This year, both Black Friday and Cyber Monday set sales records… for online shoppers. Americans armed with mobile devices, tablets, and computers pulled out their credit cards and placed orders, turning yesterday into the biggest sales day in the history of online shopping. Apparently, Cyber Monday isn’t as pointless as we thought, and rampant discounting does draw shoppers. [More]
cyber monday
Cyber Monday Is Now Pretty Pointless
By 11.28.16
Since 2005, Cyber Monday has been the end of Thanksgiving week, as office workers’ brains haven’t quite returned to work, and they use the time to shop online. At least, this is what online retailers must themselves as they schedule sales and other promotions for the additional shopping holiday. Yet is Cyber Monday still a thing, or do we all have shopping holiday fatigue by the time it comes around? [More]
Time Warner Cable Says It’s Resolved Outages That Kept Midwestern Customers From Shopping On Cyber Monday
By 12.1.15
The time has come — you’re off work, your computer is all fired up and ready to deliver those Cyber Monday online shopping deals… or at least, you thought it was, but it won’t connect to the internet. No deals for you. That’s the experience many Time Warner Cable customers had last night, with many in the Midwest reporting widespread outages. [More]
Target Website Crashes, Spoiling Shoppers’ Cyber Monday
By 11.30.15
Savvy holiday shoppers who didn’t want to fight the crowds on Black Friday may still be battling congested online traffic in order to obtain the plethora of Cyber Monday deals today. That’s especially true if you’re trying to score some goodies from Target, as the retailer’s website crashed this morning. [More]
Online Retail Passes In-Store Shopping For Black Friday Weekend
By 11.30.15
Going online for your Black Friday sales fix is now just as popular as trudging out to the mall to shop, according to a new survey from the National Retail Federation. [More]
It’s Cyber Monday, But Don’t Get Fired For Shopping Too Much At Work
By 11.30.15
So many people do their holiday shopping online that the idea of “Cyber Monday” seems like a relic of an era when online retail was a novelty in search of legitimacy. Still, the name — and the sales — persist, but shopping on the job today could land you in a heap of trouble with the boss. [More]
Walmart Starting Cyber Monday On Sunday Because That’s What Happens Now
By 11.23.15
Here’s a proposal: why don’t we toss out all the special names for the big holiday shopping days and just accept the fact that retailers are going to throw sales at the public before, during and after Thanksgiving? Walmart seems cool with that, as it’s moving its Cyber Monday sale-a-palooza to Sunday. [More]
Retailers Took More Than 3 Minutes To Answer Customer Service Calls On Cyber Monday
By 12.2.14
While not as many people went shopping over the weekend as they did during last year’s holiday, retailers still sold billions of dollars worth of stuff in just a few days, and some of that stuff was damaged or otherwise required calls to customer service. But not every seller was terribly eager or prepared to deal with the onslaught of phone calls. [More]
Sears Chat Rep Orders Wrong Dishwasher: That’s Your Problem
By 12.16.13
It all seemed to go so well. When a California man saw a great Cyber Monday deal on a Kenmore dishwasher at Sears, he hopped right on that. $700 off a $1419 appliance? Yes, please. When he learned that the order was in error, though, and he could only have the great price for a dishwasher in the wrong color, who was at fault? Sears wanted him to pay the difference. [More]
Motorola To Redo Cyber Monday Sale On Wednesday After The First Try Didn’t Go So Well
By 12.3.13
For all the patient boys and girls out there who were waiting to get a $150 discount on an off-contract Moto X yesterday, your efforts might’ve felt a bit wasted when Motorola’s Cyber Monday deal never even got off the ground. Due to the crushing weight of shopper traffic on the purchase page, Motorola Mobility couldn’t pull its sale off, and instead has rescheduled the deal for Wednesday at noon EST. [More]
This Is Probably The Worst Cyber Monday Deal Of 2013
By 12.2.13
Retailers with a huge coupon list the exclusions to that coupon when manufacturer deals or other factors keep them from lowering the price too far on a given item. We understand that. What we understand slightly less is why Dick’s Sporting Goods bothers to publish their exclusions at all. [More]
“Halfway To Cyber Monday” Countdown Ushers In New Era Of Holiday Shopping Creep
By 5.21.13
First of all, don’t be fooled by that 00:00:00 countdown in the photo accompanying this post — it’s part of an email forwarded by Consumerist reader Kaleb, and presumably the ticking clock works in the offers sent to customers on the OfficeMax mailing list. But let’s not lose sight of what it really is, at its essence, which is a countdown clock to a “halfway to Cyber Monday” sale. Yes, holiday shopping creep is a thing now and we’ll all have to deal with it. [More]
Microsoft Store Can’t Exchange A Defective Computer Properly, Sends Me Wrong Refund
By 1.21.13
Albert wrote to us about his problems with his Cyber Monday purchase from the Microsoft Store. No, we haven’t been sitting on his message for almost two months: he’s been struggling with Microsoft for that long, trying to get this transaction to make sense. One important thing that he learned: just because he’s lucky enough to live relatively near a Microsoft Store, that doesn’t mean it will do him any good. [More]
Home Depot Delivers $2500 Worth Of Appliances, Won't Accept Money For Them
By 5.4.12
Consumer thought experiment: if Home Depot delivers some appliances to you, but never bills you for them, are they free? If that were true, a California grandmother got one heck of a Cyber Monday deal on more than $2,500 worth of kitchen appliances from Home Depot. That’s not what she wanted. She’d rather just pay the hardware mega-chain already, but they won’t accept her money. A computer glitch makes it look like she already paid for the appliances, and Home Depot won’t accept her money. [More]
Every Monday Is Cyber Monday This Holiday Season
By 12.14.11
According to the ancient tradition, the Monday immediately following Thanksgiving has been known as Cyber Monday, that day when we all pretend to be working but are really sifting through countless websites looking for bargains. But that long-held tradition is now being repeated every first day of the work week this holiday season. [More]
Study: JCPenney, Avon, Gap Websites Are Worst At Responding To Customer E-Mails
By 11.30.11
After years of being trained to dread contacting a company via phone, lest we get trapped in the automated phone tree, customers are turning to e-mail for resolving their customer service issues. And while a new study shows that a majority of the top online retailers did a passable job of replying to customer inquiries, a handful of websites apparently decided to give their e-mail customer service teams some extra time off this holiday season. [More]
Stay In Bed: Black Friday May Not Be The Best Time To Buy That TV You Want
By 11.21.11
As we mentioned last week, just because retailers are offering deep discounts on some electronics doesn’t mean there will be savings on the particular item you’re after. Now there is some science to back that up. [More]
What Was Your Best Black Friday/Cyber Monday Purchase?
By 11.29.10
You might have noticed in the last week that a small handful of forward-thinking stores and websites have offered discounts on products to kick off what some would call the “holiday shopping season.” [More]
