Was Circuit City $ 199 Notebook Black Friday ad irresponsible?

In My Humble Opinion
1

When I first saw this $ 199. price for a notebook price onadscans I was tempted to get in line although I had sworn to myself I would never get involved in this silliness again after last year’s Black Friday experience.

I checked back with adscans before Black Friday and sure enough the CC notebook was 449. and only 199 after a 250 rebate from AOL if you bought a year's subscription to their service. The disclaimer was in teeny tiny print next to the 199.00 price. Based on extensive experience with CC sale prices I am about 100% sure this notebook will be at, or very near, to $ 450 again before New Years so I blew off any notion of a Black Friday line up.

So I’m at my sister’s house in Media PA Thanksgiving night, and they’re interviewing people lining up outside CC at 11 PM the night before for the store opening @ 5 AM. It was ferociously cold and the wind was whipping outside. I froze my temperate Maryland ass off just getting my night clothes out of the car (I don’t know how Twickster and the other Philadelphians stand it). People were mainly in line for the notebook or a flat screen TV deal that was being offered. Some were talking about buying 2-3 notebooks at this price.

And I’m thinking “The people in line don’t realize the deals will be limited one to a household or customer, and they probably don’t realize they’ve got to buy this AOL service to get the deal. They’d better have plenty of notebooks or these cold people are going to be severely pissed!”

So lo and behold there’s this story in The New York Daily News.

Digital rage! - Crowds want their laptops

And I’m thinking that anyone with a brain could have seen this problem coming up 5th Avenue. I think it was somewhat irresponsible of CC to tempt people with a near irresistible price without making sure tons were in the supply chain.

2

what wasn’t written but anyone with more than 3 brain cells functioning could figure out is that there is also a max at each store. That number might be 15, 16, 30 or whatever, it for sure is not infinity +1.
My son mentioned that Adequate Purchase was supposed to have a plasma TV for something like $1,000. I asked how many per store, he did not know. I said my guess is one, so what do you do if you are second in line? :confused:

3

Maybe the prime irresponsibility was in how the limited supply was distributed.

I’ve stopped by Staples on black friday for the last couple of years, and on the big-draw items like LCD monitors, laptops, and such, they go to the line outside the store before the store opens and hand out vouchers for these items based on the person’s place in line. That way there’s no stampede when the doors open. You go to a specially setup station to redeem your voucher for the hot item.

As for quantities I would be surprised if anyone actually thought there would be more than a very few.

If Circuit City (or WalMart, or any of the other bloodbath stores reported yesterday) just open the doors and let folks sprint for the items, then yes, I would say that’s highly irresponsible, and an easily forseeable situation to boot.

4

I’m generally happy to jump on the bash-the-big-box-store bandwagon, because those places often suck, have awful customer service, and generally do their best to get your money while providing as little as possible in return.

But come on people.

Anyone with more than two functioning neurons should, in the early 21st century, know that if an offer seems to good to be true, i probably is. Either that, or there’s a whole shitload of small print hoops that you will have to jump through for your chance at the Bargain Of A Lifetime[sup]TM[/sup].

And this level of skepticism should be doubled and redoubled for these ridiculous Black Friday sales. Does anyone seriously believe that all these incredible bargains are going to be offered to as many people as walk in the door? Does anyone really think that anyone who wants one will be guaranteed a $1000 plasma TV or a $200 computer?

I guess, at some level, we could blame the store for irresponsible advertising. But the reason this shit works is that morons fall for it. The advertising industry makes all sorts of ridiculous claims and implications—drink our beer and you’ll get more chicks, use our razor and you’ll get more chicks, use our deodorant and you’ll get more chicks—and anyone who believes anything they see in advertising without doing some independent research needs their head examined.

So, my answer to the OP is a qualified “yes.”

Sure, the stores might have been irresponsible, on some level. But they do this shit all the time; it’s not like it’s unexpected. And the stores’ lack of responsible advertising is no more egregious, in my mind, than the stupidty of people who attend such sales in the belief that the stores are somehow obligated to keep the impossibly low prices going until they get to the counter.

5

So are you agreeing or disagreeing with me mhendo? I ask because it seems like we said similar things in our posts, but you quoted me and I really don’t know why.

As I said, the irresponsibility was not in the limited numbers of available items, but in the free-for-all way they were distributed.

6

My vote is it was irresponsible, and unethical and reprehensible. I think they were lying, in the sense that they were trying to mislead people, get them to believe something untrue, with what they said.

It’s common enough, sadly, that businesses will stay (if only arguably so) within the letter of the law while doing something that is pretty obviously fradulent.

