Black Friday Cheers & Jeers

The dust has barely settled on Black Friday weekend, but we here at dealnews have already declared last week's biggest winners and losers. Unfortunately, overloaded servers, lukewarm deals, and lack of inventory ensured there were as many jeers as there were cheers. Below you'll find our personal picks for this year's biggest cheers and jeers.

Cheers: To Frys.com, whose pre-Thanksgiving prices on LCD TVs beat the Black Friday doorbusters of seemingly every store.

Jeers: To Wal-Mart for heavily promoting its "Secret" Black Friday sale, and then featuring a KitchenAid stand mixer with a minimum of one per store. (One!)

Cheers: To Amazon.com for undercutting Wal-Mart's KitchenAid mixer price on Black Friday.

Jeers: To Sears.com, whose site was unreachable during much of Black Friday, and to Staples.com, whose rebate center was down Black Friday morning (and yes, many of Staples' Black Friday deals required rebates) and to newegg.com, whose site buckled under pressure on Black Friday morning.

Cheers: To TigerDirect.com, who donated a portion of every sale to the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation not only on Black Friday, but for the remainder of the year.

Jeers: To Toys "R" Us and Target for listing recalled toys in their sales circulars.

Cheers: To offers of free shipping without minimum at Staples.com and OfficeDepot.com. (OfficeMax, sad to say, pretty much skipped Black Friday.)

Jeers: To Buy.com's Black Friday sale, which had many prices that were actually higher than they had recently been — at Buy.com, no less. An extra jeer for Buy.com recycling their Thanksgiving deals on Black Friday and Cyber Monday.

Cheers: To Amazon.com and Walmart.com, whose sites, unlike last year, survived all of the traffic spikes.

Compiled by the editors and writers at dealnews ... many of whom worked long hours on Thanksgiving Day to sling deals. Cheers!