Black Friday 2015 Retailer Rating Thread

[That'sAllFolks]

I thought it'd be interesting to rate the different retailers and how they've compared in years' past pertaining to BF

Amazon - Much better than last year with complete series sets of Sopranoes, The Wire and Fringe at all time lowest prices, but again they didn't show up with the LDs as in years past. REVISED to 4/10

Best Buy -- good inventory, website worked well and their bargains were a tittle better than in years' past with OITNW S1 and S2 and Hannibal S1 at 4.99. And don't forget San Andreas 3D for 9.99 and Band of Brothers for 9.99. 9/10

Big Lots-- good pricing (2.88 BD,1.88 DVD), but nothing we haven't seen all year long. No really good titles, just mostly krrap. 2/10

Deep Discount - last years' winner didn't make a very good showing this year. With the exception of Gotham S1, Flash S1, Arrow S3 and a few other WB titles, they didn't have any really good deals. 6/10

FoxConnect - easily the most disappointing. Crappy BF pricing (except for the mistprices), but at least they had the 50% earlier in the month. 5/10 for the 50% sale. Otherwise 1/10.

Frys - not too great. A few deals, but the fact their promo codes didn't work on TG soured my evaluation of them. Also I missed alot of the $4 titles because I kept waiting for a promo code to make them $3 like last year, but that was my fault in assuming. 5/10

Target - most improved over previous years. Lots of unadvertised deals during the early part of the week, with additional codes to make it even cheaper. Decent BF deals, but I think the best stuff was before Thanksgiving even started. 8/10

Walmart -- their BF selection was mediocre -- at best. Plus the problems with the website to work like a fortune 500 company caused the online experience to be a total FAIL. A few BD gems like Hansel and Gretal 3D, but most of their BF stock was either repeats of previous years, or a $1 or 2 more expensive than Target and BBY. If it weren't for the misprice(?) of the 3D titles, they would almost be a total bust. 4/10 if the 3D was a mistprice, 6/10 if it was an unadvertised sale.


Overall, I'd give BF 2015 to Best Buy, with Target making a strong 2nd. Nobody else had any great amount of bargains unless you count Amazon PMs, which were not near as extensive as in years past (not counting the TOTAL FAIL of Amazon BF 2014).

[Stereodude]

Originally Posted by That'sAllFolks

Amazon - Much better than last year with complete series sets of Sopranoes, The Wire and Fringe at all time lowest prices, but again they didn't show up with the LDs as in years past. 6/10

You're being pretty generous here IMHO, unless you're including the overseas Amazon flavors, like UK and FR in your grouping. The lowest prices for The Wire at Amazon.com was $59.99 on Nov 4th, and The Sopranos was $74.99 on Nov 12th. Both well prior to black Friday week / cyber Monday. Amazon.fr had both for about $45 shipped to US (less if you ordered them together and combined shipping) from black Friday through Sunday though.

[That'sAllFolks]

Originally Posted by hariseldon

[Show spoiler]Amazon US 3/10 exclusively based on the first week deals of The Wire and Sopranos that allowed me to PM at BBY since their shipping/packing has become a severe liability. After that first week they did absolutely nothing for the duration and didn't even PM very well. Otherwise another no show for 2015 unless you allow this weeks Breaking Bad DOTD and Fringe Price Error add points.


Amazon UK -- not as good as last year, but at least they were trying and most of their LD didn't sell out. If they'd ever fix the VAT LD issue then they might get a 10. Constantly good to great DOTD items and many items were put back on sale after the LD for about the same price (STTNG, ST ENterprise, BSG for $22, Pixar Boxset for 60?,etc.


BBY - 8.5/10 and the Domestic Winner.

Deep Discount -- not as good as last year, but they still had some nice TV season price 7/10. Will drop a notch or 2 if more people get cancellations of their backorders Arrow/Gotham/Flash seasons.

Target -- didn't buy anything from them, but the threads showed they did a good job and the 20% coupons are just still giving

Fox Connect -- XFiles preorder sort of Count. 1 star pupil 85 for the season and 150 for the boxset (twice). They have to get at least a 3/10 just for the one deal. Otherwise a complete no-show

Walmart -- other then the 3D items it was mostly a zero, but the 3D glitches or not give them a 6/10. Aladdin, Tomorrowland, and a few other 2D deals worked OK. The fact that the prices were up early in the day Thrusday and stayed most of the weekend earns them at least another point since I never saw a crowd or had trouble parking.

B&N -- 30% coupon and last wk of 50% Criterion sale. I never know whether to call that a BF sale or not, but it's hard to argue with Zatoichi for $70 and Apu for 30 and all other regular Criterions for 12. The re-usuable codes this year were a major bonus. There actually were some non-Criterion items with 50-60% off prices + 30% coupon that kind of got lost in the swirl. The 75+10 and 50+10 GC deals sweeten the post a little though a delayed gratification since the promo GC have to wait to be used and the 50+10 promo deal in time limited (in theory). I'll give them an honorary BF 8.5 since I spent more more there than anywhere in the last 10 days of November

Yeah, I think I will lower Amazon to 4.0/10. But if you want to compare DD with Amazon, both of them had only a few good deals on BD. I know DD had some complete series DVD sets for rock bottom prices that didn't get much attention here or at DVD Talk, so I will leave them at a 6/10. I don't really count the Dexter sets et al as BF, but I guess you could.

[Clark Kent]

Best Buy was easily the best Black Friday experience for both Internet and physical retail. Walmart's retail came in second.

Amazon has stopped caring. They have enough rich customers now that they don't worry about pushing heavy discounts.