Not to be confused with Black Thursday1.
In the Untidy States of Overpuddle2, the fourth Thursday in November is Thanksgiving, a public holiday that dates back a few hundred years. Not dating back quite so far, and not an actual holiday, the day after this has become known as Black Friday, which is considered to be the first day of the Christmas shopping season, and most large retailers have promotional sales to celebrate it.
The last few years has seen this phenomenon hit the UK, and – unsurprisingly – it has also become a feature of some online retailers who operate in the global market.
And this year, Elesar Ltd is bringing Black Friday to the RISC OS community so, according to the announcement, “there’s no need to emigrate to America to participate” – which makes sense, really, because Elesar’s products aren’t sold in the shops there.
The magic date this year is 25th November, and for any of the company’s product(s) that weigh 1kg or less and which are purchased on an extended version of that day, Elesar is offering free shipping to anywhere in the world.
“An extended version of that day?” I sense you asking?
Why, yes – the company has taken into account that the world is round and rotates on its axis, and its inhabitants therefore don’t exist in a single time zone. The offer is valid between two UTC times (which at the moment coincides with the time here in the UK) – the Elesar Black Friday sale runs from 10:00am on 24th November (10:00 24-Nov-2016 UTC), until 12:00 (midday) on 26th November (12:00 26-Nov-2016 UTC); throughout that period, it will be Friday, 25th November somewhere on Earth.
Limited to one order per customer, to take up the offer ensure the total weight of the items selected from the Elesar shop is less than 1kg (the current weight is shown in brackets on the shopping basket page) and select the “Use coupon code” – with the code to enter in the box being ONEKAYGEE – and then proceed through the remaining steps of the checkout as normal.
A quick check reveals the weight of the various items Elesar has on sale that qualify for the offer (individually or combined, provided the overall total weight remains below 1kg) to be as follows:
- Titanium motherboards: 700g
- PCI Express parallel ports: 50g
- CloudFS (because of the manual): 45g
Unfortunately, the snazzy mechanical keyboards (with red function keys, doncherknow) weigh in at 1,400g, so aren’t included in the offer – and the limit of one order per customer means you can’t ask the company to take an axe to one and order each half separately.
Which is probably a good thing, actually, because they might not work after that.
It’s also worth noting that if you are ordering from outside the EU, there is no VAT to pay – although import duties may apply.
Orders can also be made by email, and the company will reply with a proforma invoice that needs to be paid by return for the order to be completed and fullfiilled.
!ReadMe
- Black Thursday, as every RISC OS user of old should know, is the nickname given to Thursday, 17th September, 1998 – the date Acorn announced it was closing its Workstations Division, which meant their next computer, Phoebe (aka the RiscPC 2) would never see the light of day as a finished product.
- Also known as the United States of America, the USA, or just America. Or Overpuddle.