With a history as an engaged RPG gamer you might have predicted that I was really excited when I heard that during last week’s Cyber Monday sale, Square-Enix was offering Final Fantasy 7 for a ridiculously low price. In fact, Square put pretty much their entire collection on sale at prices that were 60% off. It was crazy!

But you might imagine my surprise when I tried to purchase a few downloadable versions of some classic Final Fantasy games only to be met with an error screen on the Square website. I tried to purchase those downloads for about an hour and a half and just couldn’t get past the error screen.

It was the most frustrating experience you could imagine.

Or at least it was the most frustrating experience you could imagine until I contacted Square’s help line to see if they could help me with problem I encountered. And lucky for you folks, I’ve saved the entire back and forth conversation for you to read and most likely be disgusted by as I was disgusted. Here’s how the e-mail conversation started:

I tried to purchase both Final Fantasy 7 and Final Fantasy 8 PC editions during your Cyber Monday sale, but the order form on the website kept coming up with an error message. Is it possible to still buy those two games and the Cyber Monday prices? I’m a long-time Square fan and I hope that you understand my frustration when I could have gotten these two games at a great price, but your website wouldn’t work for me. Thanks.

I think I was pretty rational and calm in that query. Here is Square’s first awful response:

Thank you for contacting the Square Enix online store. We apologize for the inconvenience. We show that the Cyber sale already ended. Please attempt a new order. To place a new order, go to: http://store.na.square-enix.com/store/sqenixus/en_US/ResetShoppingCart

Ugh… talk about a useless, non-response. If I owned Square-Enix and I saw that this was the response that one of my customer service people sent back to the question that I posed, I’d fire them for not being able to comprehend basic English or customer intent. Here is my response to Square:

It appears that you didn’t listen to my concern. The items that I wanted to buy were on sale during your Cyber Monday sale. Your website did not work during your Cyber Monday sale. I tried to purchase the items several times during your Cyber Monday sale and your website would not work. This is false advertising and is against the law in America.

I’m asking that you recognize that your website – not me or anything on my end – but your website failed during the period that your sale was active. And as an act of repentance for your website failing during your sale, I’ve asked that you offer me the two games that I was attempting to purchase for the price that they were offered during the failure of your website.

The response you provided doesn’t address any of those points. Please try again.

I mean – I can’t be any clearer in that response, can I? Well, get ready for more useless help from Square. This was their response:

Thank you for contacting the Square Enix online store. We apologize for the inconvenience this issue may have caused you.

Unfortunately, we are no longer able to place an order for the price on the Cyber Monday promotion. You may need to complete the order at the current price that is showing online. However, we can submit a request to match the promotional price once the order has been completed. Please be reminded that this request is not a guarantee the the price will be matched.

If you wanted to place an order, you may do so. Once it is completed, please provide the promotional offer information that details the price you are referring to.

That’s right, folks – Square’s response to my request was to tell me to buy the products at full price and then request that I be offered the promotional price… after I made the purchases! In what world does that make sense? Well, I attempted to explain this to the dopes at Square:

This isn’t an acceptable resolution to the problem. You certainly wouldn’t accept my “conditional” payment and forward me the software with the condition being that I’m only sending you the money if I get the discount that your broken website wouldn’t allow me to get on Cyber Monday. You’d be fools to give away your product on the hope that I was going to pay in full just like I’d be a fool to pay you in full with the hope that you’d live up to meeting the sale price (which, let’s be honest, you absolutely wouldn’t do).

So this has been a useless interaction for me. I look forward to sharing it with my fellow gamers and folks who have generally been disenfranchised by a once-great company.

They haven’t/didn’t respond to my last e-mail, but that’s okay. The steep decline in the popularity of their now-craptastic Final Fantasy series speaks volumes to how far this company has fallen. People used to line up outside of stores to get the latest Final Fantasy games. Now? Well, fan backlash was so strong against Final Fantasy 14 that it forced Square to take the game off of the market and totally recreate the product. When your company has fallen that far, it’s no wonder that your customer “service” team isn’t able to meet the type of simple request that I asked in my question.

Oh how the mighty have fallen…

Even though I was never in a store that was this bad, I used to go out and shop on Black Friday.

