Black Friday

edit: grammar

123 comments

in slovenia we just passed a law that requires shops to state the price change of an item in the last 30 days :)
- One of the benefits of being part of the EU :)
- I think its a thing here in norway as well. Thats why they just increase the price in early october, just a month ahead of black week bullcrap. Have seen plenty of electronics "super discounted" to the same price they had in september/october
- I think its a thing here in norway as well. Thats why they just increase the price in early october, just a month ahead of black week bullcrap. Have seen plenty of electronics "super discounted" to the same price they had in september/october
  
  It might actually work if the requirement was a year instead of 30 days.
  Also mandate minimum font size for it and that it must be displayed along with the current price anywhere the current price appears.
  
  Big items I usually start watching a few months out. If I see a store or brand that pulls tthis garbage, I simply go elsewhere. If I can't find it on offer, I buy it regular price at the smaller retail store.
- Oh wow that's cool! I'm from Slovenia too and I didn't know that.
  
  How did you figure out your citizenship then?
  
  I know nothing about your country, is it common to speak English and what's the native language?
- All of EU is adopting this practice to comply with the EU Price Indication Directive.
  
  I love to see the eu fucking over companies
- In America we keep the same price but decrease the amount of product. #profit
- Also in Poland
- Brazil's consumers rights department listed itens prices so stores can't fake advertise them. Countries with regulations: ok, we can do Black Friday, but...
  
  I like how for all the problems Brazil has, the consumer protection laws are consistently some of the best around.

As a past retail worker. Black Friday was miserable. I worked at Bestbuy. I saw a lot of people breakdown and quit thay day due to the stress. Don't encourage it. If you do go out. Be respectful and remember it's just things that don't really matter. I have never gone out and don't support it especially the trickling of businesses forcing employees to work on Thanksgiving.
- Currently at work at the worst company you could ever work for, Big Lots. We've even got extended hours today, but hardly anyone here shopping. ANY corporation that has shareholders has no choice but to become increasingly evil and vile to their employees.
  
  God damn, that sucks... Best of luck pal.
- I was on year 4 or 5 retail, working in a small strip mall that included a best buy. The people swamped the door so hard it came off when the poor kid unlocked them, literally doorbusters and he got trampled and died.
  Every year there’s a few deaths to the craze and I made a habit of checking the count every year.
- Work at Best buy currently in inventory, last year all week of black Friday we have over 300 online orders at once until we were getting closer to the end of the night. This week so far the most I've seen is 50. We're staffed the same, less so in fact with all the call-outs, but still we have a full team in tomorrow from 1am until midnight.
  
  1am geezus back when I worked at Bestbuy. 2008ish I came in at 3:30am to sell shitty netbooks to customers waiting in the lines outside.

Years ago, in October I wanted to buy a new TV, my wife said we should wait for black Friday but I just bought it anyway. I keep checking the price day after day and the price of it keep rising slowly every day, until black Friday when it had a 40% sale off and was still more expensive of what I paid two months before.
- Directed by M. Night Shyamalan

These transcriptions are getting incredible. I never would have thought it was possible to accurately convey a comic through text, while keeping the meaning and humour intact.
- Is that AI generated? If so that's fucking amazing!
  
  OP wrote it thrmselves :)

Wrong, Black Friday not $899, but ~~$1099~~ $999

Speaking of sweet Black Friday deals, I came across this gem recently and chuckled a bit, the nerve.
- The price decreased by $1.00
  K
  
  Yeah they're clearly mistaken

three words: camel, camel, camel
- For anyone who is unaware of what this refers to, it is this website:
  https://camelcamelcamel.com/
  The website describes it's services like so:
  Our free Amazon price tracker monitors millions of products and alerts you when prices drop, helping you decide when to buy.
  
  Right now the product is showing camel. You can wait for it to be camel and then buy, but if you’re patient you’ll catch it when it’s in the camel and save a lot.
  
  Sure is nice seeing all of those 40% off tags and seeing on CCC it's actually more expensive than it was a week ago.
- What's up with this product price of $99 for a "re-usable straw" that listed near the beginning for me
  
  It's list price is $99,999 with an average of $68,267.48?! I obviously wouldn't be purchasing from that vendor for many reasons; but how easy is it to manipulate prices for a website like this? Or maybe it's a vendor that's trying to make the website seem useless? Or just a one-off?
  Idk, it caught my eye right off the bat though lol
- For scamazon I vastly prefer keepa
- Love those camels.

