Hints on how to get that big deal on Black Friday

[Papa_Complex]

Pepper spray the opposition!


Black pepper Friday? Walmart shopper in LA pepper-sprays rivals

Police hunt for 'competitive shopper' who attacked 20 others to keep them away from Black Friday sales bargains

Walmart advertises sale prices to shoppers on Black Friday at a store in Oakland, California. Photograph: Noah Berger/AP

Bargain hunters at a Walmart in Los Angeles were hurt when a fellow shopper attacked them with pepper spray as the doors opened on the US's holiday shopping season.

Authorities said the woman was trying to keep the other shoppers from merchandise she wanted during early opening on "Black Friday", the name given to the post-Thanksgiving shopping day.

"Somehow she was trying to use it to gain an upper hand," Police Lieutenant Abel Parga told the Associated Press. Authorities said the woman was "competitive shopping".

Officials said 20 people suffered injuries. Matthew Lopez, one of the shoppers, told a Los Angeles Times blog: "I heard screaming and I heard yelling. Moments later, my throat stung. I was coughing really bad and watering up."

Parga said police were still looking for the woman. The store remained open and those not affected by the pepper spray continued shopping.

This year's start of the holiday shopping season, know as Black Friday - a term apparently coined to illustrate the point at which shops and stores start to make a profit, or go "in the black" – began in earnest overnight as some retailers, looking to grab as big a piece as possible of what is expected to be average sales, pushed Black Friday openings into Thursday evening or opened at midnight for the first time in years,

Bargain hunters flocked to shops searching for deals on big screen televisions, video games and toys, while fretting about their own economic well-being.

The strategy appeared to be working, judging from the 300 people who were lined up at a Toys R Us store on Long Island, New York, before it opened at 9pm on Thursday, Reuters reported, while shoppers and employees at other shops said the crowds were bigger than in the past.

The US National Retail Federation expects 152 million people to hit the shops this weekend, up 10.1% from last year.

Retailers from Amazon.com to Wal-Mart were also offering online deals as Thanksgiving has become one of the biggest online shopping days of the year.

Retail executives and analysts are predicting a more competitive season than 2010, even though unemployment remains at 9%, European debt woes are weighing on the stock market and consumer confidence remains low. NRF forecasts a 2.8% rise in sales for the November-December holiday season, down from the 5.2% increase in 2010.

Some shoppers, though, feel the recession has returned, even if it has not shown up in the economic data. "This year, we are going to do shopping but I don't think it is going to be as much shopping as we usually do. Because of the recession, we are not going to shop as much," said Desiree Schoolfield, 49, a public service professional from Queens who was shopping at the Toys R Us in Times Square.