Check Your Black Friday Prices by Purchasing Now
It’s great to find a really good deal and see the huge savings you get by standing in line for hours or hitting the Buy button at the right time. Unfortunately, businesses are aware of this and manipulate you.
It makes sense that companies are using this knowledge for evil, and you can see evidence in the data collected by John Asbury on Medium, posting that Black Friday deals are often not what they seem. His team noticed that the multicooker was the highest price in a year right before the infamous sale date. Quite suspicious:
It’s all about overpricing on the eve of Black Friday. When deal week arrives, retailers discount the item to create the illusion of a deal. This is a dubious tactic to increase sales while maintaining profit margins. Of course, there was still a “discount” on Black Friday, but it was heavily overstated.
This is a common trick. Some smaller specific companies are the worst offenders, Asbury said – gaming equipment maker Razer, Stealth pistol safe, AncestryDNA DNA testing kit – but they also spotted it with Google Home Wifi.
The bottom line is that you have to check the price history of whatever you buy that is superselling. Start looking at what you want to get right now and pay attention to the price. The camelcamelcamel.com website that collected most of this data has an Amazon price tracker and even offers a Chrome extension to do this in your browser. You can still make a purchase, but at least you will know how much it really costs.