We managed to survive our first Black-Friday shopping excursion – but not without a certain degree of kicking, screaming and tantruming – mostly on my part (Anna was actually fine).

I did learn a few things today:

  • The people that show up at the stores in the very early morning are sort of like vultures, picking off all the good stuff. We didn’t get to the store till the afternoon and a few of the items I wanted to look at were long since sold-out.
  • If you go to the store on a day that they are having really good sales, you will end up buying a bunch of stuff for yourself even though you meant to go shopping for gifts.
  • Going to a place like Sam’s Club that has a membership policy actually works out pretty well since that keeps the store a little less crowded than most places.
  • Most importantly – I learned that if you are planning to buy something expensive, it is best to know what forms of payment an establishment accepts BEFORE you show up at the store. I for one did not bother to do this which led to a rather unfortunate result that I’ll describe below. At any rate, the forms of payment that Sam’s Club accepts can be found here.

Our little excursion started out better than I had expected. We managed to find a parking spot right up front – I had anticipated parking at the back of the lot and hike through the rain, so this was nice. The store itself was certainly crowded, but it wasn’t the insane, mad-rush sort of crowd that I had in my head. We found all of the basic items we needed within a few minutes – we also bought a bunch of stuff that wasn’t on our list – but hey, we won’t be wanting for Keurig K-Cups around the office for a while.SamsClubHoliday1

Once we got the basics out of the way, it was time to grab a TV since that was the whole point of our visit. I had already narrowed the options down to two before we arrived. The TV is going to be a Christmas present for my parents so I had only a few basic requirements. It had to be: an LCD, between 37″ and 42″, full 1080p, made by a good manufacturer like Samsung and it had to be less than $600.  Based on those details I found these: a 40″ Samsung or a 40″ Toshiba.

The final choice was an easy decision since I couldn’t find the Samsung when we arrived at the store and the Toshiba was right out front. By this time we were ready to go – it may not have been too crowded, but my time limit within any store is about 30 minutes, so I was ready to hit the road. When we arrived at the checkout line we paid for all of the items but the TV with some gift-cards that we had. I was going to pay for the TV with a credit card since my brother and sister were going to pay me for their share of the present later on.

I go to pay with my Amex but the kid at the register says “sorry, we don’t take those.” This is great – I didn’t bother to bring any of my other credit cards. Fortunately the Wife had one of hers and it was a Visa. “Great” I thought, everyone takes Visa.

Actually, not everyone takes them – I go to swipe it and the kid says “is that a credit card or debit card?”
“Credit.”
“Yeah, sorry, we only take Visa debit cards.”
He shows us a list of the cards that they do accept – debit cards of course (mine was at home), MasterCard (also at home) and Discover card (have one of those too – also at home). In the end we left with a cart full of stuff – but no TV. I suppose it isn’t the end of the world, when I got home I noticed that they still have them available online and shipping is free for a limited time, so I’ll just order one. Fortunately you can use both Visa and American Express on the Sam’s Club website.

The Friday-after-Thanksgiving shopping outing wasn’t nearly as traumatic an experience as I was expecting. We managed to get a bunch of stuff that we needed despite my somewhat embarrassing credit-card debacle. The blame for that rests solely on me, they don’t exactly hide this information, I just made a poor assumption. For her part, Anna enjoyed trying out some furniture. Not that we’re currently in the market for a new couch or anything, but that didn’t stop her from trying out every last one of them.
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They still have a bunch of great deals and a lot of the items that were already sold out in the store are still available online. You can check out the deals here.

Here are a few interesting items to consider.

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Giveaway!

In Tuesday’s post I launched one $50 gift-card giveaway and I mentioned we’d be launching another one tonight. So as promised, here is tonight’s giveaway. Once again, one winner will receive a $50 Sam’s Club gift card. I’ve already asked people to talk about their best and worst gift receiving experiences, but I want to keep the holiday theme going. As much as I hate that radio stations start playing Christmas music BEFORE Thanksgiving, I’m fine with hearing it the day after. So I’m using Christmas music as the theme of today’s giveaway. In your entry, mention your favorite Christmas song (or songs). That’s all, you don’t need to explain why (unless you want to), just the name of the song will do.

Official Rules:
1. You must already be, or become a subscriber to this site in order to participate in this contest.
2.  To enter, leave a comment on this post and indicate the name of your favorite Christmas song (or songs). You need to include this information in order for your entry to count. If you just say something like “I want to enter.”  I’ll delete your comment.
3. One winner will receive $50 worth of Sam’s Club gift cards.
4. The winner will be selected using random.org, based on the number of your comment.
6. This contest will end at 10pm on Friday, December 11th 2009.
7. Winners will be notified by email and posted to this site. Winners will have 48 hours from the time of notification to claim their prize. If the prize is not claimed within that time, another winner will be chosen.
8. Each comment represents a single entry. Those entitled to multiple entries for performing “extra credit” must add a comment for each entry.

Extra Credit:
1. Follow me using the Google Friend Connect widget – 1 extra entry
2. Follow on Twitter and Tweet about this contest – 1 extra entry per day (include link to Tweet in your comment)
3. Blog about this contest – 3 extra entries (include a link to the post in your comment)
4. Enter any of the giveaways in progress on www.theartofbeingmom.com – 3 extra entries (include name of contest and your comment # )
5. Post a comment on any of the other posts on this site (from the past month) – 1 extra entry per post (leave post name and comment #)

6. Visit the Sam’s Club “Holiday Helper” page and leave a comment on any of the posts. Include a link to this post in your comment. – 2 extra entries for each Holiday Helper post that you comment on (you can do this for any number of the posts on that website but only one comment for each post counts. You can’t just go and add 5 comments to one post and then claim 10 entries, but if you post a comment on five separate posts you can get 10 entries).

(remember, you have to leave a comment for EACH ENTRY when you do extra credit. We pick winners based on a drawing using the comment number. If you put 5 entries into a single comment, you defeat the whole purpose of the extra credit, since you aren’t increasing your chances of winning. No, I am not going to go through each entry and make sure that you’ve entered correctly, that is up to you.)

FTC Disclosures:
This post is part of the Sam’s Club – Sharing the Savings Blogger Program. I have received compensation from Sam’s Club in the form of a complimentary Sam’s Club membership. I have also been provided with membership gift/cards to giveaway to our readers. Regardless of compensation, all views and opinions expressed are my own.