November 19, 2004

• Wow, look, it's a post on AOL. Oh, no it's not. It just has equivalent spellings and a topic just as interesting. Whoever you are, please shrivel up and die.
• CONSUME! CONSUME!!!
• Guess what? Friday the 26th is also Buy Nothing Day. If you're not into the consume until there's nothing left thing, you can (you know, collectively) give retailers the message that the holiday should be about giving thanks for what you have - not being inundated with advertising begging you to buy every last thing you don't have. From past experience, I can recommend packing up some leftovers and hanging out at a park. You will probably have it to yourself, and there is a nice sense of being in a quiet place when you know most of America is shoving against each other and competing to stand in lines.
• That's a bit out of order isn't it? Looks like a useful site if you need to go shopping.
• b4hand? Tnxgiving? If I wanted that, I'd join a yahoo group. Or fatwallet. Seriously, this isn't a consumerist trough site. There are plenty. This doesn't need to be one. If someone wanted a consumerist trough, they likely wouldn't come looking here.
• b4hand and then returning them to get credit on BF Explain to me again I'd want to wait in an endless line at the return or (must not laugh or cry while I say this) "customer service" desk on the busiest shopping day of the year?
• black friday is also a day plumbers dread. why? "Pipes are like your arteries," said Paul Abrams, Roto-Rooter spokesman. "Soap, grease, hair and debris that go into drains acts like cholesterol building up over time until Thanksgiving overloads the pipes like a heart attack. All it takes is one major overload to exasperate the situation and cause a major clog."
• Am I missing something here? Why would you buy something today for regular price and return it on a day with a sale price? Why wouldn't you just buy it on the sale day?
• M: because you get your full price back, turn around and pick it up for sale price 1.buy 2.return 3.cheat 4.PROFIT! meh, my time is worth more
• I'm with mecurious - why not just buy it on sale to begin with, and not worry about having to spend the rest of the store credit at that store? But I won't be doing that, since I hate shopping on a good day. I think I will sleep. lovely lovely sleep
• The Ten Commandments for BUY NOTHING DAY 2004
• Not only is this shopping strategy immoral, it might also be useless. Most major retailers don't allow returns on shopping days of maximum business, because they're too swamped.
• Back in my old store managing days, this ploy was actually a fairly common trick. Customers would buy it at full price and then come in when it's on sale and want the price difference returned to them. As a courtesy, we used to do it for them. Then we got smart and told 'em all they could get for the item was the current sale price. Although it was much more common for people to steal an item and then try to return it for whatever-the-fuck price they could get.
• Wait, how is it a trick at all? They end up just getting store credit, or at most getting the money back so they get it at the sale price. No one makes any money from this. I'm so confused. How is this a trick/scam/etc? Sounds like a waste of time to me.
• My guess would be that by buying it ahead of time you are assured you'll get it, as opposed to waiting until the day it goes on sale and risking the store selling out of it. Unless you're like those crazed Wal Mart shoppers who line up in the parking lot at 4:00 AM waiting for the store to open. Even then you're only guaranteed a broken foot or some other bodily harm.
• Eeesh! The first day of the Winter Solstice shopping season again! I'm going surfing the day after Thanksgiving. You know, giving thanks and all.
• nice link homunculus - though I'm curious about how you go about sexually assaulting a corporation. How does one literally Fuck Starbucks? Reverend Billy?