Hearing of the bad economy makes me think that prices will be really low. WRONG!
I did see some 40-50% off sales. The product was old crap, that couldn’t sell for even the discounted price. WalMart is going up on everything, except for cranberry sauce. Everything, everywhere, is about the same old price, or higher, disregarding gas. I went out shopping with my girlfriend, and she bought a Phillips dvd player, for about the same price that I saw them for 2 years ago. She also bought an HP computer. 800 bucks. About what was expected, and what a standard, midrange computer would go for in ‘better times’. Ad infinitum.
If the stores are discounting anything, other than pure crap that they normally discount, I haven’t seen it. How about you?
Merry Christmas,
greatshakes
I can tell you from my experience the only deals I’ve seen are Circuit (Citys, Cities?) that are going out of business. I got a few deals at the 50-60% mark before the vultures took everything good. Other than that it seems like a lot of the overpriced clothing stores are having buy one get one half off or straight up 50-60% sales of their own. I tend to like some of the stuff Old Navy has and popped in their yesterday. They had a bunch of items (plain tshirts, pj pants, etc) that were $6 a piece so I picked up a few undershirts, and a bunch of other sections had 60% off.
I think it’s kind of funny that even at 50-60% off some of this stuff is a good deal comparably but still probably way more than cost. Seems these companies can make it through. Sell your stuff well for way too much money during a strong economy, and rake in the money, and when the economy sours a little slash your prices to give the impression of great deals, but still make a few bucks on the crap your selling. I have no idea how much they really pay for this stuff but it seems selling a pair of jeans for $30 as opposed to $50-75 is still gonna turn a small profit at the very least.
Williams-Sonoma is offering 20% off everything in the store right now. Borders sent me a coupon for 40% off any book. Jewelry stores were offering 25% off watches, and the high end stuff had 24 months same as cash payment plans.
The Men’s Warehouse is offering a two for the price of one suit sale right now.
Not sure what you consider a deal, but IMHO all of these are pretty good deals on stuff that usually doesn’t go discount.
A local craft store offered 40% off Yankee Candles and 75% of Christmas ornaments and decorations, but the discounts were only good today from 1:00 until 3:00. Other than that, nope. It seems like prices are still pretty high.
When I was suit shopping in early fall, the Men’s Warehouse manager with whom I dealt advised me that they would be holding this sale, an annual end-of-year event; a good deal, but it’s a regular one, not one brought on by the economy. (But thanks for reminding me of the sale! I could use a new suit.)
Overall, I’ve had the same eperience as the OP, but I don’t tend to go to higher-end stores. Lower-end stores are the ones who tend to do well in downturns, and don’t find it necessary to hold special sales. Perhaps it’s time to go hit the Fashion Mall and scavenge at the “rich” stores?
The REI I work in practically looks like an outlet and that’s not normal. Not only is a significant portion of clothing on sale, but we just added a 15% discount to the already 30%+ off sale prices. Not only that our coupon promotions keep getting extended and our super clearance sale may actually be pushed up from it’s normal time.
There are some really, really good deals to be had and I’m not just saying that. It’s almost like a fire sale and REI is definitely NOT going out of business. It’s just been that sales for every retailer are WAY down from where they should be.
Yeah, I hit Kohl’s the week after Thanksgiving and completely shopped for three of my aunts, an uncle, and a cousin, got multiple fairly nice chains for pendants for other people, and got my sister-in-law a $30 gift card. The grand total was $175, because all the merchandise I got was at least 50% off, and all the jewelry I got (a couple of really nice sets, and the chains) were 70% off.
Of course, I remember finding similar sales (though perhaps not including as much of the store) there last Christmas season, too.
I even started a thread, I was so thrilled when I got this deal. I recently purchased a piece of yard art 
and had it delivered to my home near St. Louis from Iowa. I paid $500, plus $40 for the delivery. At this time last year, it would have cost me at least $1000 and a minimum of $200 (more likely $500) to deliver. On the other hand, I bought it from an individual, and maybe you only mean commercial retail sales.
Well, the hubby and I did get some really remarkable deals at a Pfaltzgraff store. All of their brick and mortar stores are closing, and from now on, they will only have a web presence. We went in thinking everything was 40%-60% off, and were delighted to find out that, that weekend, everything was an additional 40% off. We got, lemme see, a solid wood wine rack, some wine bottle stoppers, a candelabra set for my MIL for Christmas, two new sets of wine glasses (it was just before Thanksgiving, and we were gearing up) and a whole slew of other stuff, and got out of the store for a song!
We are planning on finishing up our shopping on Christmas Eve, at an outlet mall, and it will be interesting to see what kinds of deals we can dig up there.
