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Senior Member
Join Date: Mar 2000
Location: California USA
Posts: 819
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My Circuit City Black Friday experience in 2006
Let this be a cautionary tale for those who decide to go to Circuit City (CC) in the future. Here is my tale. CC is plagued by disorganization, a lack of body personnel on the floor, and long wait times.
Anybody here knows that the Friday after Thanksgiving (heretofore known as "Black Friday" because retailers can actually make a profit) is usually the busiest shopping day of the year and officially marks the beginning of the holiday shopping season. Thanksgiving is not only a day for eating lots of turkey, but it is also the day to peruse the BF ads for the following day.
Most of the retailers usually open on BF at 5am, but CompUSA announced that they will be open on Thanksgiving night at 9pm - midnight. They will then close, and re-open on BF at 5am. My sister volunteers to help me shop. She decides she wanted to go to CompUSA. Her only goal is to buy the Casio 7.2 MP Z70 digicam for $180. She says she wants to get there at 830pm, a mere 1/2 hr before opening time. I tell her 'good luck' knowing full well that tons of people will be out there and she is probably going to come home empty-handed. I circled some items in the ad that I wanted her to get for me there. I also gave her about 3 more ads to help me shop w/ since we are separating and shopping based on which stores are going to be closer to us. I was going to Citrus Heights (CA) for CC & also Best Buy (BB). She was going to CompUSA, then home to Folsom and staying in town to shop for Staples, Office Depot, and Office Max.
I had a light Thanksgiving lunch and dinner because I knew I was going to get in line early and I didn't want to have to end up pooping. My plan was to nap early in the day so that I would have the energy to wake up and wait in line. I couldn't sleep so I decided to just go even though I had planned to arrive later. I got in line Thursday night at about 1030pm and realized I might've mis-calculated about the cold. All the people ahead of me not only had their lawn chairs (which I also had), but they also had blankets covering themselves. They looked like they were there to watch a football game in the winter (professional shoppers). The gal in front of me counted about 35 people in line ahead of her.
Sometime near or before midnight I call my sister to ask how she did at CompUSA. Turns out she got there as planned, 1/2 hr before 9pm. There was about 300 people in line in front of her. She still got the digicam that she wanted. She didn't get the HD I wanted (they were wiped out), but she did get me the Sony DVD burner (internal).
At about 1230am Friday morning, I started to feel frostbitten on my fingers and toes. I was wearing two pairs of gloves, but they weren't winter gloves. I wished I had worn a 2nd pair of socks on top of my only pair. I was wearing thermal long-johns under my jeans and a sweater underneath my jacket w/ a skull cap and scarf. It was so cold that I wanted to quit at about 1am but I couldn't because I was waiting in line to get a digicam (the Canon SD600 for $200, a mere $50 savings) for a person who is family to me. I was there for nothing else. Thoughts of quitting constantly entered my mind, but I wasn't going to surrender, no matter how many toes I was going to lose. I really wanted to get this cam for family. Many times I fantasized about having a hot chocolate in my hands, being in a hot-tub, or even sleeping in my warm cozy bed.
Luckily I started talking w/ some of the people around me and they all seem like very nice people. I pee'd about 3 times (last time at 315am) while they held my spot for me in line. I made some mistakes w/ the ad. I shouldn't have kept looking at the ad and I shouldn't have circled all the items I wanted, as others who borrowed my ad would get to see the items that I had targeted and also might have seen my items that others have missed.
At about 4am, I rec'd a phone call on my cell from family. Upon having found out my predicament and my suffering, urges me to quit. Even though I entertained the thought many times, I replied that I wasn't going to since this wasn't for me, it was for family, that I was too close to quit now. So family keeps me talking on the line to hopefully distract me from the cold and give me strength to push on. I had actually wondered many times whether others would make this kind of sacrifice for their family.
At about 430am, people started getting really excited. I don't recall when vouchers (for really cheap items like laptops and desktop computers) started getting passed out, but people started putting away all their items in the cars, but I held onto my lawn chair (which folded up into a rod). Donuts and drinks get passed out by the store about 5 mins til opening. As we slowly start approaching the door to enter, I figure that having survived the freezing cold that the worst is over, but little do I know that fighting the elements outside, compared to CC inside, the worst is yet to come.
So CC only passed out vouchers on the really cheap and valuable items. Everything else is pretty much first come, first served. As soon as we get in, people start running towards the departments they want to start at. This is reminiscint of winning a shopping spree, except everyone else won too. I run towards the camera department only to find one man working the cash register and one lady working the floor. Everyone knows that the cameras are not left out there on a palet or on a shelf, so I run up to the woman and tell her which cam I need retrieved. Other people follow suit too. She told everyone to stand in line and she would bring out items to them. I am #2 in line. It doesn't matter what you tell her. She disappears into the back and brings out one product, three of the same model. At least three times she would bring out 3 of something I didn't ask for, and she would offer it up and people would grab them from her. It was very dis-organized like a free-for-all. The guy ahead of me in line already gets the items he wanted and is ready to pay for them, except the cashier working the register is too nice and allows himself to be distracted answering questions from people not waiting in line. After seeing the lady about 5 times, I finally get the product I wanted. The cashier hasn't even finished serving the man ahead of me. It's been at least 15 mins. I decide to bail out and find a shorter line. That was my biggest mistake.
There are no shorter lines. Just many different lines in the store, all to pay. I finally pick a line that seems reasonable. It's the voucher line, where people can also pay. I started in line only about 25' from the register. I don't know what the holdup is, but the wait time was intolerable. I decided not to reward their incompetence, by abandoning the 100pk DVDs I had in my hand. All I wanted to do was pay for this digicam. At about 735a I sat down in line. All the standing was ridiculous. We were only moving at a rate of about five to eight feet per hour. I was in direct view of two other lines and they appeared to be moving no faster as I kept my eye on certain people in those lines.
I have many conversations w/ my neighbors while waiting in line. What else can you do? I don't have a PDA or fancy phone to play games with. I later realize that the registers not only print out the receipts for sales, but also the accompanying rebate forms, which can end up sometimes being 2' long. They also had a promotion where if someone was buying a laptop, then they would get 4 items free (after rebates). But they didn't keep the 4 items at the register. Everytime someone wanted the 4 items, a store employee would go to the back to fetch them (and never bring extras). Also, the register person would waste time answering questions and listening to complaints from the buyer when they could've been answered by someone not dedicated to ringing up purchases. I believe that a lot of the delays too might've resulted from customers not understanding or seeing the terms for items and having misunderstandings at the register. Regardless, I still hold CC responsible for not making them clearly stated in the ads and also for not making enough people available to free up the register people to do the only thing they should be doing... ringing up sales. I finally get out of the store at 9:13am, a full 4 hrs+ after having opened. There is no time left for me to go to other stores since they are probably cleaned out by now. Stupid CC.
So many of us waiting in line made the resolve never to go back to CC in the future for BF. But pain is short-lived, so many will return yet again in search of a good deal, but I won't. But this ordeal wasn't the kicker. I found out the next day that I could've bought this camera online BF at CircuitCity.com for the same price and have it sent to the store. Argh! Stupid CC!
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