Defeating Black Friday

Our 10-year-old plasma TV died a few weeks ago. Knowing the big deals were about to start, we put off buying another. At the same time, we refuse to shop on Black Friday. In fact, if we can avoid it, we steer clear of anything that looks like a shopping mall, strip mall, department store…it is a moral choice.

But yesterday we finally gave in. We’re in the long Thanksgiving weekend and just couldn’t continue to watch our favorites on an iMac, even the big one. With three great days to catch up on Netflix, we had to do something. But how to avoid scenes like this one?

Defeating the crush

This was going to need careful planning. Buying a big-screen TV isn’t like picking up a toaster. Beyond finding the model, we needed to consider parking, stock levels, cash register lines, getting the television from storage, loading it into our car and getting it home. Those are challenging things on a normal shopping day.

But then we remembered that Best Buy allows in-store pickup for online purchases. Our local store had ‘secret’ parking spots on an easy access back street. The line for store pickup is at the front, separate from all others. The plan was starting to come together.

As we stood in a short line clutching our order confirmation email, with chaos behind, to the left and the right of us (but not in front of us), we knew we were nearing victory.

By the time we picked up the television from the Best Buy loading dock (a Black-Friday-only convenience), we knew we defeated Black Friday. We had the Black Friday price without paying the Black Friday price. We simply used the tools available to everyone but few are ready to use.