If anyone with a few neurons should be able to see through the ruse, well, anyone so equipped should also see this advertising wasn’t intended to truly inform, but rather to mislead and confuse.

Shame on them. This is a good reason to avoid Circuit City in the future. I’d rather not do business with folks that try to decieve their customers, preferring instead vendors who want well informed buyers. But if they have a team of lawyers who advised they’d probably get away with this, well, I’d have to guess the lawyers probably bet correctly.

7

Well, i’m agreeing with you in a limited fashion. I agree that their marketing showed a certain measure of irresponsibility, but really no more than most marketing and advertising. And if customers don’t read the fine print, or if the customers behave liked crazed animals in the stores, than that’s the fault of the individuals involved.

Also, i’m not quite sure what you mean by “free-for-all way they were distributed.” How exactly was this done? Were the items just sitting on the shelves, as such items normally are? If so, i’m not sure what the problem is. As i said, if people kick and scream and beat each other up to get to these things, then the people involved are idiots.

Of course, the fact that the store managers and staff act as if this is a shock to them, and they never expected such behavior, is just as stupid.

That’s what advertising is all about. If everyone realized that, we would be a bunch of better informed citizens. We need to start from the premise that advertising is designed to sway our emotions and downplay or marginalize our reason and logic. Advertisers crap on about how they just want to inform us—that’s bullshit. They want to bribe or cajole or intimidate or embarrass or guilt-trip us into handing over our money.

No argument here. Which is why we need to pay attention, and refuse to give our business to people who follow such practices. If it doesn’t work, they won’t do it.

Also, i’m sure there are plenty of people in those lines yesterday who were well aware of the limited numbers of good deals, or the dodgy loopholes and small print, and who still decided that the price reduction was worth the inconvenience of standing in lines in the middle of the night and battling other sweaty herdmembers for the privilege of picking up some piece of electronic wizardry. If those people are willing to put up with all that shit, good luck to them.

Again, no argument from me.

By all means avoid them. I’m no fan of Circuit City or Adequate Purchase myself. But realize also that as long as people line up at 2am for these Black Friday sales, these businesses will continue to use these same advertising tactics.

8

I’m not certain how they were distributed either, but based on the pictures I saw of people wrestling on the ground, and news blips I heard on the radio, some stores just opened the doors and let people stampede towards the hot advertised item(s). That’s the only thing I see as the stores being irresponsible, and that’s what I meant by free-for-all distribution. The irresponsibility is that there’s easily implemented ways to distribute the limited product without letting people race to get it.

I don’t consider the stores at all irresponsible for having incredibly cheap laptops, or having only a very few of them. Anyone who’s spent anytime at all being alive should clearly understand that the great deal they’re after is going to be very limited in scope. Also, I agree that anyone who would get in a physical altercation over these things is acting like nothing more than a jerk.

9

“Nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public.”

   - A quote attributed to many, most notably, P.T. Barnum.
10

The problem—or the issue—is that it is not really in the store’s interest to facilitate an easy and orderly distribution of the cheap gear. The store wants people rushing through the aisles and going crazy, because they hope that some of those who miss out on the really cheap stuff will hang around long enough to buy something that they didn’t actually come for.

The main aim of the loss-leader items like $200 laptops is to get people into the store. If they introduced an orderly system whereby they told each person waiting in line what was left, they wouldn’t get as many frantic shoppers spending money on things they didn’t come for in the first place.

11

Well, I suppose they’re could be something to that, but I was at a store that did have an orderly preplanned system for the distribution of hot items, and they appeared to be doing a great business on other items as well. Keep in mind that they had lots of items on sale for very good prices, not just a few loss leaders. I maintain that you can still distribute the loss leaders in an orderly fashion and have people do plenty of shopping for items that are very low priced but not priced far below normal sale prices, such as a $199.00 laptop.

12

One good working method is to have an entry blank and after the first 2 hours draw for the people that get the item. You also make it a requirement that they are at the store for the drawing or a new person is drawn.

13

I actually saw this advertisement in our local paper. There WAS the disclaimer about the AOL service and that there would only be 15 per store. Can you really hold them responsible because people don’t read the small print? I saw it and the only excuse for the consumers is sheer laziness, IMO. It’s on the advertisement, I checked it out because the deal sounded too good to be true. An $800 laptop for $200? There’s always a catch.

I don’t think CC should be held responsible for this at all. But I know how the general public is from working retail. They’ll get their asses out of bed at 4 in the morning for a good deal, but read something? That’s too much work for them.