Banks? Drugstores? Fast Food? Home Sellers? Everyone Wants a Piece of the Black Friday Frenzy

Best Buy, Wal-Mart, Target, and all the usual suspects down at the mall are hardly the only businesses trying to grab consumers’ attention this weekend.

Here are some of the atypical businesses and retailers rolling out discounts and bonuses to entice you to buy on Black Friday and the busy shopping weeks that follow:

ING Direct
The online bank’s Black Friday promotion offers 12-month CDs for 2.00% APY (a 0.25% bonus compared to its usual rate), along with a $121 bonus for opening a checking account.

QVC
The TV retailer is offering one new specially priced item per hour, along with a bunch of gift items that shoppers have never seen before on the network, per the AP. Beyond the discounted merchandise, the sales pitch is: Shop in your pajamas, far away from the crowds. “There are a lot of people who think of going to the mall on ‘Black Friday’ as dental surgery – painful and awful,” says a QVC executive. “We’ll be a good alternative.”

CVS
Since the drugstore chain sells a lot more than vitamins and deodorant, I guess no one should be totally surprised CVS is down with Black Friday deals. But buying something like a $69.99 GPS (normally $129.99!) in a drugstore seems odd to me.

PetSmart
Do dogs and cats enjoy wearing faux reindeer ears and Santa costumes? Hard to say. Regardless, many pet owners enjoy giving their pets these sorts of gifts—and can do so at 50% off until November 28 at 6 a.m. with a PetPerks card from PetSmart.

Real Estate
Relatively few people want to bother trying to buy and sell homes during the hectic weeks after Thanksgiving—and that’s why you can be assured the players who are out there in the hunt are serious about getting deals done. A WalletPop post makes the argument that this is the absolute best time of year to buy or sell a home.

Hotels, Resorts, and Airlines
Hyatt hotels and Southwest Airlines are among the companies discounting travel bookings made today and in the weeks to come. Also: Club Med has one-day-only Black Friday deals, with rates from $99 per person for reservations made by 4 p.m. EST.

Boston Market
Haven’t you done enough cooking? A Boston Market coupon grants 50% off family meals for the duration of the whole Black Friday weekend.

Black Friday: What We Know So Far

Done Deal: CBS Gives Green Light to Sitcom Based on Groupon

Daily deal giant Groupon is known for its peculiar sense of humor. There was the time the site “bought” April Fool’s Day. The introduction of marketing gimmicks like the creepy virtual discount wheel called “Clicky” can only be attributed to some offbeat sense of what’s amusing. And of course, from the beginning, subscribers have been reading Groupon’s trademark absurdist, careful-not-to-offend descriptions for deals arriving in their in-boxes. The fact that there’s a network sitcom in the works featuring Groupon is apparently no joke, however.

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[...] Banks? Drugstores? Fast Food? Home Sellers? Everyone Wants a Piece … [...]
http://margv.wordpress.com margv

Here we are another holiday season and the stores are scrambling to make a buck. With this economy, it probably won’t happen. Yes, there will still be the one’s who have money and can’t help but to buy what they want, not what they need. If you have money, it’s easy to spend. What about all the people who worked for a living paying your big salaries who are just trying to feed their family. Something has happened to our economy that just doesn’t seem right. With all the theft in office and the government spending on everything but to bring the economy back, what is the worker suppose to do? Why can’t the stores make everything affordable all year long, instead of coupons and rebates. Just like everything else wrong, they bank on the probability that we won’t use the coupons, and we don’t cash in on the rebates. While shopping on Black Friday, I noticed that some things that were a little less expensive throughout the year were now a little higher. Yes they have certain things reduced for this day, but they raise the price of most of their other items to make up for it. Most people do not notice this. As in commercials, business, they trick us into believing we want this. We are not very smart when we fall for all the hipe.
http://money.blogs.time.com/2010/01/19/can-saving-money-simply-be-a-matter-of-timing-your-purchases-right/ Can Saving Money Simply Be a Matter of Timing Your Purchases Right? – It's Your Money – TIME.com

[...] January: A good time to buy sheets and towels (white sales, which make room for newer merchandise), along with TVs and homes. (November and December are also known to be good months for scooping up homes for cheap.) [...]