Do not get ripped off on Black Friday...Part One

Do Not Bother with "Doorbuster" deals

Doorbuster sales are highly publicized, big discounts for a few specific products, most of which are in limited supply. The idea is they get the crowd clamoring for savings as soon as the doors open. Ignore them. Seriously, put them out of your head, rip the doorbuster pages out of the store circulars, and pretend they don't exist.

You'll recognize the name and possibly even the model of the HDTV/game system/cell phone/tablet on sale, and you'll salivate at the super-low price, but you'll also probably miss the fine print that matters: "Limited quantities." Big stores get a small handful of these deep discount doorbuster items in, and once they're gone (often before the doors open, if the store hands out tickets for the items hours before the sale), they're gone. If you want to camp out in the cold hours before the doors open with hundreds of other equally savings-hungry shoppers for a chance to win the retail lottery, go nuts. But doing so is a sign of madness.