Black Friday: It's a day when you can either score killer deals on gear or pay way too much for too little. The amount of planning and strategy you use is the biggest factor in whether or not you'll get burned.
Photo by mecredis.
Black Friday marks the traditional point in the year when retailers stop operating at a loss (in the red) and start turning a profit (in the black), and they manage to accelerate that shift by separating lots of people from their money with Thanksgiving sales. If you plan well, this separation can result in a fantastic deal for you. If you plan poorly, it'll result in not only a lack of a good deal but a day wasted out in the cold.
The following tips, tricks, and resources can help you avoid wasting a perfectly good day off and ensure you get what you're looking for at the price you want.
Is It Worth Your Time?
Before you even begin to contemplate running the Black Friday gauntlet, you need to ask yourself how much your time is worth. If you're throwing a wrench into plans to spend time with friends and family to save a couple hundred bucks on a laptop that isn't all that great to begin with—and the store only has 5 in stock—it's likely worth more just to enjoy your time with family and keep an eye on our Dealhacker posts here at Lifehacker. We pore over hundreds of deals a week and can say with authority that Black Friday-like deals happen all year long thanks to the magic of the internet.
The best way to decide if it is indeed worth your time is to take the next tip to heart.
Check Product Reviews and Prices Beforehand
Don't fall into the trap of buying something just because it's such a great deal. A $250 laptop that doesn't do half the stuff you really want it to do is not a bargain compared to a $500 laptop that does. Research relentlessly, take the stack of advertisements and your list of Black Friday sites, and get information about the purchases you want to make. Reading reviews by fellow consumers and consumer-friendly publications is invaluable. You want to buy a super awesome and cheap GPS-EleventyBillion+1 unit? Hit some of these sites to make sure it's not crap and that the price is right:
If you find reviews on both Amazon and Newegg from hundreds of customers talking about how bad the signal reception is on the GPS-EleventyBillion+1, you'll know it's not worth waiting in line for—even if it is dirt cheap. If you have a cellphone you can browse the web on, now would be a great time to bookmark the mobile versions—when available—of the sites above. When you're in the Black Friday trenches, you can pull out your cellphone and check the ratings and prices right in the store.
Check Online Availability
More and more retailers are trying to grab a slice of the online market while more and more consumers are opting not to brave Black Friday for deals. This works strongly in your favor. Check out sites focused on deal hunting like FatWallet, SlickDeals, and Black Friday-focused sites like BlackFriday.info, BlackFriday Ads, and TgiBlackFriday. Not only will you get info about regular in-store Black Friday deals, but you'll find out about online deals. We don't know about you, but staying up until midnight on Thursday night to score a few good deals online and then going to bed is way better than sitting on a sidewalk outside of Best Buy only to find out that you weren't early enough for the good stuff. Photo by mborowick.
Read The Fine Print
Not reading the fine print is a sure fire way to get burned on Black Friday. Whether you're looking at the fine print on the bottom of a newspaper circular or a web site, you need to check it closely on Black Friday deals. What time does the store open on Black Friday? Are some or all of the deals time sensitive? Often stores will run deals like 15% off all electronics until 10AM or some such variation. How many of the deep-sale and door-buster items will they have in stock? How do they handle door buster items? You don't want to go to a store where people have to stampede to get to the good items; you do want to go to a store that hands out door tickets to the early shoppers so nobody gets hurt trying to scramble for the good items.
Get There Early
How early? Real early. You think you're a serious Black Friday shopper, but you're not. Not by a long shot. Some people have been planning for Black Friday all year. They read deal sites like you read the news, make spreadsheets to compare prices over the year to Black Friday and argue with other deal hounds about the ethics of bribing your relatives to help get extra loot or just how evil it is to hide merchandise in washing machine at Sears.
You're not going to just stroll into the line at 7AM to get that $2,000 HDTV marked down to $999—you'll be standing behind deal hunters who have been camped out since the day before. You'll need to scope out your local stores on Thanksgiving day to see just how crazy the line build up is. Again, referring to the first tip in our list: How much is it worth to you? A grand off a high-end television might, for some, be worth spending the night huddled outside a Sears. Wear layers, bring something warm to drink, and be courteous to the people in line with you. Aside from just being an upstanding person, being courteous can pay off when someone holds your spot when you have to use the bathroom or offers to buy an additional item for you when there is a one-per-customer limit.
Black Friday shopping tips and tricks abound, and we certainly can't cover every one. Let's hear about your best tips, tricks, deal sites, and other Black Friday-related tales in the comments below.