Boxing Day 2009

Boxing Day Shopping in Canada can be exciting and stressful. Waiting in long cold lines, arguments over line positions, drunk shoppers, and assholes. If you don't like online shopping, you can try "camping" out at the big box stores early in the morning waiting for the 7 am open time. I did this a couple of years ago and it's not fun. (I bought a set of 5.1 speakers and a cheap printer). The deals aren't quite as good as they were back then. In fact, Logitech X-540 speakers I bought were $10 MORE than what I bought them for 2 years ago! Talk about inflation! Apparently I'm not the only one disappointed by the lack of deals.


Door Crashing Deals from FutureShop or Best Buy are usually these types of items:


* Limited items (ie. 10 per store)
* Refurbished items (Never buy these!)
* Obsolete models
* Manufacturer Rebates (DO NOT BUY THESE EVER) - You'll never get the rebate check.

The only deal I saw that was worth it was at Canadian Tire. They had a 95 piece screwdriver set for $19.99, at 80% off (regular $ 99.99). Incredible deal. I picked one set up at 1PM and there was four left on the shelf! Talk about cutting it close.

Wal-mart was something else. Massive amounts of people, screaming kids, and dirty aisles. They had deals on cheap watches (50% off), but close examination showed these were REALLY cheap watches not even worth the $8 price they were asking for. I was tempted to buy a 29.99 watch but then thought about how many watches I already had and decided against it. Instead I purchased some scented creams and women's cologne on sale (50% off) - for my wife. 

I really wanted a 24" wide screen LCD monitor, but there was no real hot deals anywhere. Best Buy, Futureshop, Sears, Wal-mart, Canadian Tire, etc didn't have anything really worth camping out for. Four years ago we had a major blizzard and I decided to drive through it, camp out at Futureshop for a wireless keyboard and mouse set ($39.99) that was $100 off. I was nuts. I use a wired keyboard now because some of the games I play just don't work well with the wireless latency. The wireless is just too slow.