How will the black friday deals be done?

[Neroon]

The way it says on the website, gives me the impression that there will be different deals each day, instead of a discount over the whole period. Is that the case, if so, how would I order from multiple days without having multiple orders?

[Adam Pilolla]

Unfortunately you can't; you will have to place multiple orders if you want to take advantage of all the deals.

[Dedayog]

13 minutes ago, Adam Pilolla said:

Unfortunately you can't; you will have to place multiple orders if you want to take advantage of all the deals.

Can you at least have them shipped together?

[Adam Pilolla]

16 minutes ago, Dedayog said:

Can you at least have them shipped together?

Within the US and Canada, we will ship orders together if they are addressed to the same place and placed within the BFCM window. This WILL NOT result in any savings on your shipping fees, however.

 

Outside of the US and Canada, we will not make that arrangement as this could cause issues with customs valuations, which could result in the customer receiving unplanned-for duty fees.

[Dedayog]

7 minutes ago, Adam Pilolla said:

Within the US and Canada, we will ship orders together if they are addressed to the same place and placed within the BFCM window. This WILL NOT result in any savings on your shipping fees, however.

 

Outside of the US and Canada, we will not make that arrangement as this could cause issues with customs valuations, which could result in the customer receiving unplanned-for duty fees.

I can see where it would be difficult to do, calcing shipping with various orders.

 

Spreading deals over days is going to fuck buyers though.  Fun game, but not as fun for us.

 

Unless you allow some sort of cart/reservation system, but that will be an issue without actually paying to reserve.

 

 

[Bobby529]

1 hour ago, Dedayog said:

I can see where it would be difficult to do, calcing shipping with various orders.

 

Spreading deals over days is going to fuck buyers though.  Fun game, but not as fun for us.

 

Unless you allow some sort of cart/reservation system, but that will be an issue without actually paying to reserve.

 

 

They did it on lime day and it was not too bad actually but they did rack up but the overall shipping fees for me still meant i made a saving

[Neroon]

2 hours ago, Adam Pilolla said:

Within the US and Canada, we will ship orders together if they are addressed to the same place and placed within the BFCM window. This WILL NOT result in any savings on your shipping fees, however.

 

Outside of the US and Canada, we will not make that arrangement as this could cause issues with customs valuations, which could result in the customer receiving unplanned-for duty fees.

I'm not interested then. Honestly you guys need to rethink this strategy. Shipping is a ton of money, and I don't feel like doing multiple orders, or be in doubt everyday as to whether the next day might have something better to offer.

 

Either put everything on sale at once, or don't offer anything. This is very anti-consumer and I expect better from you all.

[Adam Pilolla]

3 hours ago, Neroon said:

I'm not interested then. Honestly you guys need to rethink this strategy. Shipping is a ton of money, and I don't feel like doing multiple orders, or be in doubt everyday as to whether the next day might have something better to offer.

 

Either put everything on sale at once, or don't offer anything. This is very anti-consumer and I expect better from you all.

No problem. This event might not be for you (although I think you'll find that, as another poster said here, you would still be saving money due to deeply we're planning to discount certain items), but perhaps others will be more up your alley.

 

In this particular case, what I've outlined above is one of the only ways we stand to make any profit from this event, but that won't always necessarily be true in the future. Linus has gone into detail about that on WAN show more than once recently, if you're interested in learning more. Thanks for the feedback either way!

[Birblover12]

4 hours ago, Neroon said:

I'm not interested then. Honestly you guys need to rethink this strategy. Shipping is a ton of money, and I don't feel like doing multiple orders, or be in doubt everyday as to whether the next day might have something better to offer.

Just thought I'd chime in and say I 100% agree with the shipping part, I can understand LMG's point of view that shipping is a huge hurdle and is very expensive and they need to profit somehow (generally I don't agree with profiting off of a shipping cost, it's a bit mis-representative of costs but that's besides the point) but I don't really see why they couldn't just put all the items ordered over the timespan of a few days into a single box and save everyone the time and money (would it not be cheaper for LMG to ship one big box vs several different boxes? And more environmentally friendly too?). It's just annoying since shipping is often like a third of the cost (sometimes more) of the items themselves, and it sucks to have to pay so much over the course of several different orders when it could be prevented altogether. 

 

Also, (someone can correct me if I'm wrong) It seems like it takes several days anyways for things to get packaged and shipped out even without bundling orders, so unless there's a tech/coding barrier (which I can understand), it just seems a bit... backwards? Like @Adam Pilolla said, they're already bundling certain orders together, so why not pass on the savings (if there is any)? Genuinely curious is all.

