Shopping on Black Friday

Disney Addicted

DIS Veteran
Joined
Aug 29, 2011
Anyone here cross the border for shopping on Black Friday (or the next day)?

How did you find it? Crazy idea or fun? Any tips?

I'm going to tell my mom today that I'm in. She is going to purchase us tickets on one of those shopping tour buses for the day.
 
I go down the week before or after. my cousin goes with a "team" of Friends. They get the xmas lists, separate them into departments at Target for instance, and one person goes to each department with the whole teams requests for that department and buys them. Genius and crazy all at the same time. hahahaha
 
I went down a couple of years ago with a few friends. It was NUTS!!!! At the major stores....box stores.....you wait in the freezing cold, in lines, for the store to open...and usually, hours before. Then, when the store opens, you wait some more to get in (depending on when you got there). When you get inside.....it's a FREAKING madhouse!!!! Absolutely insane. And honestly, I haven't found stuff to be that good of a deal. Sure, sometimes you can get tv's and stuff cheaper. BUT, if you were someone who waited outside overnight.....you were one of the lucky ones to get those good deals. If you showed up at opening and waited in the lines, and when you finally get in.....there aren't the great deals left....or they are out.

Going into the malls, some of the clothing stores have sales. BUT no different than what you might find before Christmas or on boxing day. I know people like to do Christmas shopping. Hollister had good deals. Aeropostale had better deals at their outlet stores than for black friday in the regular stores.

I went down last year with my mom in late October. We found tons of great stuff on sale and great deals. No black friday. And NO people:cool1: It was wonderful. You could walk around, not be pushed. No yelling. No shoving. It was peaceful and a great time.

To spend all the money on going down, having to spend the night to be allowed the money to come back into Canada without paying duty, to me personally, isn't worth it. It was the most frustrating thing I've done. I really enjoyed it though, in October. Was a nice drive. Weather was great. NOT great in Nov....snow storm.

PLUS.....I did buy a computer from Best Buy. 3 years later I had an issue with it. Brought it to a place in Canada to have it fixed. They can't fix it. It's made in the states. Had to take it back to the states to have it fixed. So, while it was a brand that Canada sells, it was manufactured there, and it could NOT be fixed here. Best Buy here would not touch it. Said it would be the same for any electronics sold in the states....I've had friends who have run into the same issue. So that is something to think about as well.

Sorry if that was not what you wanted to hear, it was fun when I went the second time, just NOT black friday....
 
I go down the week before or after. my cousin goes with a "team" of Friends. They get the xmas lists, separate them into departments at Target for instance, and one person goes to each department with the whole teams requests for that department and buys them. Genius and crazy all at the same time. hahahaha

Now that IS a genius idea! :thumbsup2 I love it!

Thanks for the info MedicGoofy! It turns out my mom did not realize how, umm, "hetic" Black Friday shopping is. I asked if she was sure about going that day. She changed her mind after we googled "black friday 2010" and saw a few videos & photos.

I wondered, since we would miss the mad openings, (at least, I think we would) if the rest of the day would be ok. The bus leaves Oshawa at 4am.

However, there are still 1-day shopping tours in Sept, Oct and Nov. Personally I would rather go in Sept or Oct and avoid the cold. ;)
 


DH and I go every year and LOVE it! I honestly don't find it as crazy as everyone says it is but we only go to New Hampshire and I also make serious serious plans.

The flyers get "leaked" about a week before and you really have to go through them and choose where you want to go. I get a spreadsheet going with the stores, what time they open, the items I'm interested in and price. Black Friday is NOT a time to peruse or window shop. Get in and Get out so you can move on to the next store/deal.

We start with the early opening stores and go from there.

