Black Friday not the cheapest time to shop, says consumer group

Just don't buy stuff you don't need. 100% savings every time.

When will fediverse allow more than one upvote!? Until then, I can only give you this one
- Multiple accounts across multiple federations?
- 1 jrbaconcheese, 1 vote! DEMOCRACY!
- Just give Lemmy gold.
  
  🏅
I agree with you, but the word "need" means different things to different people...
- I need a m1 flamerthrower, a davey crocket, and a one way ticket to saudi Arabia. Doesnt mean ill get any of them.

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.

That’s why I love deal communities like Slickdeals, if the deal sucks someone will be calling it out
- 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.
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.
- Wouldn't it be noticeable because this new "-a" model would have no ratings/reviews?
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.
- I had a TV do that. The LED backlight was dying. It cost me £10 and an hour or 2 to fix.
  
  Some are more of a pain than others to fix, but it's worth checking out.

I was looking at a robo sweeper on Amazon and noticed it was suddenly a Black Friday special - same price.

Camelcamelcamel.com forever
- Does that work for you? Everything I try it in like the last year or so it says no history.
- Keepa browser extension has saved me thousands over the years
And maybe sneakily lower specs. They absolutely do that with televisions.
- 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"
Damn, not even kidding you, I think I just fell for that last night. It arrives tonight.

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.
- Honestly the biggest reason was that college kids are more likely to buy the accidental damage warranty or have parents that will.

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.

If Americans are complaining about the discounts on black Friday, what shall we (Europeans) say about it? Our discounts are at best lukewarm.

In my place, discounts are 90% off but they increase MSRP before the discount.

So end result.... same price before discount.
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.
What discounts? There are a ton of items I've been watching that are "on sale" but more than they were a month ago.

Sure, but is it the cheapest time to shop that you can plan for? Waiting for a good sale will always be the best plan, but you can always bet on black Friday having relatively good deals

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.
- I feel like most retailers also mark up the prices a few months before than just bring it down to retail price
Plus it’s a convenient time of year when you’re buying Christmas gifts

I've never been one to shop for deals.

I've always thought you get 100% off the things you don't buy.

I save quite a bit of money only buying things I really need, or are truly important to me.

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.
The logic is that you buy what you need during this time, but it became a scam a few years back.
Same, although if there is something I want/need and there isn't a rush it is nice to hold out for a sale so I spend even less.

Companies make product lines specifically for Black Friday so they can save on the sales.

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.

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.
- fixed!
Which day is?? Or is it not one specific day of the year?
- Black Friday is the day after US Thanksgiving, which is the fourth Thursday of November.
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?

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.

A gaming laptop that I purchased on sale in February this year on Amazon is listed as a Black Friday deal at the same price point: $599

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!

Slickdeals is my go to. It is a deal forum, that, as far as I know, hasn't been compromised by fake reviews.

The whole article referring to Which? with their question mark wassss a pain

agree that the name is silly, it apparently also broke the tl;dr bot below