Keen shoppers in early start for Black Friday deals

[caption id="attachment_230569" align="aligncenter" width="630"] Customers wait for Toys R Us to open on Black Friday
Picture: Werner Hills[/caption]

For the love of bargains and good deals‚ Nelson Mandela Bay shoppers woke up at the crack of dawn yesterday to queue at retail stores in a bid to catch Black Friday specials – with groceries and booze being the most sought-after goods.

Some shoppers hit the malls as early as midnight, with some shops having to close their doors for small intervals throughout the day to manage the crowds.

But by midday the mad rush to rip goods off the racks had subsided‚ along with the adrenalin.

All that remained was the faint beeping of tills.

Nobathembu Melane 43, said she had missed out on Black Friday last year and that was why she had hit the shops just after midnight at Baywest Mall.

Game and Dion Wired at Baywest Mall opened up at midnight yesterday.

Zaakeyah Ahman, 19, had brought her grandmother to Baywest Mall as she wanted to grab some of the groceries that were on special.

“I am just here to stand in the queue while nana does the shopping,” she said. Phindiwe Fans, 31, who was shopping at a packed Greenacres Shopping Centre, said she always looked forward to Black Friday.

“The first time I heard about it was in 2015 when I bought a television set at Baywest Mall for less than I had budgeted. Since then I always look out for Black Friday.”

“I got here as early as 8am; although the queues at Checkers were long I managed to get everything.”

Fans spent about 50 minutes in the queue at Checkers.

At Cleary Park Shopping Centre, Dalton Jantjies, 36, said there seemed to be fewer people than last year.

“It’s only places like the liquor stores that you really see it is Black Friday.”

Meanwhile, online shopping did not seem to get off on a good start on Friday morning as web-based retailer TakealLot’s website was down because it had been overwhelmed.

This is despite the shop saying on Thursday that resources had been bolstered across the company for Black Friday.

Customers were unhappy as this was not the first Black Friday the company’s tech had groaned under the amount of online shoppers.

The websites of Dion Wired, Incredible Connection, Virgin Active and Toys R Us were also hit with outages.