Boxing Day doesn’t just have to be about spending money. Some people look at it as an opportunity to make a little cash.
Corinna was the first person in line outside the Future Shop on Granville and Robson in Downtown Vancouver, but she wasn’t there to cash in on door crasher sales. She found a guy on Craigslist who offered her $75 to wait in line from 11 p.m. until shortly before the store opened this morning.
“It’s Christmas time and I was looking for a little cash, and I’m always checking Craigslist for jobs,” she tells News1130. “I thought it would be stupid not to respond to the ad.”
Corinna talked her boyfriend into tagging along. The couple bundled up in warm clothes and the man who paid them to wait let her borrow a chair. She says the wait wasn’t so bad.
“There were lots of crazies around, so it was better than TV,” she laughs. “It kind of flew by.”
Others preferred to experience Boxing Day the old fashioned way. Mark showed up at 2 a.m. outside the Best Buy near the south end of the Cambie Street Bridge.
“We actually didn’t sleep at all, we just stayed up all night,” he tells News1130. “They have a Go Pro here for $200 off, so why not? It’s not too bad out here. I’ve got my homies with me.”
Mark even talked one of his buddies, Ludwig, into tagging along even though Ludwig wasn’t particularly interested in buying anything.
“I might buy something if it’s on sale. Why not save [Mark] a couple hundred bucks?” he asks.
The rain and cold didn’t bother Ludwig much. He says Vancouver is the “Hawaii of Canada.”
So did you line up in the freezing cold to get your hands on Boxing Day deals?
If you are like many Canadians, you think the entire day is completely overrated!
In fact an Angus Reid Poll finds 96 percent of us wouldn’t be caught dead camping out overnight.
These people in Vancouver totally agree.
“It is a non-shopping Boxing Day for us. I only went once with my sister about 20 years ago,” says one man News1130 Radio caught up with.
“It is more or less overrated. The discounts given seemed to be better when I was younger,” said another.
So how much of a deal would it need to be to lure you outside of you warm home? Fifty-seven per cent would only wait in a line for a discount of more than 40 per cent off or more, while 31 per cent would never wait in line regardless of the savings.