Post-Thanksgiving Sales Were All Non-Starters
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I was admittedly caught in the hype of the post-Thanksgiving sales. After the news media figured out that all the talk about the body scanners and pat-downs at our nation’s airports turned out to be nothing really once people actually went through our nation’s security checkpoints with little incident, they got all excited about the Black Friday and Cyber Monday. And since I basically had half my week cancelled (I teach two of four classes on Thursday), it was easy for me to get distracted.
Anyway, I found that all of the sales were underwhelming. Here’s a partial scorecard.
Griffith’s 70% Sale
With free shipping! But only good on deprecated products, and now there’s only two iPhone 4 accessories. And I already have their awesome Reveal Etch that I got free, courtesy of Apple’s Free Case program, which is the best one. I was hoping for the Radio Shark to be on sale or something useful like that.
Virgin America’s Cyber Monday Sale
I wasn’t gonna bite on this anyway since I need all the United miles I can get to keep my meager Premier status, but I clicked through and learned that this wasn’t much of a sale. They basically rolled over their lowest published fares past March, where they stopped last week, through May. This was just a fare sale that was announced on Cyber Monday, and not much more. (Now I hope that United will match and roll their T and S fares on NYC-LAX past March 17.)
Apple’s Black Friday and Cyber Monday
I’m still using one of the Airport Express base stations I bought in 2003 when the Apple Stores first started doing these Friday sales. I scored that base station for $79, a full $20 of retail. But nowadays, they basically match the Educational discount on the computers. And sometimes, they Educational discount is even better. Today’s sale was mostly on accessories, but that’s just spending money on what I don’t need.
Omni Hotel’s 999 rooms at $99 per night
This is a great deal at one of the best hotel chains in the country. A bunch of rooms at hotels in the chain were $99 for stays between now and the end of January. But all the dates in LA and Washington I wanted were blacked out. They did have a deal at the San Diego property after Christmas, but we already booked an equally good deal via Travelzoo. So after waiting all weekend to book a inexpensive room at a great property, there was nothing I could use.
I really wished my local sushi place was offering a Cyber Monday deal. I would have ordered online!