**Edit - Did you go shopping today, how much did you spend did these marketing tactics work on you?

So I went Black Friday shopping today and I missed last year so if this was the case last year I'm sorry. But it seemed this year the retailers especially Walmart and Best Buy were very tricky. Not sure if its every store but this year it seemed they made the sales a lot harder to find and to pick out. Example!

I went to Walmart at 1 AM and it had opened at 10 PM Thursday. Yah I was a little late. I went to the audio video which is of course the first place I go. I had my master list and went straight to the movies and games sections. When I went to buy stuff I realized their was no Black Friday prices on half the stuff. The movies all had their original price tags on with no indication they were on sales, except Pirates Of The Caribbean that was clear. Their was a couple bins with clearly on sale stuff but those were only the biggest deals and the clearance stuff you typically see at Walmart. I grabbed what I saw clearly market as being on sale unfortunately a lot of their best deals were already gone but I guess that's my fault. Anyways the TV shows were listed at full price and since I had my master list and not the physical flyer I couldn't verify everything was on sale. The line up for check out was growing by the minute so I grabbed a few items that I knew for a fact were on sale, asked an employee about the TV shows and she said she didn't know and I should check the flyer. Finally I bailed only spending 100$.

Then I went to Best Buy. In the past when I have gone to Best Buy they have been better. This time they had a few key deals up front as they always have. But they were more sneaky this time around at least two years ago you'd go to the BluRay section and their would be a price tag that said say 7.99$ and it wouldn't say specifics about which BluRay it was, you knew all the BluRays above it were 7.99$. This time however their was a price tag saying 7.99$ but it would name one specific movie and there would be three or four above it. I was confused and the whole section had all these price tags but each one specific titles and the regular priced titles were mixed in. Same went for music and DVD's, luckily games were a lot better all the sale games were listed well most of them some I knew were on sale from the flyer.

In the end I couldn't always tell what was on sale and what wasn't. In the past I have always known exactly what was on sale and what wasn't. Also in the flyers two years ago they would have stacks of BluRays or Movies not like the two or so stacks in this flyer. Those stacks would have twenty or so movies. This year they only had a few titles a stack of say ten, then in some ads it said other select titles. But in the store their was no clear indication what the other select titles were. I asked an employee a couple times about sales for the most part they could verify if something was on sale or not, but sometimes the movie above say Narnia BR for 17.99$ was actually 17.99$ like Narnia other times it was the full 34.99$.

I realized this year I couldn't just go in to the store grab the deals and get out. I had to look around the store trying to figure out exactly what was on sale. I spent about two hours in Best Buy and last time I was in and out in 40 minutes with 700$ of stuff. I was in Walmart for forty minutes and I'm usually in and out of their in ten. Anyways I realized GameStop was way better this year then they have ever been before. Fye had some amazing deals and was great.

But did anyone else notice that the retailers were a lot more sneaky this year? Or was it steadily getting this way and I just missed last year. I did end up spending around 1,000$ as much as I ever have. Two months pay and I'm already over 1K in debt on my credit cards. Dang you American consumerism!

Anyways thoughts?

Black Friday was always a scam.

Its always been a scam, but if you actually knew what you were doing it was very easy to milk it for everything. I'd do a month of research making a master list of all the cheapest deals in each of the stores, then come Black Friday I would hit a store within an hour and onto the next one, never getting a deal less then about 75% off.

This year I couldn't do that, first only half the deals were in the flyers. Second half the deals weren't listed in the stores. Third some deals like Captain America for example were tricky their was three packages a special edition a BluRay/DVD combo pack and the bare bones BluRay all in different parts of the store and only one on sale, but it wasn't listed I had to ask around.

But I guess their goal was to keep everyone in their stores longer, rather then giving them an easy and fast way to get all the best deals they made it far more difficult.

IMO I think it may just be hard to convince employees to spend their Thanksgiving putting stickers on merchandise.

This. None of the games at my local gamestop had sale stickers on them today (Got Sonic Generations for $30, but the sticker said $50), but I knew which ones were on sale from the flyer. It would take an unnecessary amount of man hours to label games, re-label them for a 1 1/2 day sale, then re-label them again once the sale is over.

Not talking the actual labels on the movies, games as much as I am talking the price listed on the shelf right below them. It would be very easy and non time consuming for them to put a price label that says 7.99$ and just put all the 7.99$ BluRays above it like they used too. Rather then putting a price tag on the shelf saying "Tomb Raider BR 7.99$) then having three or four movies directly above it.

Mixing the sale content in with all the other content and making it next to impossible to see whats on sale and what isn't. Thats not just saving time thats purposely done, I mean it never used to be the case.

In fact wouldn't it be more time consuming to put three different labels up saying (Specific movie name 7.99$) rather then a single one saying (BluRays 7.99$) and having the 7.99$ BluRays seperate from the others. This is where the labels did come in because it was impossible to tell which movies were on sale so you had to check the labels but the labels weren't marketed.

The ads said " 50 Select titles" or such, but how the heck can you know what those 50 select titles are if there is no price listed on the shelf or price tag on the product. I had to ask like 10 or so times about products just to see if they were on sale or not and half the time they weren't.

I just think its a marketing strategy. Get people in the store and confuse the shit out of them so they buy stuff at full price or nearly full price. You go in for your five or so movies and games and then you see everything else and can't tell whats on sale and what isn't and end up buying stuff at full price. Its actually ingenius!

They have their normal stock and Black Friday stock. Sometimes the store will lower the price of stuff in stock but that is not likely. You simply missed all the stuff that is displayed. It's gone within a couple hours. You have to be there early to get anything.

well its always good to ask. thats how my niece found out the mp3 players were sold out.

I was there an hour and a half after oppening. They had some of their best door busters at the front on display. But everything else was in with the regular stock. Especially BluRays and DVD's, there were a few from the flyers at the front but I asked for a couple of the ones on the flyer and the employee took me to the BluRay section and said that they were mixed in their somewhere.

In other words only the biggest deals were on display at the front. If you wanted the other deals you had to go look at the stuff mixed in with the regular stock. I remember two years ago it was all seperate and if not it was clearly marked 7.99$ BluRays.

But yah who went shopping how much did you spend? I went with 300$ and ended up spending 950$ on myself and buying more for friends. In fact both my credit cards got frozen for suspcious activity forcing me to stop, thank God.

I didn't spend anything, I got stuff for other people.  I go every year and they rarely let anyone take stuff that wasn't put out specifically for Black Friday.  This year they let people at the store I went to get games that were behind the shelves but movies and other electronics were not allowed to be sold for the sale pice unless they were in a display in the isles and marked with a special bar code.  This is for Wal-mart by the way.

Best Buy was different but unless we got there at least 5 hours early they always ran out of stock.  You are right that they keep the movies and such in their normal spaces but games were usually put in bins.  Most other big ticket items like TV's are given out to the people in line before the store opens by means of a voucher.  You get that piece of paper and have till the next day to pick up your item.