Black Friday not the cheapest time to shop, says consumer group
3 years ago by AlmightySnoo 🐢🇮🇱🇺🇦 to c/technology
When will fediverse allow more than one upvote!? Until then, I can only give you this one
Multiple accounts across multiple federations?
Shit, just roll your own instances
I need a m1 flamerthrower, a davey crocket, and a one way ticket to saudi Arabia. Doesnt mean ill get any of them.
Best part of the Davy Crockett is that the accurate range is less than the minimum safe distance of the warhead.
Id be the first person in Valhalla who nuked themselves.
Put me in coach
A lot of the deals on Black Friday are actually cheaper quality products. A TV specially made to be cheaper than the regular model. Less HDMI ports, lower quality parts. And the item/model number is slightly different.
I also like tools like Honey or CamelCamelCamel, which show you the actual price changes over time, and you can decide when the right time to buy is. Obviously, you never know when something will go on sale in the future, but it at least helps you see how good the current price is compared to the past month or year.
Keepa makes Camel x 3 obsolete, it shows far more information
This is very noticeable on Amazon especially. So many “deals” from budget brands or one-off Chinese brands that nobody has never heard of. This is especially noticeable on Prime Day too.
I have worked with buyers at Best Buy that negotiate these “deals”. The manufacturers will create a near identical version of a higher quality product, but the model number will be a sub-model (like -a). When uninformed consumers are bargain shopping for a deal they will see that the “same” model is more expensive elsewhere and think they are getting a deal. This sub-model product will have cheaper components and fewer features and a higher product margin.
Some of these products would have very high failure rates but the companies still keep doing this because it helps to push their extended warranties. Then people buy them even when they buy higher quality products because they remember the failure on the other one.
Long story short, don’t shop on Black Friday for deals in electronics.
I got bit by this earlier in the year. I needed a smaller TV for the bedroom. I narrowed down the line I wanted. Target and Best Buy were the only two local stores to carry it. BB had the 2023 model, Target had a 2022 model with a sub-designation that was $50 cheaper. I went with Target because I didn't care if it was an older model, just needed something good enough. Well, it wasn't good enough, not even close. The color accuracy was so bad that the tint adjustment was useless — it was both too pink and too green no matter what. I dug out my old calibration disk and tried to adjust the color by isolating red/green/blue channels. The best-effort adjustments made it better, but still awful. I even connected it to the network (hardwire only, fuck "smart" appliances) just in case a firmware update helped. It did not, so back it went. Had to wait, multiple times in line and for someone to pull from the back, for like 45 minutes because they "don't do exchanges" so I needed to do a song and dance to get the sale price on a replacement purchase. Got the replacement home, same deal. At that point I suspected it was leftover Black Friday junk.
Took it back and went to Best Buy. Spent the extra $50. Perfect color out of the box. Lesson(s) learned.
i ended up with a cheapened 'walmart' model that was also a "last year's model". was the cheapest, smallest 1080p in the store a couple years back when prices were inflated and selection was weak. but i couldn't take it back, it was a gift.
i'm stuck with only 2 hdmi, no bt or 3.5mm, and rca analog inputs i'll never use... but at least i got the better remote than a co-worker that has the next year's model--and i'm still grateful i was able to finally dump the 19 inch tube and the equally-small monitor that were serving as my "TVs".
Or know what you're getting.
Micro Center is just epic every way. I love those guys.
Generally an observant person will notice this, especially if they actually read the box. The model number extensions will vary though, some are 6 characters for example.
That's undoubtedly true in general, but there are exceptions. For example:
It's a little hard to tell just looking at specifications without directly comparing in person, but I think the Costco Black Friday-specific version of the Roland FP-10 digital piano actually manages to be better than the normal version (even before you consider that it's cheaper and comes with a bunch of accessories). Specifically, it has 128 voice polyphony instead of the regular 96, and the only other difference I can find is that it advertises "a custom selection of tones curated by Roland and Costco exclusively for the FRP-2-ACR," which I hope doesn't mean they're worse.
I got a smart TV about 10 years ago on Black Friday. It was fine until a few years the screen "bruised". Everything now has a purple hue and that is the "guest" tv. No other lcd tv I've had has had the same issues.
What a shocker that Black Friday is all a marketing scam.
Amazon are the worst for it. Instead of reducing the prices of their products, they will often just add the RRP next to the existing price and claim that it's 35% off or whatever, even though they've actually only knocked about £5 off the price it was already.
It initially started with tech saavy who are in the know how of prices getting a good deal, but the more casual the practice became, so did the sale value as well, as it switched from techies getting a good deal to corpo creating black friday specific products to trick the layperson that theyre getting a good deal.
Sales are only good if the average person doing the shopping is also in the knowhow for pricing.
