While you do need to be careful about this bullshit, things do actually often hit lows for black Friday sales. Particularly electronics.
For like the first ten of them and you have to get to the store 6 hours before it opens and then fight gladiator matches with all the other crazy people to be at the cash register first. No thanks, man!
That very much still happens. I have not seen any killer deals online. Have you?
You gotta track stuff you want to buy ahead of the pre-sale price hikes. Depending on where you live, what you want to buy and how much money you make that might be too much time and energy so checking price history sites (like camelcamelcamel for amazon) when they’re available also works in a pinch.
But definitely double check SKUs. A lot of Black Friday products are more cheaply made than their usual counterparts, even if they outwardly seem like the same product.
I saw it when I worked retail (which was a long time ago, so I guess as an anecdote, add an extra grain of salt; maybe things have changed but I doubt it).
We would get pallets of product right before Black Friday, and curiously, they would overlap with product we already had in the store. For example, if we carried a 40" TV from brand X (TVs are very notorious for this Black Friday swapping), we’d get a pallet of 40" TVs from brand X which looked exactly the same, had the same specs on the box, but a different SKU. In some cases we were instructed to remove the original stock and replace it with the Black Friday stock, which would be priced lower.
As others have mentioned, returns on the sale stock would be high. And there would be interesting differences, like an obviously cheaper remote or an overall lighter unit.
And of course sometimes there was no overlap – we’d get some product from some no name brand that just sat out in the aisle on its pallet. These were absolutely only brought in for Black Friday and I have to assume they were the cheapest imaginable garbage inside.
I’ve never sought out a Black Friday sale since those days.
TVs are a classic example. I found luggage accidentally one time years ago. Was so poorly made I was shocked it hasn’t disintegrated in transit. Immediately returned it. When I did some research, it looked like none had ever actually sold off that SKU until Black Friday, and they had a stupid price listed months before hand for that deep discount the day of.
I used to work at Best Buy in the Video department. We got all new products shipped in just for Black Friday. One year we got these $40 VCRs (I realize I’m dating myself here) that we must have sold a billion of. Within the week, we had so many returns that we didn’t have any place to put them.
Similarly Best Buy’s brand, Insignia, is a mix mashed TV full of components from other TV brands (unless that has changed in the last 4 years). They’re usually the ones to go on deep discount but, due to the nature of the internals not being from one company, they’re nearly impossible to repair.
So, although your Insignia may last a year and a half or two, the Sharp panel may fail, the Phillips backlight could fail, or the PCB from Samsung could fail, adding to more e-waste.
I went clothes shopping in the US today and saved 496 dollars with all the coupons and sales, and got mountains of stuff. I always do it that way, but I shop the day after Black Friday and the deals are still the same. US department stores on holiday long weekends are the best deal ever, I save money all year and go for a great big shop.
I read this meme in an anti-semitic voice.
Capitalism is cancer, no it really is. It’s a system demanding infinite growth in a finite system. What the fuck else would you call that?
I thought capitalism was just that the market should be open.
I didn’t recall any mentions of infinite growth.
There’s really no point arguing with someone who thinks in memes, and definitely not with someone who leads with “Capitalism is cancer.” But business does have a “grow or die” philosophy, which could be what the person means by misapplying the term “infinite”. The mainstream business world knows literally infinite growth isn’t possible - although many people in business don’t see or acknowledge specific limits, or think they’re so far away they can be treated as infinite right now.
This, they keep thinking profits have to go up indefinitely, so they raise it far beyond what can be reasonably accounted for inflation. Then they wonder why no one’s buying.
The idea that “people need to afford your product” doesn’t register to these clowns.
I’ve learned my lesson. I bought a graphics card and a monitor a few weeks ago. They were the kinds of desirable purchases that were never going to get discounted on Black Friday.
Idk, I bought a 4k 240 hz oled monitor for $300 off for black Friday, the lowest price it’s ever been. I think deals are still out there.
Deals are there, many are not worth the wait and the real (good) deals are often less desireable items.
At least from what i’ve seen myself.
But i always hope the more expensive stuff gets a discount so i can get something better than what i would’ve bought otherwise.
Right now there are a couple 4080 super’s discounted but it’s only like €80 difference for a model i would only buy if the difference was larger, so i almost ended up buying a non discounted 4080 super model.
Most price changes I have seen goes like this:
September: 300
Start of november: 500
Black friday: 250 - 50% off!
In the UK, Which (a consumer group) did a study. I think 90% of products were cheaper or same price at other parts of the year.
The only thing cheaper is usually the shit that no one wants that they cannot shift, or those 5 TVs at the start of the day that make people believe there are good deals available.
Do you think you have a link for it, I’d help me in a policy paper I’m helping write.
What I’ve seen many times (and what often still is a pretty good deal)
- JAN: product X, 1100 bucks
- FEB: product X EOL. last items BUY NOW - 20%!
- MAR
- APR
- MAY
- JUN
- JUL
- AUG
- SEP
- OCT: some warehouse: Fuck. Is that a a stash of product X?
- NOV: BLACK FRIDAY WEEK! Product X -45%! LIMITED STOCK!
