Black Friday: Late-night troubles at Wal-Mart

Why anyone would be so desperate for a deal that she would use pepper spray on other customers is beyond me, but that's what apparently happened at a store in Porter Ranch. About 20 customers, including children, were hurt in the incident late last night. From the LAT:

"This was customer-versus-customer 'shopping rage,'" said Los Angeles Police Lt. Abel Parga. The woman used the spray in more than one area of the Wal-Mart "to gain preferred access to a variety of locations in the store," said Los Angeles Fire Capt. James Carson. "She was competitive shopping," he said. Police are searching for the woman but said they've had trouble getting a clear description of her.

There were scattered incidents all over the U.S. as several major chain stores opened their doors several hours earlier than usual - and a few, such as Wal-Mart, were open on Thanksgiving and rolled out their Black Friday specials later in the evening. From AP:

Early Friday in Fayetteville, N.C., gunfire erupted at Cross Creek Mall and police say they're looking for two suspects. Separately, police say two women have been injured and a man charged after a fight broke out at an upstate New York Walmart. And at central Florida man is behind bars after a fight broke out at a jewelry counter in Walmart in Kissimmee, Fla.

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About 600 shoppers were in line at a Target store in Brooklyn in New York when it opened at midnight. By the time it opened at midnight, nearly 2,000 shoppers wrapped around a Best Buy store in St. Petersburg, Fla. Mall of America, the nation's largest mall in North America, had 15,000 shoppers for its midnight opening. And more than 9,000 people were outside the flagship Macy's store in New York's Herald Square at its midnight opening, up from 7,000 a year ago.

Turns out that Black Friday doesn't even get you the best deals, at least according to research done by Oren Etzioni, who teaches computer science at the University of Washington. From the NYT:

It is not until early December, Professor Etzioni's research shows, that prices are likely to be the lowest for electronics, products that are among the biggest sellers on the Friday after Thanksgiving. "The bottom line is, Black Friday is for the retailers to go from the red into the black," he said. "It's not really for people to get great deals on the most popular products."

What the professor has determined with a complex computer algorithm for consumer electronics, others have found through less scientifically rigorous means for other products, including clothing and toys: despite all the ads that suggest otherwise, the lowest prices tend to come at other times of the year. In the case of toys, stores actually offer the steepest discounts in the weeks immediately following Thanksgiving because they want to unload the inventory not swept up on Black Friday, said Dan de Grandpre, who has tracked deals for 15 years at Dealnews.com. "Toys have a very short shelf life," he said.