Amazon’s app craps out on Black Friday

What do you get when you combine “doorbusting” savings, early Black Friday shopping hours, price-match guarantees and a smartphone app that lets you check — while in the aisles of one store — the competing price of products on the Internet?

Well, you get very confused.

Two years ago I made my first foray into the world of Black Friday shopping. It, along with the birth of my children, was an experience I’ll never forget.

(Understand, please, that I was in the waiting room when the kids were born. That’s the way it was done back then — “Come get me when it’s over.”)

That’s kinda the way I approached Black Friday — as an awed, frightened sideline observer waiting for someone to tell me what was going on.

Most people are seeking out the best deals on HDTVs. I was seeking out the people who are seeking out the best deals.

And I contend that if social scientists ever want to study the modern day hunter/gatherer — female version, mostly — they should set up their cameras at Target, Macy’s, Penney’s and any other store when the Christmas shopping season breaks loose.

I’m not being sexist. But any guy in the stores for Black Friday shopping is mainly serving as muscle (to grab the other end of the 50-inch TV box) or as protector (“stand here and don’t let anybody take anything from the cart.”)

As you know, the action once started in the wee hours of the day after Thanksgiving. When I did this same column two years ago I arrived at Target at 4 a.m. only to find that I was about five hours too late for getting any good deals — although I did score a $9 Dirt Devil vacuum that is still in perfect working condition on the account that it never left the box it came in.

People that day had presumably lined up right after ingesting the turkey so they could get the deeply discounted electronics products and not-so-great deals on everything else. (In fact, one guy might even have had the turkey leg in his pocket, but I was too tired at that time of night to ask.)

With the economy still bad (when isn’t it?) and people extremely price-conscious, stores have moved up and up the date of their seasonal sales. It wouldn’t shock me — although it would offend me — if in a few years Black Friday started on Good Friday.

In recent years, consumers have discovered something that stores wish they hadn’t: sometimes the great discounts on Black Friday are just ordinary deals on the everyday Internet.

That’s why many stores are now guaranteeing they’ll match any lower online price — while, I assume, hoping consumers won’t ask them to. Not that you could find a store employee to ask about matching a rival price.