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90% of Black Friday deals were the same price or cheaper six months before

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Re: 90% of Black Friday deals were the same price or cheaper six months before

#131

Here in Norway we didn't have Black Friday until like a decade ago or so, when shops started introducing it. They even had to explain what it was all about in the ads. Now it's no longer Black Friday, no... now we have Black Week and even Black November, filled with 10% off prices or deep discounts on old junk nobody wanted... There's still a few really good deals, and there's a positive to concentrating the deals to…

Here in Japan, this year is the first time I see "Black Friday" at every real store. It was mostly online event.

Re: 90% of Black Friday deals were the same price or cheaper six months before

#133
post #63
post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe Amazon thinks camelcamelcamel is helping more than hurting?

Well I do use them to "time" purchases through Amazon, not look at other retailers to make my purchase location decision.

I have alerts setup there to alert me when the price gets to $x, 1 of the few places I have setup like that. So in my case, I definitely buy more from Amazon because of the site.

Re: 90% of Black Friday deals were the same price or cheaper six months before

#134

I'm sure this surprises no-one who has ever waited for a Black Friday (deal) only to suspect/know that the price is no different than before. It feels especially this way in Europe where retailers have adopted "Black Friday week" or similar purely to encourage additional spending. There is a tool (in Switzerland) I use a lot. TopPreise ( http://toppreise.ch ) scrapes, aggregates and compares prices from retailers but…

We have a similar site in New Zealand https://pricespy.co.nz/ Use it all the time.

Re: 90% of Black Friday deals were the same price or cheaper six months before

#135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used to chase these kinds of deals, but if you stop to think about it, spending hours to optimize for $10 is almost certainly a terrible waste compared to what you could have been doing with that time. Deal seeking always eats up many hours of time for these small gains. That analysis skill applied to any kind of business problem is easily worth thousands. No offense intended if this is pure stamp collecting.

I run an e-commerce business and see the opposite as well. People who earn, say, $30/hr won't take literally 2 seconds to scroll past the sponsored listings and save $50+.

How do you know the incomes of random people visiting your site?

Re: 90% of Black Friday deals were the same price or cheaper six months before

#136
post #46

It has been interesting watching the concept of Black Friday (and cyber monday) evolve over the past 20 or so years from being mostly an "American big box retailer dumping excess stock" thing to "oh boy its black Friday, time to go buy stuff!" thing. The entire event has basically been undeservingly co-opted by everyone looking to cash in on hype over an event that basically doesn't even resemble what made it a thing…

[flagged]

Re: 90% of Black Friday deals were the same price or cheaper six months before

#138

For those who use Amazon and want cost perspective on particular items, Camelcamelcamel is a superpower ( https://camelcamelcamel.com/ ) I’m sure one day I’ll find out they make money in all sorts of sketchy ways, but in the mean time it’s a great free website, and I’m continually astounded to see how often retailers play around with the prices they post.

It speaks to the truth of the original post that I set up a ton of price alerts six months ago and exactly zero of them have gone off.

Re: 90% of Black Friday deals were the same price or cheaper six months before

#140
post #46

It has been interesting watching the concept of Black Friday (and cyber monday) evolve over the past 20 or so years from being mostly an "American big box retailer dumping excess stock" thing to "oh boy its black Friday, time to go buy stuff!" thing. The entire event has basically been undeservingly co-opted by everyone looking to cash in on hype over an event that basically doesn't even resemble what made it a thing…

>Just like how for singles day in Asia, retailers shamelessly just jack prices up beforehand to make their sale prices look like discounts.

This would be illegal in Denmark https://www.forbrugerombudsmanden.dk/hvad-gaelder/markedsfoe...

English

>If an item, for example, has cost DKK 1,000 throughout the year, and it is set up to DKK 1,500 for 6 weeks and then comes on “sale” for DKK 1,000 again, this is misleading, which is illegal.

obviously you can do stuff like set the price up for a longer period to escape being illegal but then you probably have a bunch of stock sitting around that doesn't move.

although as a general rule when I see black friday deals in Denmark I am not too thrilled at the savings, maybe because they tend to be realistic markdowns.

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