Black Friday tips: Things you should NOT do when shopping
The big shopping week promises plenty of deals to entice customers but these sales are often found to be not as cheap as they may seem.
Black Friday is nearly upon us and the now-infamous shopping day has encouraged consumers to turn feral in recent years. Videos of people flooding into shops and snaffling as much as they can epitomised the early days of the unofficial holiday.
In the context of people struggling to pay for things due to high inflation, any deal may look enticing. However, companies are more than aware of the lure of Black Friday and it has been proven that deals on offer are often no better compared to other times of the year.
British consumer protection site Which? conducted their yearly analysis of Black Friday sales. They found 98% of products on sale on Black Friday 2021 were cheaper or at least the same price at other times of the year.
Is Black Friday really all that?
Which? looked at 214 different deals from last year’s Black Friday sales at seven major UK retailers. They looked at prices six months before and after Black Friday, which was 26 November last year.
86% of the products were cheapest in the six months before Black Friday as well as not one of the products being at their cheapest on Black Friday itself.
Which? named Amazon and Very as “the worst retailers overall for dubious discounts”. Considering Amazon was one of the companies at the forefront of Black Friday’s beginnings this is certainly a company to watch out for.
How you can get the best deals
Checking multiple websites is the easiest way of making sure you are actually gettting a deal. Multiple shops may be selling an item while not all may be calling items a special offer. Maybe you aren’t getting as good a deal as you may have thought prior.
Another way of checking deals is using apps or websites which track prices of products. Sites like Pricerunner and PriceSpy can be used to see if the product you are looking at is actually on sale or not.