn't resist. You guys think this was a good deal? I'm having to re-learn plasma specs; as I've largely ignored them for 2 years now. I did get the 4 year service plan; kind of hoping that it does crap out in that time (what I've always expected of a plasma), but I haven't gotten definitive accounts from owners of newer gen plasmas as to their stability.

 

[zinfamous]

Originally posted by: Chunkee
if you bought one today from CircuitCity, think they would price match?

This is a late reply; but I'd be curious to know if they did. Best Buy didn't print this deal; it was only advertised online and In-store; so I wonder if they would accept a price match w/o a printed ad to document it.

 

[zinfamous]

Originally posted by: Mermaidman

Originally posted by: lupi
A little BTW for the future, even if you don't get there when the line starts and best buy decides to run the unadvertised/web only things again don't be so worried about them running out. People were going for the 32 westie and HP lappy but virtually left the panny plasma and toshiba lappy alone cause they hadn't read about it yet.

Another factor is people are less like to buy a big-ticket item just because it's a good deal. I'm sure some of the early birds have time to waste for a reason 😉

yep; my experience was that the panasonic plasma that they offered, and eventually the others, were well-stocked to meet the demand. i saw about 15-20 panasonics out on the floor. The BB that I went to on the north side of Chicago is a smaller size; and despite it's location in a highly populated and popular part of town, not too many people still realize that it's there after 2 years. It's the bottom floor of a building, with no real street signs. I wonder if this helped thin out the crowd? I straggled in around 8:30 and although it was crowded, it certainly wasn't the madness I imagined it would be. The larger Best Buy in the area, with an actual parking lot, was probably a different story. I bought the Samsung, but there were several opportunities during the process to switch mine out for a Panasonic when others switched out for the Samsung. The guy in front of me ended up buying one of each...