Today I was reading a lot of stories about Best Buy and how apparently they have been having a lot of trouble financially due to a changing market such as people buying things online and general management issues. The news story interested me more as I actually worked in company a few years back and even had shares in the business.

Even though from a corporate point of view or ladder I was pretty much an unknown I still remember the times such as the store I was involved with did literally over 2500% more sales than the other top stores during various key launches mostly due to the management’s ability to allow a person like myself to take full charge as to how to market and sell the items.

Of course that number definitely turned heads. Afterwards I was actually motivated in wanting to contribute in different ways such as getting more into the corporate decisions such as taking advantage of the social media scene as at the time there wasn’t really many companies in that industry that did it. That was actually one of my keys to success to as I took a lot of pride in what I did and constantly scoured various places on the Internet to see what people were saying about the store. However, it appeared though that they went more for the trust the guys on the board table direction as opposed to the people that were knowledgeable and passionate about products and of course people like myself felt that there was nothing to grow into anymore which meant parting ways.

Looking back it really makes me wonder what simple choices like those would have done for the business. In some ways it reminded me of like the “old timers” basically swaying off the “young generation” where the new way of doing things sounds crazy. Never just sway off ideas just because you don’t understand it yourself I guess is what I would say in that scenario. I think the Netflix and Blockbuster story is a good example of that. Sure is weird though seeing a company where at the time you were with was so big just to now read it is struggling.

Like a lot of other Canadians today I was planning to shop today to save money on items that I have either held off from buying or if I see a great deal for something that I had use for. The main focus though was completing present purchases as mentioned before I usually leave the smaller/add-on items till later.

I woke up at about 6:20am and made sure that I had breakfast and all to ensure that I won’t lose my energy throughout the day. As well, I checked my e-mail and noticed that Newegg and Amazon.ca sent its boxing day e-mail to everyone about its sales.

The Newegg deals were stone cold I thought, but Amazon had an interesting deal which I will go a bit into later. My mall of choice was a mall called Metrotown as it had the most stores with the items that I was interested in purchasing.

With the mall opening at 8am, I arrived at about 7:40am. A lot of the items I had to buy were video game related as I got people such as my nephew a Nintendo Wii for Christmas and held off buying extra items such as additional controllers as I knew there would be better deals on boxing day.

Looks like a lot of people were after the same category of items too as upon entering this store called EB games had the longest lineup it seems.

However, I did my research ahead of time and went to a store called HMV as they had the best deals for what I needed. The lineup wasn’t too bad either as there were probably only about 20 to 25 people in front of me.

I ended up purchasing two games that would have normally costed me about 109.98 not including tax and instead the before tax total was $59.98. That is a large $50 savings.

Next was buying controllers for that Wii system. The tricky thing is you need to buy two items to make a full controller for many games with the main remote costing about $39.99 and attachment for about $24.99 in most stores. I needed two sets of these too. Here is an example too on how even on boxing days you still have to do your research to save the most money while getting the best value.

Initially I saw this advertisement on Futureshop indicating that there was a special where you could buy both those items for $49.99 meaning and you save about $14.99. Or in my case, since I needed two sets that would be $99.98 while saving $29.98.

I then realized that Best Buy had a sale for this item which essentially gives you the remote that also comes with games for a sale price of $39.99 when normally costs $59.99 at most places.

Of course, considering I would still need the attachment to the remote, which would be about another $24.99 normally, the Futureshop deal still looked better. But, thankfully I got that e-mail from Amazon as it gave me a great idea.

I noticed that on the site they actually sold those attachments for $19.99 which is cheaper, but still it wasn’t as cheap as buying the bundle. However, I remember that I have this save $10 off coupon with orders consisting of over $40 that would definitely make it a better buy. As well, I wanted free shipping and so I needed to make the order over $39 after discounts.

I then saw this very popular game on normally retails for about $35 and today Amazon had it on sale for $15.

So saving $20 on that was a no brainer and I went ahead and bought that game as well as the two controller accessories. Before tax, after the coupon discount including the free shipping the total was $44.97.

Another way of looking at it is minus the game I was able to get the two attachments for $29.98 or $14.99 each. As well, I went ahead and bought the remotes with games from Bestbuy for $39.99 each.

So with that combo I got the full value set for $109.96 which would normally cost about $169.96. While the Futureshop bundle was $99.98 and is about $10 less, in contrast the combination I ended up buying had about a $60 savings value compared to a $30 one. That was a great example I thought on how mixing and matching different deals from different places can get you more for your dollar many times too. As well, always use those coupons or keep them handy.

I did end up buying items from Futureshop though as they had a great deal on SD memory cards and USB sticks. I got a better deal with some help with this to save more money though which was great and is an example on how when a retailer has large amounts of quantity of an item to sell that usually means they got a very good wholesale price and you can probably save even more.

Essentially, in its ad they were advertising this 16 gig SDHC card for $19.99 which I believe normally sells for about $49.99. As well, there was a 16 gig USB memory stick which similarly normally retails for about $49.99 for $22.99. Fortunately with help, I was able to get the memory card for $18.12 and the USB memory stick for 15.48.

I ended up buying two of each for gifts too and that meant that was an additional $18.76 savings. Value wise, $199.96 worth of items came out to only $67.92 for this boxing day sale. Savings of $132.04.

I did end up getting things for myself too, but not much. I actually had to line up to this computer store that was close to the mall. It actually started to snow outside too.

I ended buying more RAM memory for my computer that would normally cost about $79.99. With discounts and all, it was $29.99.

Like a lot of other people too I noticed, I ended up looking at foods and groceries in the end to see if there was any good deals. The only thing I saw was at the store Zellers they were selling these sardines for 67 cents that would normally cost about 99 cents. Although, the supermarket near my house has bumped it up to about $1.29 a piece for some reason and so I bought a box of 18 of them. Ended up saving $5.97.

So that was pretty much it for me when it came to shopping. Essentially, the normal price of the items I bought would have been about $612.70 (Roughly $686.22 with tax) or a boxing day sale price of $294.18 (Roughly $329.48 with taxes). About a 52% to 53% savings. Kind of a crazy figure huh? It was fun getting the gifts and saving money.

If you ask me what the most shocking thing of the day was ironically it was this line up initially:

You might be asking yourself “Geez, what kind of sale are these people lining up for?” which was my initial reaction. I was joking with my friend that there must have been a burger sale at that A&W restaurant in the corner. Apparently though, the rapid transit system here called a “Skytrain” was down and had been out for awhile. So everyone was literally just hanging around as they were stuck at the mall. Some, or make that tons, were forced to take buses home instead as you can see here:

I guess shopping for a sale is one thing, trying to get it home is another with the snowy and cold weather we have had here.