Hubby also found a good deal on a Christmas gift for our oldest daughter, but I can’t give details, because she reads the boards! 
FWIW, there was very little at our Circuit City that you couldn’t get cheaper soemwhere else, EVEN with the ‘deep deep discounts’.
I picked up some normally $50 software for $35, which was cool, but ended up buying a camera, and hard disk elsewhere for less money, and there was a LOT of stuff at CC not discounted enough to warrant pulling the trigger.
We’ve ended up spending, probably, 80% of what we normally spend, got a lot of cool stuff for everybody, and felt like we got pretty good deals. Things like a $150 iPod Nano that cost $137, including engraving, a 320 Gb HD for $80, the camera was on sale for $97, down from $130 or so, Got a cordless phone kit with 4 phones for $40 at Woot, A Roomba 560 for $100 off. ($250 instead of $350)
So, yeah, we’ve saved a lot of dough and done our bit as good consumers.
Is this a recent development? I went to the one in Kittery a couple days before Thanksgiving, and it wasn’t one of the many stores that had a going out of business sign up. I won’t miss it as much a Big Dogs, but still 
No, I haven’t noticed any great deals. OTOH, I’ve mostly been puzzled about food prices. They went up a lot when gas was 3x the price it is now, and haven’t come down at all since, despite their then moaning about how they had to hike prices because shipping product was killing them…
I got a set of Henckel’s knives that I ave never seen on sale this deep. I got a 12 piece set, all real knives (not a bunch of steak knives and 4 cooking/prep knives) for 225 instead of around 400 which is full retail, or 300, which wuld be a typical sale price.
But yes, I expected to see really good deal this year and didn’t see anything out of line for last year’s black friday deals or anything.
Perhaps I should be more careful of what I post. Apparently, from the research I’ve just done, it’s the outlet stores that Pfaltzgraff are closing. I was repeating what the employee told me at the Hagerstown outlet store. However, there are signs all over that store that say stuff like “Worried about not being able to find your favorite Pfaltzgraff pattern? Don’t worry! It will still be available online.” No mention on these signs of some of the brick n mortar stores staying open.
Got a new Dyson vacuum for under $150, but that was a once-in-a-lifetime thing.
Four sets of $1,200 skis for $200 each, meaning a savings of $4,000 while spending $800 – what is that, over 83% off?
Seafood. The seafood market has been crashing for the past few months and prices in stores have been coming down very steadily. Lobster tails that we were selling for $25 a pound 6 months ago are now in the freezer case at $14.99 per pound. Shrimp that were $50 for a 5 pound box are down to $40. I believe crab has followed suit as well. Fish, I think has been pretty steady, but it’s not really my department anymore so I don’t pay very close attention to it.
This might not be what your looking for, but it’s a good example.
Forgot about this one…my business manager’s daughter was looking at condos in a major NE city, and had been thinking about one for $380,000 in January of this year. She stalled and walked away because she really would have had to stretch to make the payments (and was going to have to get a 50-year loan or something). Last week she closed on the exact, same unit - for $199,999. She saved $180,000 by waiting 11 months.
The condos in front of my home dropped from 320K to 239K in 10 months. My favourite neighbours moved out and are now saving on monthly rent. They did save up like crazy, though.
The store I work for hasn’t dropped any prices dramatically…our Christmas items are on sale as usual, but only two items are drastically cheaper…and again, that’s the normal pattern. We used to have regular sales where our clearance items would be 50% off their reduced prices for, say, the Veteran’s Day weekend…but our new management put a stop to that and we have been sitting on lots of old crap for a year now…our customers remember the old sale pricing and have told us they are waiting for a 50% off sale…which probably won’t come…
In fact, over Thanksgiving, we had a five-day sale where we actually RAISED the price of some items that had been on sale for weeks at $25, to $30 for the five days! And management wondered why the sale didn’t go over well…
My evil neighbor, who moved out of her house a year ago, had it on the market twice this past year, then took it off the market this summer. She’s just put it back on the market…but she hasn’t dropped the price a penny. All around us are nice homes being foreclosed on, and sale signs everywhere…but she’s sticking to her guns. That’s fine with me. She still maintains the place, and we have no neighbors to worry about!
My daughter’s ex-bf works at a Circuit City, and he said they jacked up the prices before the sale. I was looking for TVs, and they were no cheaper than other places. Mervyn’s is also going under, and they appear to have done the same thing.
On the other hand, I’ve gotten some excellent deals at Macy’s with a $25 off card for a $100 purchase (I came in at $104) and we got a good 46" TV at Sears for $1099, with no interest payments spread out until 2012. The deals are selective, but they are there.