Black Friday Cautions

Hi everybody,

I awoke early, as usual, thinking I'd be going to some of the black friday sales this morning, fighting throngs of people for the best deals on things.  And then I didn't.  I spent a few minutes online looking at the sales, and discovered that most of the doorbusters were things that I didn't need.  They also tend to be super cheap for a reason.  It's tricky, but effective.  It's also one of the reasons we as consumers, and then as people, become wary.  Exhibit a) a tablet from bestbuy that has android and costs $60, but doesn't allow access to the play store, has terrible reviews and really wouldn't be as functional as my Droid Razr Maxx.

As always, cheap things need to be taken with a grain of salt.  It's sad, but true.  The people marketing the products find the thing made of cheese and bad glue, put it out front for a ridiculously low price, and hope that people will create a feeding frenzy over it, and then feel so good that they won that they'll buy it before they realize what a honking load of crap it is (I.E. read the review).  Then other people will feel badly that they didn't get the super cheap one and buy the next most expensive one so as to not leave empty handed.

There's an excellent chapter on consumer trust in one of Dan Ariely's books:
http://web.mit.edu/ariely/www/MIT/
He basically gives away free money, and people are so jaded that they walk away from $50 bills, thinking that there must be a catch.  I wish that we, as a country, could stop this consumerism.  My neighbors already have their xmas lights up, the night of thanksgiving.  I feel like the "holiday season" keeps creeping up, earlier and earlier, much as the black friday sales have.  Black Friday has become Black Thursday night, so that before we've even finished being thankful for things and stuffing ourselves silly, we're already inundated with sales flyers and crappy products being sold cheaply.

Here's to being truly thankful and waiting until we need something to go buy it.  Oh, and to reading the reviews:)

~Mark