 

Anyhow, as long as the deals are good enough hopefully the shipping will be a worthy tradeoff. Looking forward to what they have in store!

[Neroon]

6 hours ago, Adam Pilolla said:

No problem. This event might not be for you (although I think you'll find that, as another poster said here, you would still be saving money due to deeply we're planning to discount certain items), but perhaps others will be more up your alley.

 

In this particular case, what I've outlined above is one of the only ways we stand to make any profit from this event, but that won't always necessarily be true in the future. Linus has gone into detail about that on WAN show more than once recently, if you're interested in learning more. Thanks for the feedback either way!

So are you making money on shipping? I'm overseas, does this mean I pay for shipping say 5 times, everything gets put in 1 box and you guys pay once for shipping? Or would there be 5 packages? If so why would I be paying for multiple packages that I don't want.

Instead of going extra crazy on discounts, you make them a little less and we can just order as normal. I don't see the logic here.

[LinusTech]

18 hours ago, Neroon said:

So are you making money on shipping? I'm overseas, does this mean I pay for shipping say 5 times, everything gets put in 1 box and you guys pay once for shipping? Or would there be 5 packages? If so why would I be paying for multiple packages that I don't want.

Instead of going extra crazy on discounts, you make them a little less and we can just order as normal. I don't see the logic here.

If you're overseas, I think the export documentation makes combining tricky on our side, so they'll probably all arrive separately. I believe that's how it went down on Black Friday.

We're always looking to the community for feedback. It's possible we'll try a different strategy next Lime Day or Black Friday, but this time around it's going to be time-delimited deals spaced out like last year. The *main* advantage is it allows us to discount more deeply on the promo products in hopes that people will put some profitable items in their cart. If we throw up all the deals at once, we have no chance.

[manikyath]

On 11/16/2023 at 10:45 PM, Neroon said:

This is very anti-consumer and I expect better from you all.

if you think *this* is anti consumer.. you'll have a hard time finding honest stores...

 

they're very up front about what the deal is, they're not forcing you to participate, and (not that i have checked, but i think it's safe to assume) they dont do the amazon thing of raising prices before black friday.

 

the very idea of black friday is to pull in massive traffic, hoping they pick up some non-discounted items along the way so the discounts dont hurt too much.

[Neroon]

19 hours ago, LinusTech said:

If you're overseas, I think the export documentation makes combining tricky on our side, so they'll probably all arrive separately. I believe that's how it went down on Black Friday.

We're always looking to the community for feedback. It's possible we'll try a different strategy next Lime Day or Black Friday, but this time around it's going to be time-delimited deals spaced out like last year. The *main* advantage is it allows us to discount more deeply on the promo products in hopes that people will put some profitable items in their cart. If we throw up all the deals at once, we have no chance.

I absolutely get that combining orders would be difficult, mind you, I have changed my orders in the past so I know it's possible, but I get that a single request vs hundreds is very different.

 

That said, this makes these deals extremely unattractive to me, because unless there would be a major discount on an expensive item I want (which there isn't), the shipping itself would eliminate any advantage from the discount.

 

So at that point it would be down to getting a regular order done with some discounted item I want, but the next day there could be a better offer, and I would just feel bad for having taken a worse offer.

 

I've done 2 orders from you guys, and have been very satisfied with all products (swacket, screwdriver, bottles, deskpad and tshirts), and I'm sure there will be a third one, but this doesn't feel right to me. Maybe it's good business, I don't know. But let me ask you this. How would you prefer to do you orders? Would you rather have a lower discount on more stuff and you can use multiple days to make up your mind and pay shipping once, or what you are offering us now? This is not a judgmental question, I just don't get why someone would prefer the second.

Hell, I hate discounts in general unless a product is being removed from the line up. I much rather have a fixed lower price and I never have to worry if I should have waited for a better deal.

 

12 hours ago, manikyath said:

if you think *this* is anti consumer.. you'll have a hard time finding honest stores...

 

they're very up front about what the deal is, they're not forcing you to participate, and (not that i have checked, but i think it's safe to assume) they dont do the amazon thing of raising prices before black friday.

 

the very idea of black friday is to pull in massive traffic, hoping they pick up some non-discounted items along the way so the discounts dont hurt too much.

Being up front is not the same as anti consumer. There are loads of schemy things stores do for black friday. This is why I love the site we have in my country, that tracks both lowest prices and the average since the product has been sold, so you can actually see if it's a good deal or not.

