by geolemon » Fri Nov 24, 2006 6:11 pm
Maybe Office Depot wasn't busy... near you.
Here, I went into Circuit City because a friend of mine is a manager there.
They opened at 5am this morning. When he arrived at 4am, there was already a line that formed around the building, and not able to double up on itself, headed over towards the Olive Garden next door. Casually asking one of the people in line who was near where he parked (around the side of the building - "wall #2" for the line), they replied that they were in line at midnight!
Having just bought a couple big SD cards for my camera, and a new MP3 player that I own that also uses SD cards, I bought a small USB SD card reader from Circuit City via their website. On sale, normally almost $20, it was on sale for $15 and with a $10 rebate, so $5. I bought it and chose "in store pickup" since that Circuit City is so close to me.
So I got there at 9am, just to see - figured I'd stroll in to the "customer pickup" counter while everyone else was battling over whatever goofy specials they were suckering people in with.
I walked into the front door, and the customer pickup counter is about halfway into the store - the line for customer pickup (4 HOURS AFTER THEY OPENED) was all the way to the front door! The line for every single register was about 40-50 people deep, no joke.
And I don't understand why... Circuit City had a good special on some cheap laptops, cheap desktops, and a couple other goodies. Each of them, they had all of 20 or 25 of, and they would have sold out entirely by about 5:10am.
I left there and went into Sears since it was actually in the mall across the parking lot, and it wasn't quite as ridiculous, but it was still pretty crazy.
My conclusion was quite seriously that I don't care WHAT they had on special, or free even - for how long you had to wait in line, just for the CHANCE to get one of the few available [with the odds against you] - it simply wasn't worth it, even if you DID manage to get one.
Maybe Office Depot wasn't busy... near you.
Here, I went into Circuit City because a friend of mine is a manager there.
They opened at 5am this morning. When he arrived at 4am, there was already a line that formed around the building, and not able to double up on itself, headed over towards the Olive Garden next door. Casually asking one of the people in line who was near where he parked (around the side of the building - "wall #2" for the line), they replied that they were in line at midnight!
Having just bought a couple big SD cards for my camera, and a new MP3 player that I own that also uses SD cards, I bought a small USB SD card reader from Circuit City via their website. On sale, normally almost $20, it was on sale for $15 and with a $10 rebate, so $5. I bought it and chose "in store pickup" since that Circuit City is so close to me.
So I got there at 9am, just to see - figured I'd stroll in to the "customer pickup" counter while everyone else was battling over whatever goofy specials they were suckering people in with.
I walked into the front door, and the customer pickup counter is about halfway into the store - the line for customer pickup (4 HOURS AFTER THEY OPENED) was all the way to the front door! The line for every single register was about 40-50 people deep, no joke.
And I don't understand why... Circuit City had a good special on some cheap laptops, cheap desktops, and a couple other goodies. Each of them, they had all of 20 or 25 of, and they would have sold out entirely by about 5:10am. :rolleyes:
I left there and went into Sears since it was actually in the mall across the parking lot, and it wasn't quite as ridiculous, but it was still pretty crazy.
My conclusion was quite seriously that I don't care WHAT they had on special, or free even - for how long you had to wait in line, just for the CHANCE to get one of the few available [with the odds against you] - it simply wasn't worth it, even if you DID manage to get one. :rolleyes: