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Holiday Bargain Prices Leaking Out Early Online

Posted on: Wednesday, 9 November 2005, 15:00 CST

A respectable Hewlett-Packard notebook computer for $398, with no messy mail-in rebates. A Plantronics Bluetooth wireless cell phone headset for $9.99. A Canon digital camcorder for $249.99.

These are some of the jaw-dropping bargains that await shoppers on Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving, when retailers lure holiday crowds with so-called "doorbuster" discounts.

We're not supposed to learn about these deep discounts until Thanksgiving Day, when newspapers are stuffed like turkeys with colorful ad inserts.

But the Web changes everything, including Black Friday.

A loose community of bargain hunters has emerged online, some of whom are obtaining advance copies of Black Friday ads _ often over the objection of retailers _ and making the information public days or weeks in advance. The ads, presumably provided surreptitiously by people involved in their printing or distribution, are often copyrighted, making it legally questionable to show them without permission.

Black Friday 2005 (www.bfads.net) is one such site providing leaked ads, run on a shoestring by a San Jose teenager named Michael Brim, now a freshman at California State Polytechnic University in San Luis Obispo, Calif. The site doesn't guarantee the validity of all the leaked ads, but it still attracts plenty of people.

Home Depot got angry enough with Brim last year to have their attorneys give him a call.

They reached Brim on his cell phone during his calculus class at Piedmont Hills High School in San Jose _ providing the vision of high-priced lawyers behind mahogany desks in a glass office tower with no notion they are talking to an adolescent running a Web site from his home.

Thanks to Brim and a rival site run by GottaDeal.com (http://blackfriday.gottadeal.com), the world now knows about the deals listed above.

Wal-Mart didn't meet Black Friday expectations last year, apparently because it lacked enough exciting doorbuster deals.

The nation's largest retailer apparently isn't going to get caught napping again.

Its biggest doorbusters for Nov. 25, when its stores will open at 5 a.m., include two HP computers.

The HP Pavilion notebook will be available for $398 with a DVD/CD-RW combo drive and other amenities. That's a decent configuration, for $100 less than the prevailing price today for bargain laptops that are less well-equipped. Today's low prices also typically require waiting to receive $100 or more of mail-in rebates.

Wal-Mart will also sell an HP Pavilion desktop computer with a 15-inch LCD monitor for $398, again without requiring rebates. That's also $100 or more below previous bargain desktop systems.

HP and Wal-Mart, by the way, declined comment on the impending deals.

Radio Shack, Sears and others will have various deals, including a Plantronics Bluetooth headset reportedly going for $9.99 _ about $30 below the regular selling price _ an Axion portable DVD player for $59.99 and a Canon camcorder for $249.99, about $50 below regular price. A DVD player from Proton will go for just $19.99 _ less than the cost of many DVD movies.

The Black Friday sites always are careful to note they can't guarantee their information, but postings in 2003 and 2004 proved overwhelmingly accurate.

Brim, 18, says he started Black Friday 2005 because he's a dedicated bargain hunter and, "It's neat giving back to the community."

His site drew a peak of 11 million unique visitors per day shortly before Black Friday 2004, according to Brim, and brings in enough advertising revenue to cover its costs with a small amount left over.

Black Friday, which gets its name from the flood of black ink retailers expect during the holiday season, first started leaking online three years ago.

FatWallet (www.fatwallet.com), a bargain-hunting Web site, drew legal threats from Wal-Mart, Target and Best Buy in October 2002 for posting Black Friday prices.

The retailers argued that upcoming prices, not just the ads themselves, were protected by copyright law. They ultimately backed down, and FatWallet's message boards continue to discuss Black Friday deals

Meanwhile, a half-dozen or more Web sites devoted to Black Friday, including Brim's, have since sprung up and gone a step further by posting scanned images of the ad inserts _ potentially a much clearer violation of copyright law.

Brim last week removed scans of the Black Friday ad insert from Sears after the company's lawyers faxed him a threatening 54-page letter. But the scans remain available on other sites, including GottaDeal.

This shows how the Web changes the game for retailers. Once information leaks out, it's like playing whack-a-mole to find every online nook and cranny where the information can hide; Brim, for example, admits to copying the Wal-Mart ad scans on his site from GottaDeal.

"Perfect pricing knowledge among your customers is never an advantage to sellers," said Stephen Baker, an electronics retailing analyst with NPD Group of Port Washington, N.Y. "This forces retailers to be on their toes a little bit more, in a good sense."

Baker also gave one piece of practical advice: Wal-Mart usually has a generous supply of doorbuster specials, but the $398 laptops won't last long. Baker says you should get to Wal-Mart no later than 8 a.m. on Black Friday if you want to take one home.

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(c) 2005, San Jose Mercury News (San Jose, Calif.).

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Source: San Jose Mercury News

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