In fact, I was so wrapped up in Black Friday that I used to write about it right here on the blog. I wrote reviews of Black Friday dating back to 2008, 2006, 2005, and even way back in 2004. After 2008, I stopped going out on Black Friday. It was around that time when I really started planning to kick my student loan repayment into high gear. Plus, some time around 2008 is when the insanity of Black Friday shopping was reaching an apex. And if there were ever two good reasons to stay away from the big box stores and malls on Black Friday, then those are two really good reasons to stay at home.

Fast forward to 2013 and things are a little bit different. First, I no longer have the albatross of student loans weighing me down. Second, stores are now opening on Thanksgiving night to accommodate a portion of the traditional Black Friday crowd. And finally, so many consumers out there are struggling financially that the idea of spending all day shopping on Black Friday just doesn’t make good financial sense any more. It’s certainly a different world than back in 2008 when I last wrote a review of what I encountered on Black Friday. And since the world is a little bit different now than it was back in 2008 I decided to brave the stores on Thanksgiving weekend for the first time in years. This is what I found…

Thanksgiving Night Shopping
Around 11:00pm I decided to go shopping for two specific items. The items weren’t for my family since I finished Christmas shopping for them well before Thanksgiving. Instead, the items I was looking to purchase were for my church’s Christmas giving tree. If you’re not familiar with a giving tree, it’s where the less fortunate folks in a parish ask the church for help in providing their kids with a merry Christmas morning by helping them buy a few gifts. Within the program, though, there are restrictions. For example, at my church you need to be an active parishioner in order to participate in the program. In other words, you can’t just show up in November and say, “Hey, I need help buying gifts again this year.” Nope – ain’t going to happen.

I also have some personal rules that I follow for the Christmas giving tree program. One of those rules is that I don’t buy gift cards. Over the years, the number of tags on the giving tree that are asking for gift cards to Walmart, Target, Shoprite, and other retailers has grown exponentially. And if the purpose of the giving tree is to ensure that young kids wake up on Christmas morning with a few toys to play with under the tree, then I don’t see how a gift card gets a 6 year old boy or a 7 year old girl to that end. One of my other rules is that I tend to gravitate towards buying gifts for boys instead of girls. Something about going into a toy store and buying a Barbie or a princess play set doesn’t work for me. I couldn’t tell you why – it just doesn’t work. Perhaps my most important rule, though, is that I try to pick giving tree tags for younger kids. I understand that teenagers have as much need for a merry Christmas morning as the young ones, but the young ones have stronger memories of the “good times” during the Christmas season. Plus, at some point if you’re a parent and you’re asking for help getting your 15 or 16 year old kid some gifts for Christmas (and you’ve done so for the last 15 or 16 years), then you failed at some aspect of your life. And I know that is a presumptuous statement, but if you have a 15+ year track record of not being able to save a few buck each year so you can buy 3 or 4 nice things for your 15+ year old kids during Christmas, then I’m not interested in advancing your inability to plan ahead and live an irresponsible lifestyle.

So I stick with getting gifts for the little ones. Now back to the story…

This year, I picked two gift tags – one for a 7 year old boy and one for a 9 year old boy. They both wanted wrestling toys. One wanted a wrestling figure and the other wanted a wrestling ring: two very easy toys to pick up on Thanksgiving night after I left my family’s house. At some point around 11:00pm I went to the local K-Mart and they had all of the toys right there. Most importantly, though, they didn’t have an excessive amount of people in the parking lot or in the store. In fact, it looked like any other Thursday night in the store. I grabbed a few wrestling figures and the ring and headed for the checkout (I go a little bit above any beyond so when a kid asks for a wrestling ring, he gets a ring and two wrestling figures and when a kid asks for a single wrestling figure, he gets three). And the checkout is what stopped me in my tracks. After very publicly promoting that they’d be open all Thanksgiving Day and night, my local K-Mart had two cashiers working. TWO! Look, if you’re only going to put two cashiers on duty on what could have been one of the heaviest shopping nights of the year, then you’re better off not opening the store at all.

