This year we decided to skip the crowds, the cold weather, and the long lines in lieu of ordering what we wanted online. After we ordered online, we enjoyed a nice Thanksgiving meal and watched movies because that is what we do.
Having gift cards available to purchase items on Black Friday was a true blessing. We earned the gift cards last year as an incentive to work extra hours at our side hustle jobs. We work two jobs contrary to many who think we sit around all day in our theater. Don’t work! Don’t eat!
The gift cards were taxed on our W-2s accordingly. Uncle Sam will always get his cut. The gift cards were due to expire 12-31-2019 so Black Friday was the perfect time to spend them before they expired.
The difference in the number of movies we ordered and what we have actually received via mail is an EPIC FAIL. Due to the back-order delays, our Black Friday shopping is Valentine’s day shopping. Anyhoo! This experience is clearly a Black Friday fail!
We won’t make the same mistake of ordering all of our Black Friday items online next year. Ordering online was a mistake because we ran into several problems that did not surface until a few days later. Many of the deep-discounted items are now back-ordered. This is frustrating because the back-order shipment dates are extended to February 2020 from major retailers.
We are not the only ones with a delayed Black Friday 2019 shopping experience. The Twitter hashtag #blackfridayfail is full of disgruntled consumers. We highly expect after the media hype from Black Friday has died down, the stores will just cancel the back-orders all together and refuse to honor Black Friday pricing. Many Walmart shoppers are already upset this has happened to them. We expect many of the 3D titles that were rock bottom pricing will suffer the same cancellation fate.
For us the main issue is not knowing if the orders will be cancelled. If the orders are cancelled, we have missed our opportunity to purchase at another retailer since most price match. We will do things differently next year.
We are grateful to have received some of the items we ordered weeks later. Hopefully, the other titles we ordered will arrive soon. To be perfectly honest, we have so many new titles from our October 2019 Haul and November 2019 (Pre-Black Friday) Haul. We more than likely wouldn’t watch the back-ordered items until 2020 anyway.
As we mentioned above, next year we will visit the stores to obtain our Black Friday deals in-person and with a fixed cash budget. We believe this will improve our Black Friday movie haul experience in several ways:
Fixed Budget – We will take a certain amount of dollars shopping. When the money is gone, we are done shopping. Shopping online we spent a lot more because we charged all of our purchases. However, with cold hard cash we would be forced to be more selective in our purchases. Sticking to a fixed amount will seriously improve our Black Friday shopping experience
Bank Account – The purchases that didn’t fit on the gift cards went on our debit cards. We reconcile our debit accounts daily. The few items that did ship where split into eight different shipments. We were charged eight different amounts instead of four lump sum totals when we ordered. Because most of our items are on back-order we still haven’t been charged for those items.
Debit card and gift card flux is horrible as you never know when the item will be restocked. Cash is better because the transaction is completed right away without any additional account monitoring or reconciliation. Spending cash will eliminate debit card and gift card reconciliation issues.
A home theater can be expensive if you try to keep up with the Joneses and play the “my rack is better than your rack” game. We could care less about the Joneses or what another person has in their rack. We have made our humble home theater affordable by waiting for sales, clearance, and special shopping events (B2G1Free, Black Friday, Sales, Clearance). Balling on a budget has proven to be very successful for our home theater goals. We do the majority of our movie hauling this time of the year when Black Friday deals are the lowest prices of the year.
Hard to Find the Exact Deals – We found Target’s online deals were hard to find. We searched for the Game of Thrones $10 complete season deal but the results showed every price accept the Black Friday pricing of $10. If the movie is in-stock at the store it is located in the special Black Friday shipper bins every store puts out. We will know exactly where to find it in the store.
Products Online but Available In-Store Only – Several items were featured on Best Buy’s website as buy-now items. We placed several featured items in our cart only to find at checkout they were only available in-store. We will improve our Black Friday experience by shopping in-person so all the deals will be available to us.
Back-Ordered – We are still waiting on back-ordered items from major retailers. January – February 2020 is listed as the approximate ship date. If the deal is sold out in-store then we know right away to try another store. We won’t miss the opportunity to purchase at Black Friday prices from another retailer. This will also improve our Black Friday shopping experience.
The movies we ordered on Black Friday are not life necessities like medicine, food, clothing, or shelter. We will not suffer or go hungry if we don’t receive Spiderman 3D right away. The Spiderman 3D movie and a few other 3D titles on back-order are part of our upcoming Epic 26 Marvel 3D movie marathon party we are planning. Once all the movies arrive, we will be able to have our unique marathon.
We don’t take our blessings for granted. However, next year we will visit the stores in-person, pay cash, and complete our Black Friday transactions within two days. This year our transaction maybe drawn out to February. For us that is an epic Black Friday fail – lesson learned #blackfridayfail.
Again, we are blessed to purchase anything. We will wait and see if our 3D back-ordered items are eventually cancelled. This is what we have in hand from our Black Friday 2019 haul.
A full list of movie titles with links to trailers are below the pictures. Click the photos for a better view.
