Every Wednesday Ross Rubin contributes Switched On, an opinion column about consumer technology, multimedia, and digital entertainment:
Dear Ross,
As a valued customer, we'd like to inform you of some changes that we'll be making to our Black Friday program this
year.
—Shopping site non-aggression: For the past few years, various Web sites have offered details of Black Friday products
and pricing in some cases weeks before these products go on sale. We realize that all of our competitors are going to
have pretty much the same stuff on sale. The brands may be different, but with a 70 percent discount, most people
couldn't care less. In any case, we're not going to threaten to sue Web sites that publish these products and prices.
All in all, it's probably not a bad thing to be on good terms with people directing traffic to our store on Black
Friday.
—Late openings: On Black Friday, our stores will open at 10 AM in recognition that many of our customers travel home
from relatives in a tryptophan-induced stupor on Thanksgiving. Your dollars aren't worth appreciably less five hours
earlier, and we'd like to give plenty of time for all the shoppers coming from the three or four 5 AM openings all
competing with each other to converge at our stores for the 10 AM openings.
