For the love of bargains and good deals‚ customers across the country woke up at the crack of dawn to queue at retail stores in a bid to catch Black Friday specials.

At Avenue District Shopping Centre in Roodepoort‚ Johannesburg‚ customers were armed each with a trolley and when doors opened at exactly 7am on Friday‚ they battled their way into Checkers Hyper.

Some of the items they desperately wanted to get their hands on were toilet paper‚ baby diapers‚ cold drinks‚ margarine‚ washing powders‚ sanitary pads‚ and cereals. Customers flooded the shop's aisles and stocked up a storm.

Pushing a trolley seemed to be too much of a hassle for one man‚ who instead loaded his groceries into a sack. “Trolleys are a waste of time‚ I'd rather pull [a sack]‚” the customer remarked.

“I'm so excited about the prices. I'm here for a few things. But I'm annoyed because not everything is on special‚ so I will just get these toilets papers‚ as many as I can. And other things I need at home. It's hectic‚" said Lerato Mokwana while rushing to the queue for cereal boxes.

Scores of customers also queued outside Checkers Hyper at Mall of Africa. “I woke up at 4am but I was late because of traffic. I arrived here before 6am‚” said a customer. She said she woke up early so as not to miss out on washing powder and beer specials.

“I am here to buy pampers‚” said another customer.

Meanwhile online shopping did not seem to get off on a good start on Friday morning as web-based retailer TakeaLot’s website was down because it was “overwhelmed”.

This is despite the shop saying on Thursday that resources were bolstered across the company for Black Friday. Customers responded unhappily as this is not the first Black Friday the company's tech groans under the amount of online shoppers.