Each of the two checkout lines was about 15 people deep and everyone was pissed that the store decided to open without adequate coverage in the checkout lanes. After spending some time observing (I observe a lot when I’m in these stores), I realized that people with only a few items were checking out quicker at the courtesy desk. I quickly moved over to the courtesy desk, checked out, and left the K-Mart with my Christmas giving tree toys in hand (actually, they were in a bag). My next stop was JCPenney at the Monmouth Mall. Admittedly, this stop wasn’t for the giving tree, but rather JCPenney is one of the few stores where you can find really high quality big and tall clothing, so I stopped there to see what was on sale. I wound up buying a quarter zip sweater that was actually too big (I returned it the next day for the right size). Some of my observations about JCPenney include the fact that a lot of the Thursday night shoppers – and by “a lot” I mean at least 90% of the entire population that I saw in my area that night – were of specific ethnic or cultural descent. I’m not suggesting that 90% of the people in the stores were a single ethnicity or cultural identity – not at all. Instead, I’m saying that 90% of the entire population consisted of a diversity of people including first generation Mexican immigrants, Orthodox Jewish people, first and second generation Indian families, etc. If I had to suggest a single ethnicity that was more prevalent than the rest, then I’d say that the Hispanic population outpaced everyone else by leaps and bounds. Anyway, just a random observation that occurred to me while I was at JCPenney.

After my quick stop at JCPenney (I was in the store for a total of about 10 minutes), I headed to one of the habitually worst places to shop in Monmouth County – the Neptune Township Walmart. Honestly, folks, if you ever want to have a horrendous shopping experience, then go to the Neptune Walmart at any time of the day and try to order anything from the deli counter. If you get away from that deli counter in under 15 – 20 minutes, it would be record-breaking. Anyway, my purpose of going to this disaster area on Thanksgiving Night was to purchase the gift bags that my church requires you place your giving tree gifts in before you bring them to the church. And I have to admit – this wasn’t a big ordeal for me on Thanksgiving Night. I went into the store, grabbed the two gift bags, walked to the register and waited a split second while the person in front of my checked out, and then I checked out myself and left the store. As I left the store I was asked to show my receipt and my purchases (which were in my hand because I refused to take a plastic bag to put two paper gift bags in). My entire experience at the Neptune Walmart was not aggravating at all and that is pretty shocking considering that store’s atrocious history. I should comment, though, that I didn’t venture to the back of the store where the electronics department is located. I looked back there and it looked like Armageddon on earth, but I didn’t dare take a walk to that part of the store. No reason to ruin my shopping experience, you know?

And that was my Thanksgiving Night experience.

Black Friday
The only thing I did on Black Friday was head back to JCPenney to return and switch out the quarter-zip sweater that I purchased a few days earlier. There was a small line in the store, but it was fully acceptable. In fact, I have to salute the young woman who handled my switch request at the checkout counter. She ran into a series of problems trying to make the switch in the system and she kept asking for my patience, which I always give to a cashier (I always remember that the last thing they need is an angry me staring at them). And because I was so patient with this woman, she took an additional $10 off of my purchase which brought the item down from its original price of $45 to the sale price of $25 to the additional reduced price of $15. Not bad for a nice piece of winter clothing.

And that’s the whole of my shopping experience this Black Friday. The lessons learned include that shopping on Thanksgiving Night means less crowds and higher diversity of shoppers while the big department stores make returning items a very easy and even thankful process. Another lesson learned is that I’m thankful to have completed my shopping before Thanksgiving and via all-online stores. Overall, I was very pleased with this year’s shopping experience, though not pleased enough to make it a regular occurrence each year.

Well, one of my coworkers talked to a friend of hers who is getting a new place and, to make a long story short, that friend wants the television for her new place. The relief of knowing that a near-perfect television is going to actually be used versus thrown away in the dump made me feel really good. So, at some point next week the friend will come over and grab the television to bring it to the new apartment and I’ll be relieved that the set is getting used and that it is no longer taking up additional space in my house.

There isn’t much of a story here other than that I’m pissed about this whole thing. I bought this television on November 26, 2005 (which happens to be the last Black Friday that I really went out and spent a bunch of money). The television is a 30 inch, 1080p high definition, widescreen Panasonic television with a CRT design (i.e. it has the heavy big back to it and is not a flat screen). About a year and a half ago, the television randomly stopped receiving remote control signals.

That’s my problem with the television and that’s why I’m getting rid of it.

The high definition works fine (it’s actually a wonderfully crisp picture) and there is nothing else wrong with the set. The only problem that I have with it is that it doesn’t receive signals from a remote control. That means that if I want to change a channel, adjust the volume, turn the set off, or do anything that you would normally do with a remote control – I can’t do it. Think of what televisions used to be like before remote controls – that’s what this thing is like.

