On Thursday, on the way down to Grandma’s house for Thanksgiving we stopped at KMart. They were supposed to have some Thanksgiving Day-only deals and I did find one little present. It was the misery, however, that I wanted to comment on. There were people on line to purchase, screaming at cashiers, insisting they should get the Friday price, even though it was Thursday. One woman of about 50 was being extremely condescending to an incredibly patient cashier. The shopper was saying that she intended to come back the next day with receipts and get the price adjusted to the better sale price, so the cashier might as well just give her the discount and save everybody the aggravation. The cashier said, “I can get my manager and you can ask her,” barely concealing a smile as the idiot shopper backpedaled.

I overheard two women walking through the store complaining about getting up early Friday morning to go shopping. They were bitching and moaning about how it’s not fair that the stores have sales like that…it ruins the holiday.

You know, I have been watching the flyers for a number of items over the last several months and I have seen something that may seem surprising. With very few exceptions, the Black Friday sale prices are no better than the regular sale prices from week to week. Yes, there are a limited number of ‘doorbuster’ deals, but there really aren’t that many. Yes, you can sometimes find some newer DVDs for half off or better, but those are usually not the doorbusters. And do you really think the $800 Walmart plasma is comparable to its $3000 (sale price) major brand counterpart.

Just because someone says it’s on sale doesn’t mean it is the best price you will be able to get. And we have to remember, a deal is not always a representation of value.

Example – several years ago I had a friend who bought a big screen television. Actually, that’s not entirely accurate. He bought a tv stand. The big screen TV came with it for free. Don’t get me wrong, it was a very handsome piece of entertainment furniture, and it was not cheap. As I remember, it was in the $1k range. Maybe a little more, maybe a little less. But my friend was just so psyched to get the free TV.

He was not taken – in fact, it was probably not a bad deal. But it wasn’t really a free TV. At the time I recall that most of the major outlets were giving away free TV stands with the big screen TVs,  and the final total was in the same ballpark. This was just a clever reversal of the common deal.

But my friend kept insisting he got a free TV. Finally I told him to enjoy his free TV, but I recommended that he not go around telling people about the great deal he got on his stand.