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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

#141

Post by simion314 »

stjohnswarts wrote: post #100
gaius_baltar wrote: post #11

This have been a joke for a few years here in Brazil, we call the day "Black Fraud" (sounds a little better in Portuguese) The relevant point is that Black Friday is an "artificial" event here: we do not celebrate Thanksgiving Day so there is no need for a the stores to get rid of unsold inventory. It started just ~10 years ago when marketers began advertising it as a sales day.

I mean if people didn't like it wouldn't it go away? What is the fraud involved? I am sincerely curious. Are the sales fake or something? like they have very limited inventory and just get people in and while they're there the store hopes they'll buy an alternative? That used to be a big thing around here but generally these days if you get there early you can get the deals, or if you sit up late and buy on the web s…

>What is the fraud involved?

The "marketing/sells" guys decided that prices for products changing daily is something profitable, Keep a tab open to some product and refresh it daily, see how prices change and how you get tricked.

So for Black Friday they will increase the prices before the sales and then put a giant "25% off" label. They also can say advertise with some super deals like super cheap laptop but they might have only 1 device. So in Romania we have laws and big companies will be fined heavily and shamed for this evil tricks(not sure if this is an EU thing or only local).

Maybe you mean "fraud" is not the correct word and there is a better legal word that fits for this evil and illegal(on some regions) behavior.

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

#142

Post by el-salvador »

ajsnigrutin wrote: post #57
ayngg wrote: 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…

I live in slovenia. We literally have all-month black friday "deals".

Something similar happens in El Salvador.

One retailer trademarked "Black Friday" so no other store can use it.

This caused Black Friday to become Black November, Blue November, Red Weekend. I think we even have deals in September.

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

#143

Post by AussieWog93 »

executesorder66 wrote: post #135
AussieWog93 wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

I don't, it's basically just a "normal wage" for non-professionals in Australia.

My point was that people will spend an hour working to make $30 but won't spend a minute looking around to save $50.

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

#144

Post by gonesilent »

ziml77 wrote: post #60
fasouto wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They do money by adding their affiliate code to the links. However the Amazon Affiliate TOS [0] say: (y) Unless otherwise agreed by Amazon, your Site must not have price tracking and/or price alerting functionality. I see many sites with this functionality. I don't know if they all got approved by Amazon or they are not enforcing this clause. [0] https://affiliate-program.amazon.com/help/operating/policies...

Maybe Amazon thinks camelcamelcamel is helping more than hurting?

Amazon must think so it's allowed camelcamelcamel to live on for 8+ years I've been using it.

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

#145

Post by toast0 »

dougmwne wrote: post #81
julianlam wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, if you get caught up in the mania and hype of any particular "sale" and don't price compare then you're bound to get ripped off. I wouldn't dismiss singles day, though. There were some surprisingly cheap (both in price and quality) items I picked up on singles day. Got an AirPod clone for something like a dollar last year. This year I picked up a coffee grinder off the official retailer for Timemore on AliExpre…

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.

When I was salaried, the marginal value of my time was $0. Thar extra thirty minutes shopping costs me nothing and gives me satisfaction. Now that I'm retired, my marginal value is still $0. Taking longer to spend money is in itself valuable. If I get discouraged by the shopping and don't buy the item I was looking for, that's the best outcome for my wallet.

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

#146

Post by larnik »

nitsuaeekcm wrote: post #48

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.

This gives you some idea, but it doesn't include coupons, deals and lightning sales in the tracking.

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

#147

Post by sizzle »

I remember camping outside Circuit City/CompUSA/Good Guys or Fry’s the day before with friends and nothing better to do to snag a door buster laptop or desktop computer, decent specs for like $2-300 bucks. They would hand out vouchers for the door buster items and I would sell them to people who showed up late and basically get a free computer. Good side hustle in my teens.

Once retailer recognized how lucrative it was and started making special SKUs for Black Friday of cheaper products was when I realized the Black Friday I loved was dead and stopped going out.

Can anyone relate?

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

#148

Post by makeitdouble »

barbazoo wrote: post #113
makeitdouble wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To me there is two specific aspect of Black Friday that make it special for online shopping: - retailers are showcasing a limited number of goods that they expect to sell fast. This means short delivery times, no weird third party shipping from obscure places. They are prepared, and even buying at the same price as usual, the experience tends to be better. - the piling up effect makes it worse for delivery, worker co…

> retailers are showcasing a limited number of goods that they expect to sell fast. I wonder how much of that is true and how much is just make believe.

Anecdotally, last year a bit before Black Friday we wanted a new iPad (unrelated to the event, it just happened that way). Ordering directly from Apple had a 2 weeks delivery date, getting it from Amazon during Black Friday landed it 2 days after in front of our door.

And it was cheaper (same price, but bigger storage)

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

#150

Post by sandos »

ajsnigrutin wrote: post #57
ayngg wrote: 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…

I live in slovenia. We literally have all-month black friday "deals".

In Sweden we have "black week" starting monday before black friday, then of course black friday, cyber weeked, cyber monday. Then there is any number of made-up things by various sellers too. Traditionally there is always a sale between christmas and new years, and basically all of January too.

I think this year was not very common in that for example TVs had the same low price the entire week, usually someone has a lower price during just the friday but not for popular models this year.

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