You may have noticed above that I said the thing stopped working a year and a half ago. That was around December 2008 which was a matter of days after all of the warranties that I had on the set ran out, of course. I used the television as it was for a few months, but when I couldn’t take the drastic changes in volume between the television shows and the commercials and when I got tired of getting out of bed to turn the set off before going to sleep, I purchased a beautiful 48 inch Vizio flat screen, 1080p high definition set (with a three year warranty). Since I purchased the Vizio, the Panasonic has sat all but unused in the corner of my kitchen.

So…after watching it sit there for over a year with no use at all, I think that it’s time to cut the cord and get rid of the monster as a part of this year’s spring cleaning process. If you read this blog regularly, then you know I keep a very strict eye on my finances and that I hate waste. I really believe that bringing this television to the dump is a huge waste of money. I can understand that the television, which I purchased for $649.99 (and another $39.00 in sales tax), is no longer worth the original purchase price. The set is four and a half years old and has an old CRT design (though it does have all of the high definition and widescreen bells and whistles), so after taking into account the problem with the set being unable to receive remote signals I’d put its fair market value at about $250. The local television repair place charges $50 just to look at the set – that doesn’t include what it costs to get the set fixed. Unless the repair is $20 or $30, I can’t see myself spending the money to get it fixed. Further, I can’t see myself essentially giving away another $50 just to know whether or not the set could be fixed.

If anyone out there has a better option than bringing this thing to the dump, let me know. If not, then it’ll be at the dump by the end of this week.

What I’ve noticed in the last few Black Fridays is that there is a disconnect between the major retailers (Best Buy, Wal-Mart, Target, etc) and the consumer-based desires of the middle class. Don’t get me wrong – these stores have the market cornered when it comes to mass producing somewhat inexpensive electronics and shoving them out the door to the masses. That’s great and I think that it is actually a service to many families in America. However, once you have that good or product, you’re not going to to go back and get another one – especially in the middle of a recession where each dollar is/should be scrutinized before it is spent.

I also think that the DVD and Blu-Ray DVD market is going to stay stagnant this Christmas season. Frankly, people don’t know whether or not they should start buying Blu-Ray discs in bulk or if this medium will be outdated in two or three years like the standard DVD. Plus, the cost of a Blu-Ray DVD is a bit out of range for the mass market. Not good for the electronics retailers.

I think that I’m going to become a Cyber Monday guy. There’s something about sitting in front of my computer to get the same exact sale price on an item that I could travel to the store to get (and that’s if there are enough items per that store and if I want to get to the store at the crack of dawn). Here’s hoping that your Black Friday adventures were more enjoyable and fruitful than mine were this year. If you have a good Black Friday 2009 story, I’d love to hear it in the comments section below!

Enjoy!

The Black Friday Deals 2009 Guide is a one-stop deal hunter’s dream. Become.com is a comparison shopping search engine that finds the best deals on the web. As I?m sure you know, the holiday shopping season is already in full swing online. More than 55% of US consumers plan to do their holiday shopping online in 2009, and 26% plan to purchase more gifts over the internet than they did last year, according to a study from MarketLive, Inc. and the e-tailing group.

I went over to http://blackfriday.become.com/ and it’s not such a bad site. There is a lot of useful information and I’m sure that you’ll be able to find what it is that you’re looking for it you bounce around the site and take a good look.

My Mom also sent me a link for Black Friday advertisements. This one is called Black Friday Ads 2009 and you can find it by clicking here. This site has a more basic set up in that it lists all of the various retailers right on the front page with direct links to their advertisements.

Whichever site you decide to use (if any), I hope these websites are helpful.

BFAds.net already has a bunch of advertisements scanned and available for your review on their website. It’s never too early to start planning your post-Thanksgiving shopping spree. I’ve been thinking about how this year’s Black Friday – and the Christmas shopping season as a whole – are going to go. On the one hand, most of the country is still feeling the negative effects of the downturn in the economy. On the other hand, Americans have begun to save more money than in the last decade…but we love to spend that money once we see it in our bank accounts.

I genuinely hope that America’s retailers do well this holiday season. However, knowing the increasing thrift that Americans are bringing to their personal finances, the big winners this holiday season might be the banks.

For weeks, reluctant consumers have forced retailers to lower their prices — and lower them again and again — before they even considered opening tight wallets and purses.

