It’s November 23rd, Amazon is listing that new TV you’ve had your eye on with a 50% Black Friday discount. Everything looks great, so you take the plunge and bag yourself a nice new 50-inch plasma. It’s the best time to buy, right? Maybe not.
When researching Black Friday deals by looking at price history last year, our team came across an interesting trend. It all started with the Crock Pot. We noticed that the highest price of the year for the popular slow cooker was the day before Black Friday. But why would retailers do this?
The answer is simple. It’s all about inflating the price in the lead up to Black Friday. When deals week arrives, retailers discount the product to create the illusion of a deal. It’s a shady tactic to generate sales, all the while maintaining profit margins. Sure, there was still a ‘discount’ on Black Friday, but it was heavily overstated.
Since this revelation, our team began noticing this trend crop up across hundreds of different products in varied categories, ranging from WIFI routers to gun safes. Here are just a few with suspicious price history over the past year.
Razer Blade Stealth Gaming Laptop
One of the worst culprits are gaming hardware manufacturer Razer. In the run-up to Black Friday last year, we observed the Razer Blade Stealth Ultrabook Black Friday price increased by $250 dollars. Only to be ‘discounted’ back down to its original price on Black Friday a few days later!
Source: Data provided by camelcamelcamel.com
Stealth Handgun Safe
One of the clearest cases of price manipulation we came across was with the Stealth handgun safe sales on Black Friday. The product was retailing at $139.99 before being increased sporadically to $149.99 for a few days in the run-up, only to be dropped back down to the original price in a ‘Black Friday sale’.
Source: Data provided by camelcamelcamel.com
AncestryDNA
The hugely popular DNA testing kit AncestryDNA also shows some pretty questionable price movements. The kit was being sold around $80 from November 1st up until a few days before Black Friday, where it was increased about 25% to $100. It was then dropped to $70 in what would have looked like a 30% Black Friday deal. However, in reality, this was only a 10–12% discount off the original RRP.
Source: Data provided by camelcamelcamel.com
Google Home WIFI System
But it’s just smaller, less trustworthy brands doing this, no reputable company would engage in this sort of practice? Wrong again. The Black Friday sales on Google Home WIFI Systems were another product suffering from price manipulation.
Source: Data provided by camelcamelcamel.com
On November 22nd, 3 days before Black Friday, the 3 pack system was increased to one of the highest prices of the year. Yes, it is better than some others as there was still a hefty discount on Black Friday, but the point is consumers are being led to believe these sales are greater than they are.
Shopping Tips for Black Friday 2018
Despite the manipulation, some products still see the greatest discounts on Black Friday, so often, this is still the best time to buy. What this illustrates is the need to be wary when shopping for goods on Black Friday, Cyber Monday or any other sales day for that matter! Always check price history before making a purchase, otherwise, you risk falling for false discounts. For more info, see blackfridayhits.com.
Wow that's shady. Thanks for sharing.
Yep! Pretty bad, I've also heard retailers try to get around people checking price history by slightly changing product names for 'special black friday releases'. That way they don't show up on the tracking sites
You said hundreds of products were found to be doing this, what others were there? Also, assuming this was on Amazon, are any other retailers known to do this?
There were other products yeah, but can't remember from the top of my head - just go onto CCC and check products you are interested in. I think it's more rife on Amazon than other places because it's so easy for retailers to get away with changing prices as much as they like, completely unchecked. However, I'm sure others are still doing it...
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