That's why I have extensions that track prices so I have an accurate price history.
- That's why I live in the EU, and they have to include the lowest price in the last 30 days with the "discount" price.
  
  That's a strange reason to live in the EU.
  
  I'm in the EU and have never heard of this
  
  So if you raise the price 31 days prior, and then put the discount on, you should still be good to squeeze more profit!
- The extensions are nice.
  The annoying part is the 10 things on my save list haven't budged in price for over 1.5 years. 😭😭😭
  
  Oh... Im so sorry to hear that. Second thing I do is check the second hand stores near me. I have one that validates their products and offers a 1 year warranty on the second hand stuff I buy from them, and it's kind of awesome. They even rate the quality.
- But which extensions in particular..
  
  Keepa which gives a chart on every Amazon page or camelcamelcamel
  
  I'm from Romania so I don't know how relevant they are for you but I use Pricy and Istoric Preturi. And the website Compari.ro

The only way to know if a Black Friday price is good is to know the usual "regular" price of the item. That takes planning to jot the price down a month or more in advance and then wait to see what the Black Friday price is. It's all a game.
- Also using plugins like camelcamelcamel can help with this. Shows you a graph of history for prices
  
  I use Keepa, same type of thing, and I'll just set it to notify me when it reaches the desired low price again. I rarely buy anything unless it's on sale prices now.

That exact model was $599 in October. I would know, because I bought one.
It's actually a really great smoker, but the app is terrible.
- Shockingly, the app used to be worse. Of course, now today their ad backend is down so the app won’t work at all.
- the smoker has an app? Who gives a shit about a smoker for an app...
  
  It's nice because you can keep track of the internal temperature remotely.

You've discovered the secret sauce of marketing.

Why are people giving descriptions of their images
- So text-to-speech can be used, meme made accessible to people with disability.
- Helps accessibility and search indexing
- It's so blind people who use screen readers can still enjoy the meme.
  
  That’s awesome

Low price Sale does not exist. It's a myth!
- This year especially it feels, prices actually went up for Black Friday. They don't even care anymore.
  
  there's a couple decent deals on basic laptops.. that aren't shit-tier specs, either. that's about all i've seen--but then, i haven't been "looking" either. rent keeps going up, can't afford anything so i don't even bother to look at ads and sales on things that aren't absolutely essential to simply exist.
  i do plan on going to wm on friday.. but later in the afternoon--for a few groceries.
  
  They care...for the money
- It definitely does, I've already made out pretty good on a couple things but you have to know the actual price well in advance and shop outside of Amazon
  
  Or you use a price comparison website that shows you the pricing history.

Haven’t seen this in the comments, shouldn’t this shit be illegal? Forgive me if i am being dumb
- For companies "illegal" just means "make more money than the fine you'll pay once you're caught".
- They'll sometimes bring in the exact same form with a different SKU/UPC so it's technically a new product.
  Also look out for weasel words like "Compare To", "X value", or "Special Buy" where they aren't actually saying it's on sale.
  
  New items can't be "on sale." It is that simple. The price is the price.
- If robbing a bank got you 10 million dollars, and the legal penalty for robbing a bank was a few thousand dollars, why would you choose to refrain from robbing the bank?
- I'm almost certain it is
  
  Maybe in the EU, but it's standard practice in the US.

Black Friday not $899, but ~~$1099~~ $999
- Sometimes it will be ~~$1099~~ $899 but they may use subpar quality for Black Friday models compared to standard models.
  Like TVs for example, certain models that are discounted on Black Friday have lower quality displays, fewer HDMI ports, cheaper speakers, etc. when compared to the "standard" model from the same line, and the ads will downplay or obscure the exact model number so you think you're getting something better than you are when you look it up.

That's why you don't buy in a rush but rather track the price of something you're interested in buying over a couple of months.

Tbf, it depends. I just bought a pair of converse for 25 bucks. Granted they’re an unpopular color, but hey 25 bucks for a pair of chuck 70s is a good price.

It's really not as bad as you say these days. The majority of stuff are good deals.
- That isn't actually true :' )
  
  Nah, it is. It's the same as folks who scream about how easy it is to be scammed on Amazon. It's rare and if you are getting tricked into buying fakes every order the problem is you.
  Shopping for deals really isn't as hard as you all make it seem.

123 comments