Life is Funny

If you’re an expert shopper, you can pick up some fantastic boxing day deals. There are a few tricks I’ve learned over the years.

I’ve done everything from sit outside of an electronics store overnight, being 3rd in line, for 18 hours straight. Temperatures were down to -1 but the windchill brought them down to as low as -9 degrees celcius.

That may not sound cold, if you bring blankets, a hat, two pairs of clothing ontop of each other, double socks, and a warm thermos of coffee..

But when the coffee runs out, and all the nearby coffee shops are closed..  things get progressively worse. When you get tired, the cold gets to you fast.  What was I going after? One of the first DVD players on the market for $139 while the rest of them were priced at $549 and above.

After a long hard night, and to the point where I thought about giving up and leaving 3 separate times.. I finally made it into the store, and got my DVD player for $139.

Problem? It was a buggy low-end model that the store got ahold of at rock bottom wholesale prices to them. It only worked with about 80% of DVD’s put into it. The fast forward feature was difficult to use. I was very unimpressed that 18 hours of waiting in the cold to save $300, turned out that I ended up with a cheap clearance item.

So would I do it again? Probably not. I don’t trust these ultra low deals. There may be a reason why the store has decided to knock down that particular model.

But with any sale, you can pick up good Boxing Day bargains, because the rest of their inventory is also knocked down. Now here’ s the catch. Many stores will open at 7am boxing day. Some open at 9am, and others open at 10am.

The key is to get a list of the stores all lined up and planned out, find out their opening hours. Instead of you and 3 friends going store to store… why not split up the work load, and have all three of you in three different locations grabbing the things you all need?

Boxing Day has planning involved. In the courier business, they call it “logistics“.

So this boxing day, take the extra time to grab all the flyers, study them well in advance. Make sure you are completely ready, and then hit the stores in the right sequential order.

Oh, and please DO yourself a favor. Even if a GPS that normally costs $300 is marked down to $80 — do the research on that particular model number. You might find out that people who bought that item at full retail might have some grips and complaints about it posted on the internet.

I love the chaos of Boxing day sales.. Sometimes I go just to watch people scramble around like idiots even if I don’t feel like buying anything. But look at it from the store’s perspective. It is their opportunity to clear out overstocked inventory. Or to put things on clearance to bring in the new year’s models.

Also pay special attention to the “3 per store” in little fine print beneath the ad. Then drive there early before the store opens.. Speak to the people in line (that sat out the night before).. they will happily tell you what deal they are after, and it will be easy for you to realize what your chances are of getting that particular item.

If you have any boxing day deals you’d like to talk about, I’d love to hear them.