Consumers have every right to be cautious with their dollars! You can read the rest of the article (which is pretty good) at your leisure, but I loved that first sentence so much that I wanted to create an entry around it.

I’ve also been looking around in the post-Christmas shopping scene looking for some good deals. As I suggested in a previous post, the post-Christmas sales are the best time to store up on stuff for next year’s holiday. I spent $25 on a new Christmas tree at Target and about $25 at Wal-Mart on Christmas cards, bags, candles, blankets, and some other stuff for next December. All of this stuff was half-price so it was a pretty good deal.

But I haven’t found any major, big ticket items that I’ve wanted to purchase. So I wonder if anyone out there has seen anything like that in their travels. Have any of you seen a big “Black Friday” type deal in any of the post-Christmas sales? Better yet, did you buy whatever item caught your eye? I think that many people will be looking for these deals, finding them, and then opting not to spend their money on the big ticket item anyway.

Times are tough and, as if they didn’t already know it, retailers are in for a rocky 2009.

1. Shop Earlier! By far, the best thing that you can do to lower your expenses during the holidays is to shop earlier. Yes, there are Black Friday sales and Cyber Monday deals, but if you want to save the big bucks, then you need to start shopping extra early. How early? Try the days following Christmas! After the holiday has come and gone, most retailers slash their prices up to 75% (and sometimes more) on holiday items. This is the perfect time to pick up next year’s holiday cards and decorations at bargain basement prices. You can even stock up on some smaller, generic items like gift tags and bows. If done right, you can spend a few bucks at the local Wal-Mart and come home with enough of these minor items to last a few years – eliminating these costs for the foreseeable future.
2. Shop Smart. We are blessed to live in the age of the internet – so use it to your advantage! While it is unnecessary to make all of your holiday purchases online, doing so might save you some cash. The real money-saving lure of the internet, though, is the ability to “shop around” from the comfort of your own home. Use the internet to create a shopping strategy and to compare prices. Check to see if the electronics super store can beat the wholesale club or the big box discount store for the digital camera that your brother wants. Once you’ve found the lowest prices on all of your gift list items, map out a strategy for your shopping day. Remember, saving money also means eliminating redundancy in your traveling. There’s no reason to spend more on gasoline because you didn’t pre-map your shopping excursion.
3. Make a list. And check it twice! One of the textbook strategies to reduce your expenses at the store is to make a list of what you want to pick up at the store and stick to it. If you are going to a store to buy a specific video game or DVD set, then retrieve the item, pay for it, and move on to the next store. The longer you stay in one store, the more likely you are to pick up an extra few items. As an additional point on lists – be sure to ask those who are on your gift list what they want the most this holiday season. There’s no use in buying Mom a new set of lamps for the living room when she really wants a new luxurious bathrobe and spa set from JC Penney.
4. Re-gift. I should have named this point “have no shame in your game” since that’s the core point. Remember the under the kitchen cabinet combination CD player and radio that you won at the office party? Since you’ll never have a use for such an item you may as well wrap it up and send it off to Aunt Tillie. The point here is that if you have unopened, unused items that you really don’t want and are worthy of being given as a gift, then you can save considerable amounts of money by using the art of re-gifting. Be careful, though. You need to keep your re-gifting worlds separate. Take items that you receive from co-workers and give them to family members and then use items from family members as gifts to friends, etc. When re-gifting, always be sure to maintain a separation between your various social groups.
5. Pay in cash. While the economy continues tying itself into knots, the major financial institutions are becoming more restrictive with their credit card policies. Some people are waking up and finding that their interest rate has jumped while their credit limit has been decreased. If you are paying for your gifts in cash or with a debit card, then you do not run the risk of having to pay an increased interest rate over the next few months while the market figures itself out. Part of being aware of which items you can pay for in cash is understanding that you may need to restrict your spending this holiday season. In these uncertain economic times, it is important to keep your financial house in order. Sometimes, to keep your own house in order you need to restrict your spending – even during the holiday season. If there is a silver lining in restricting your spending this year it is that there is a strong chance that the people who are buying you gifts are doing the same thing.

These are just a few of the many ways that you can save some money this holiday season. When all else fails, though, remember that this season really isn’t about fancy gifts or expensive trinkets. Family, friends, fellowship, and faith – those are the only things that most people need to enjoy the holiday season. And we’re in luck because they all come free of charge!