Here in Europe they’re forced to show the lowest price of the last 30 days and I was looking at some games in GoG and for several interesting games their Black Friday “discounted” price is €15 whilst the lowest price in the last 30 days is €10.
So the Black Friday “discount” is in fact 50% more expensive than the previous time that game had a “discount” which happenned not even that long ago.
That’s regionally specific then, because they sure as hell don’t do that where i live (EU member). They have to compare with non-sale price within a month or something, so it’s complete bullshit here because they artificially inflate prices prior to black Friday “sales”.
Guess I’ve just chosen the right country to point my VPN to then :)
Sounds sweet, which country is it
Actually I just checked GoG without going through a VPN (from work) and I see the same “Lowest price in the last 30 days before discount” information, so maybe GoG just does it for all of Europe or maybe even always.
In other words, I don’t think is going via na IP in that specific country that’s doing it.
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.
If you happen to be in the US, better to make those sorts of purchases now before prices go up under tariffs.
This is why camelcamelcamel.com is great
Yeah, always gotta check price history. Especially on Aliexpress.
Was looking at buying a particular retro game emulator handheld. Black friday pricing was the same as non-black-friday pricing, but it was “discounted” from $300, which it has never actually been sold at. Still bit the bullet and bought it because it did end up decently cheaper using one of their “spend $x and get $y off” coupons.
While you do need to be careful about this bullshit, things do actually often hit lows for black Friday sales. Particularly electronics.
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 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 lat 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’ve read this for years but never personally seen it.
Check out black friday tvs, then look them up online. Won’t take long to find one that’s “cheap”
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!
at least you said “the other crazy people”
Wrong decade.
That very much still happens. I have not seen any killer deals online. Have you?
Depends on what you’re looking for. I got a tablet half off.
Awesome! Congratulations!
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.
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.
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!