Good Luck and don't be scared :goodvibes
 
Try going to Grove City.....it was nuts. We went for drinks and dinner after a night of shopping. People were lined up with sleeping bags and coolers, to get into Future Shop and Best Buy just AFTER the stores had closed. It was freaking stupid. It was worse there than any Boxing Day sale I have ever seen:rotfl2:
 
We live on a border and shop in the states regularly. We have Nexus so it is easy for us to just whip oveer. Last year was the first time my husband and I went for Black friday.....NOTHING IS WORTH IT. People who have luck are very organized right down to wearing matching T shirts. The lines to pay are horrendous. We went over at 6 am. and I couldn't believe it. You would never see it in Canada! LOL!
 


There is nothing I want badly enough to face those crowds, the weather and the crowds. :rotfl:
With that being said, my sister's and I have a yearly trip the day after Black Friday. The specials are still amazing and you can shoot a cannon through the malls they are so quiet. We always score great bargains and aren't caught up in the stampede. Plus the staff at every store is much more relaxed!
 
I went a couple of years ago. Spent the night at a hotel across from a large mall. While driving down the highway we saw a Best Buy and there were tents already outside - at 3 or 4 pm the day before! We went after the stores opened - early but we waited until the stores had opened - but the line up to pay inside the stores were horrendous. A huge Walmart - the line was completely around the inside parameter of the store. Like others have said, there is no way I would stand in a line up for hours to pay for something - my time is worth more than the discount on the items! We wandered around a bit but really didn't buy much because of the line ups to pay. We went back to the same stores the next day and low and behold, the same items that we had looked at the day before, we still there and at the same price! So we bought everything the next day, at the same price without standing 3-4 hours in line to pay!
 
I was on a bus tour this Labour Day weekend. The tour guide said she took a bus over to Buffalo one Black Friday, and it took them 8 hours to get through the border coming back! Now they go into Pennsylvania instead...not sure where they cross the border, but it ain't Buffalo!
 
My DW and I hit Black Friday in Scottsdale a couple of years ago. Our flight didn't get in until around 10am though, so we missed the midnight sales madness. We hit the stores on the way from the airport and found some great deals. I'm not much of a shopper but found the crowds bareable, I'm guessing they'd thinned out a bit.

You can sign up online for a lot of stores and get their flyers early and some offer extra discounts.

Shopping in the States, particularly in the Phoenix area is incredibly cheap so even paying retail can save you lots and if you hit outlet stores ... WOW! My DW is heading down in a few weeks to re-outfit our daughters and herself. The savings more then pay for the airfare and car rental.

One trip she learned when mall shopping is to make her first stop a luggage store, then she's got an easy way to carry her purchases!

Good luck!
 
Well, I have never done a Black friday trip but I did order a ton of great gifts online from Black Friday/Cyber Monday sales. I got my daughter a Cricut for something liek 60 bucks shipped-it was crazy, also got some great things from the discovery store but they shipped UPS and I had to pay duty. It was still a great deal for items I could not get in stores here but I would have liked to have known about the duty. I cant wait for this year, I am going to start looking in early november online and then hope the sales are as good-have fun to anyone who goes out...
 
I live in a border town, so my DSIS and I went last year - she stayed over at my house, and we got up and left at 3am - we were tired, it was busy, but we had a lot of fun. We found we were too tired to get much, plus we went away last year for Christmas, so we didn't buy much. So this year, we have a room reserved for two nights, we plan to hit the sales early, break for lunch and a nap, do some more shopping, and then try again the next morning before heading home. We're just excited to get away, and we love shopping together without the hubbies or kids, so we'll make it fun. If it's too crazy, we'll just relax in our room and get dinner out somewhere.:goodvibes
 
Also, many stores carry on the deals until what is now called Cyber Monday. Occasionally, the deals on Monday are even better as they're trying to clear out whatever stock didn't go the Friday/Saturday.
 
We travelled down to Disney last black Friday. We had crossed the border on Thursday afternoon, only took about 10 minutes. Stayed in Erie the first night. Roads on Friday were literally empty except for the cops. However ever mall that we could see was packed. We had planned on stopping but decided not too. On our way back, 2 wks later, we did stop and managed to get quite a few things at really good prices. Little to no crowds.
 

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