OTTAWA — Over 1,000 people waited in the cold to take advantage of the Boxing Day Sales at the Best Buy on Coventry Road, surprising the sales staff who had expected half that number.

“I have been here since 1:30 a.m., this morning,” said Michael Da Silveira who was first in line, accompanied by his father. They were hoping to find deals on 42-inch TVs, laptops and a personal video recorder.

The excited and nervous staff opened the doors at 6 a.m. after a brief team meeting near the entrance, allowing in streams of 250 customers at a time. The Best Buy staff greeted the first stream with applause — and the shopping chaos began.

The first stream of shoppers grabbed all the shopping carts, leaving none for those waiting outside, and began a flurry of rushed activity, bumping into stocked merchandise on their hunt for a deal.

Those who knew what they were shopping for headed to those departments, others began filling their carts with anything they could find, beginning with the flat screen TVs stocked in boxes near the entrance.

Five minutes after the doors opened, there were already line-ups at the cash with staff assigned to just direct this traffic. Aisles had been set up in each department as people waited to be given the product they were seeking — laptops, home theatre products and cellphones were popular — before heading to the line-ups at the cash.

By 6:20 a.m. the queue outside had disappeared, though shoppers continued to arrive throughout the morning.

“December started off slow but since last week cellphones seem to be one of the busiest departments” said Brian Armstrong, a cellphone representative at the store. He was expecting it to be one of the busiest departments on Boxing Day as well.

A recent Bank of Montreal survey showed that the average Canadian expected to spent $1,397 during the holidays season, up from $1,305 in 2010. However Ottawa shoppers are spending less than that, with spending declining since last year , according to the Ottawa Chamber of Commerce.

“I wouldn’t say we are down in sales, but this is obviously one of our biggest days of the year and we want to be successful with that,” said Best Buy general manager Jason Galbraith.

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