Had this exact same thing happen to me for the first time recently on a product I was watching. I was confused at first because I'd been watching it for a while and thought maybe the new price hadn't refreshed or something, because it was 0% off.
Does that work for you? Everything I try it in like the last year or so it says no history.
I'm pretty sure Amazon neutered the camels during the pandemic.
Yeah I've seen some items that have no Amazon seller history, but have third party history... Despite Amazon themselves selling it.
Keepa browser extension has saved me thousands over the years
I found this out like 20 some odd years ago when I had my first job.
Black Friday is when most name brands sell their shittier models, often with less features.
Home Depot has been having daily deals that change every day. They had some workbenches on sale. Next day, they're still on "sale"
I used to work at Microcenter for awhile. The best time to buy was always back to school. Holiday deals start at the beginning of November and are the exact same as Black Friday minus a few small door buster deals and maybe a special on a few models of pc. During back to school, pretty much everything is heavily discounted.
Would make sense because laptop companies always push out new products for back to school, and usually cpu releases happen months before back to school to allow production to ramp up to account for the sales.
We've known this for a decade.
I had no concept of black Friday until the late 90s when I was told about it and looked at my sister like she was crazy for fighting over deals on socks and underwear. It wasn't until a few years later when a girlfriend wanted to get her sibling a laptop and we stood in line at 3am at circuit shitty that I realized it really was all fucking stupid and not worth it.
Most items, especially large ticket items, have an annual schedule where new models are releasee and previous models are discounted to clear the way for the new ones. Just google the type of product you want to buy to see when they are discounted most.
Camel Camel Camel is pretty good price tracker too.
There was an article a couple years back saying that manufacturers will use cheaper components for the same products, making it LOOK like the same TV but it's actually built cheaper. The really bad ones will keep the same product number/SKU but others will usually append a letter or two.
So the over all cost might be less but you're actually getting a poor quality version.
Y'all are also smart enough to know and prohibit retailers from boosting prices just before discounting them to trick consumers into thinking they're getting a huge deal when they're actually paying average, or above average cost for the product.
Does Europe have any laws about branding cheaper or items with less features, identically to existing more expensive products and selling them for less?
If not, they should, but then Temu would get fucked I assume.
I'm sure you know, but I want to add to this in case others do not.
These product lines are usually really poor quality. They might look like the original and have a similar model number, but a TV, for example, will have less ports, lower resolution screen, or a lower quality screen.
So, if it is an electronic, look up the model number and if you can't see a lot of reviews for it, then this is why.
A friend of mine once had this big ass box in his living room. I asked what the deal with that is. He said he bought a tv because it was "too cheap to not buy" the tv was worse than the one he had, so he moved that tv like twice and after 3 or so years he gave it away because he moved in with his girlfriend who also already had a tv. He still somehow thinks that was a good investment because how cheap it was.
I mean, there's still a ton of deals at a time when you're shopping for gifts. The article is saying that of the black friday deals, these aren't the lowest prices of the entire year for most items, but they're still lower than normal.
As a vinyl collector, I see labels and stores offering flat 20% off deals off everything which you don't see that often. Also seeing other types of deals on other direct to consumer brands.
If you know what you're looking for, and not looking at black friday deals to look for what to look for, I think it's a pretty good time to do shopping.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Just one in 50 Black Friday deals are at their cheapest price on the day of the sales extravaganza, according to analysis of last year’s event by a leading consumer group.
analysed 208 deals last year at eight major home and tech retailers including Amazon, Argos, and Currys.
Retail said that customers should not feel “pressured to splash out on Black Friday as it’s rarely the cheapest time to shop”.
also looked at an extended sales period covering 18 November until 2 December, in order to catch Cyber Monday which follows the Thanksgiving weekend, and still found that 86% of products were the same price or cheaper at other times of the year.
Argos told the Guardian that only one product in its analysis was a Black Friday deal, while the others were part of other promotional offers.
Amazon had the second-highest percentage (69%) of products that were cheaper than their Black Friday price at other times of the year.
The original article contains 542 words, the summary contains 160 words. Saved 70%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
Black Friday is also not the most violent shopping day in the US. I wrote a blog post about it and a truly awesome movie idea, about seven years ago.
Edit: Fixed link!
Your link needs more link.
This comment brought to you by the authors of modern news article titles.
Which day is?? Or is it not one specific day of the year?
I wasn't asking what black Friday is, I was asking which day is the most violent.
Wait, this doesn't even have any data to show if black Friday is or isn't the most violent shopping day. You just say it isn't without giving anything to actually back it up. Or did I miss something?
agree that the name is silly, it apparently also broke the tl;dr bot below
no shit Sherlock.
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Just don't buy stuff you don't need. 100% savings every time.
save