Black Friday Archive

Tomorrow in the U.S. is the special online-only holiday of Cyber Monday. I just left my finger workout class at the local gym to get ready for all of the exciting and quick moving deals that will be available. If you are new to Cyber Monday or are looking for information on how to find the best deals, I’ve shared a bunch of tips and techniques on my InformationWeek column.

Some online retailers have started their Cyber Monday sales early so if you are waiting until tomorrow to start searching, you might try searching tonight.

On Friday we reported that office supply retailer Staples was having issues with their website and ordering during their Black Friday sales. Today’s issue is even more fun than if the Staples website was down.

Staples posted their Cyber Monday deals a day early — one of the deals is for $25 in free Sharpie markers and pens. The purchase should be simple…add $25 in Sharpie products to your shopping cart, apply the coupon code 96140 and bingo — $25 in free Sharpie products. The deal was to begin at 6am this morning. The deal hunters lined up in massive lines with their products chosen just waiting for 6am. When 6am came, the code was not working. In fact, as of 5pm Eastern, the code is still not working.

The coupon issue sent the deal forums into mass panic. SlickDeals shows over 115 pages of replies related to this deal and over 155k topic views. Other deal forums show hundreds of reviews and tens of thousands of pageviews. So while Staples gets some egg on their face, the deal forums make out well in ad views. I guess we can say that for today, Staples was the Digg for the deal forums.

Big kudos to the customer service team at Staples – so far I haven’t read one complaint with how the coupon issue was handled. I sure hope that Staples management provides a bonus for the entire call center. At one point there were over 2,000 people on hold. The greeting on the phone line tells customers to call back later if they are looking for the Sharpies coupon and it will be validated later in the week.

Many of us are wondering why they didn’t just fix the coupon code so it worked. I grabbed a bunch of markers and pens – I wonder how long they last before they dry out.

Online deal hunters are a bit upset that the online website for office supply store Staples is down and not functioning on the busiest shopping day of the year. Staples is my favorite store in the world and I was hoping to score a Logitech illuminated keyboard which was supposed to be reduced from $80 to $30.

There’s no doubt the Staples website is getting hammered with people looking for deals ranging from computers to printers to even the most basic paper clip.

The site is providing the following error message:

An error occurred while processing your request.

Reference #102.d148453f.1259320024.0

For now, eat your breakfast and get your credit cards ready to shop, shop, shop.

Update 7AM Eastern: Staples is back – that was easy!

Early this morning I saw a report on the local NYC news that workers were trampled at the Valley Stream Walmart store this morning. We’ve all seen these reports before. Some lunatic shoppers bust into a store on Black Friday to get some cheap merchandise with no regard for other human beings or workers who are trying to put on a happy face for all they will deal with today.

Now the Daily News is reporting that one of the workers who were trampled has died. The unidentified worker was only 34-years old. Absolutely pathetic – apparently after he fell down, people stepped on him to get into the store and he couldn’t breathe. A pregnant woman was also knocked to the floor during the lunacy.

I can’t even begin to explain how outraged I am by this lack of concern for another human being–all to get the latest bratz doll or a cheap TV.

Valley Stream is located in Nassau County and I hope that the police take the tapes of the entry and match them to the tapes at checkout to identify the people who stepped on and over this worker. These people deserve hard time.