Windows 7: Walmart's Black Friday Rip-off

November 27, 2009 5:53 PM

Walmart's Black Friday Rip-off

Customers arrived at 5 a.m. to find $198 laptops had all been assigned the day before to people who called the store, never mentioned in ads.
David Coursey

TRACY, CA -- Black Friday customers who arrived at the Walmart store here, expecting to purchase an e-Machines laptop for the $198 Black Friday price were surprised to find the entire shipment of 37 units had been assigned to other customers the day before.



A store manager admitted that the only way for a customer to know that tickets allowing later purchase of the machines were being distributed early would have been to call the store and

Such tickets are used by other stores--such as Best Buy--but were not mentioned in Walmart's Black Friday advertising, which only said the laptops would be on sale from 5 a.m. until 10 a.m.

"That really sucks," said one unhappy customer when he learned he could not purchase a laptop, despite at the store at 5 a.m. when the sale was supposed to start "How was I supposed to know to call?"

The Walmart manager, named Mark, said other tech products had been pre-sold in the same way as well, but did not elaborate.

In our local Walmart they actually sold them to the early birds. Unfortunately I was a few minutes too late and could just see the tail end of them. Wanted one for my mother-in-law for Christmas. Now she has to settle for a set of pots - LOL.
In Tampa they reported 2 guys that had set up camp in front of Walmart 8 days before black Friday - with tent, air mattresses and the whole 9 yards. And all of that for some large TVs. Pretty crazy.

I camped out for 36 hours at my local Wal-Mart for the Wii lanuch...all of my friends did

It was an amazing experience...I loved it!