November 23rd, 2009 
Vijaianand Are you excited about the Black Friday shopping deals with all the hype around?
If you are a first timer, you better be. In the last two articles, we saw the trend of Black friday, how you can put together your buy list under the budget using the 5 step strategy.
You have one last thing to do which is plan for the big shopping day. In this article you will see a simple plan that makes your life easier with safe shopping. Whether you are going to start your shopping season on the Black friday or later, the plan filled with tips will surely come-in handy.
1. Prepare a plan
With families around, it might be hard to find time to draft a plan on the Thanksgiving day. Either involve your family in preparation or do it before Thanksgiving day. It is important to have a plan on which store you want to go and when you want be at the store. For example, if you want an unbeatable deal of fully powered, high peformance Sony laptop for just $399, you should be at the store at least 5-6 hours early so you one among first 5-10 people for the chance to get this deal. These hot deals are mostly limited in quantity so you have to be among first 10-20 people. If you only plan to get not so hot items, you can plan to be at the stores couple of hours early before the door opens.
Also with your finalized buy list, you should have an idea which stores you want to hit. Check their opening times and see whether you can go one store after another if they are not opening at same time. Otherwise you might want to decide which item is important to you and go to that store first. If you can join hands with your family and friends it makes easier and fun.
2.Partner with Friends and Families
Divide and Conquer method works very well for Black friday. Partner with family members or ask them to join with you. You can pair up and take different routes and hit different stores. This way you have chance of getting more things on sale instead of hitting them alone.
3. Things you need to take
- Print outs – Don’t forget to take print outs of your buy/wish list of items and store flyers if you
- Cash and Credit cards – Obviously don’t forget to take enough cash or credit cards to purchase the items. As I mentioned in the previous article, avoid using credit card unless you can pay full next month. If you do plan to use cc, choose the credit cards which adds extra warranty or safety on your purchase.
4. Retailers going High Tech
This Black friday in many ways different from the past as we discussed in the first article of this series. Most importantly, many retailers like Staples, Toysrus are using social networking media like Twitter, Facebook and MySpace to advertise last minute deals to their subscribers. Don’t forget carry your iphone or cellphones equiped with text messages to the track and avoid the latest minute deals.
5. Fast Check out is key
Another trick for faster shopping is to check out faster. You will lose more time in checking out/billing the items at the cash register than picking up the items. So if you are going to shops as a pair, ask one person to stand in check out line as soon as possible when you are crabbing the things. This way as soon as you are done shopping, you can bill your items and on your way to next store.
6. Mail-In Rebate(MIR) reciepts
Don’t forgot get the mail in rebate coupons and reciepts to go with your items. Most of the stores are avoiding MIR this season to reduce cost involved in MIR’s but if you happen to buy an item with MIR, do collect all paper work needed to claim it.
7. Know retailers dirty secrets
Look at the fine print that appears next to an advertised “doorbuster deal” at the bottom of the page in this year’s circulars. It will either say “While supplies last,” “Minimum 2 per store,” “No rainchecks” or “All items are available in limited quantities.” If it says any of these jorgans, you either plan properly to be at the store early to get them or plan to get in different store if it cost bit more.
8. Avoid rush’in
After last year stampede at a Wal-Mart store in New York that led to an employee’s death they are planning to keep it open for 24 hours. The stampede happened because so many of the deals were advertised as limited supply. Plan properly to be at store early and avoid rush’in or try to avoid congestion.
9. Don’t give up
Many times you can go late to the store even after thee actual opening times and get items on sale if you are lucky. How? Some stores put out the doorbusters in batches and your might be lucky to get them. In other case, many people who crabbed sale items decided not to get them and throw them in other shelfs, you can just browse the store and might endup getting what you wanted. So don’t give up if you are going after all the opening time.
10. Drive Carefully and Safe shopping
Black Friday is also one of days for many accidents. Everyone is trying to rush to get things. So be careful and watch out. You don’t want to get into an accident and lose more than what you want to save to start with.
Hope the shopping plan with tips and tricks were helpful. Come back for Hot picks for this blackfriday and more on mail in rebates.
Photo source: ehow.com
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