 

And for me that's super important, I want to know all the facts, I want to know how much it was, and how much it will be. I have absolutely no doubt that they did not raise prices just to give a bigger discount, hell Linus has spoken about not raising prices, that it's not needed. I love how open he is about this.

This to me feels like the opposite. Everyday I wouldn't know if that's the right day to do my order, if something better is coming.

I'm sure you are familiar with the idea of holding out for better, and you keep holding out for better, and at the end you realise you missed out on the best.

I don't like that, I think it's anti consumer.

If he wants to straight up share all the deals at once, then fine. If he wants to limit the discount on 1 product per order, fine. Just don't make me hold out for the next one hoping it will be better.

[manikyath]

9 minutes ago, Neroon said:

 

This to me feels like the opposite. Everyday I wouldn't know if that's the right day to do my order, if something better is coming.

I'm sure you are familiar with the idea of holding out for better, and you keep holding out for better, and at the end you realise you missed out on the best.

I don't like that, I think it's anti consumer.

that's how all sales work.. you may think it's anti consumer, but the alternative is no sales at all. never do any sales, just to make sure no one would feel like they missed out on the perfect moment to press the buy button.

 

12 minutes ago, Neroon said:

If he wants to straight up share all the deals at once, then fine. If he wants to limit the discount on 1 product per order, fine. Just don't make me hold out for the next one hoping it will be better.

you see.. this is exactly the point of what they're doing... the items that are on sale are discounted to the point they're cutting losses. the only way to make this make sense is if at least a potion of people also buys something else. the best alternative that fits your wishes is give a flat discount across the board that would be rather underwhelming for a "black friday sale". at which point you'd probably be here complaining that the sale sucked anyways.

 

and again.. you're not forced to be part of this sale, it's very clear up front what it will be, they're not massaging prices to make deals look better than they are. i fail to see how just doing a series of "flash discounts" is anti consumer... you're just angry you cant have all your desired items at a price that makes NO financial sense.

 

to be fair, i'd rather argue that the concept of black friday as a whole is "flawed" and/or "tainted". it's a day of manufactured hype on a date set by some accounting theory, which for a lot of outlets has become a day of hiking prices to discount them again, or even weird alternative SKU products that are more cost down than the real thing that you expect to be on that shelf. within this context, the "deal wheel of fortune" LTTstore did might be the most consumer friendly way of doing it.

[Neroon]

1 hour ago, manikyath said:

that's how all sales work.. you may think it's anti consumer, but the alternative is no sales at all. never do any sales, just to make sure no one would feel like they missed out on the perfect moment to press the buy button.

 

you see.. this is exactly the point of what they're doing... the items that are on sale are discounted to the point they're cutting losses. the only way to make this make sense is if at least a potion of people also buys something else. the best alternative that fits your wishes is give a flat discount across the board that would be rather underwhelming for a "black friday sale". at which point you'd probably be here complaining that the sale sucked anyways.

 

and again.. you're not forced to be part of this sale, it's very clear up front what it will be, they're not massaging prices to make deals look better than they are. i fail to see how just doing a series of "flash discounts" is anti consumer... you're just angry you cant have all your desired items at a price that makes NO financial sense.

 

to be fair, i'd rather argue that the concept of black friday as a whole is "flawed" and/or "tainted". it's a day of manufactured hype on a date set by some accounting theory, which for a lot of outlets has become a day of hiking prices to discount them again, or even weird alternative SKU products that are more cost down than the real thing that you expect to be on that shelf. within this context, the "deal wheel of fortune" LTTstore did might be the most consumer friendly way of doing it.

Let's not assume what I would or wouldn't think or do.

 

I never bought anything on sale here, and I wasn't expecting anything from black friday. I know their margins aren't big.

A flat discount would work, but I don't even expect that, I don't expect them to discount products with a low margin as it is. I just don't expect them to use this method. Like I said, they could either announce all the discounts beforehand, so that you can make a well informed decision, or allow only 1 product to be discounted etc.

 

I'm not angry, nor did I ask for any prices to be whatever way. You are just making shit up.

 

Yeah, like I said, I dislike discounts in general, because pretty much all discounts are just fake. It's just overpriced most of the time, and dropped for short periods of time to create hype etc.

 

Seriously think about Ikea for a moment, they never have discounts. You never go through that place wondering if you should hold off for a better deal. That's what you want. The feeling that you get when you bought something and a week later it's discounted and you can't return it, that's shit. And that's what LMG is doing. You see a cool discount, you place your entire order, and well the next day you are gonna regret.

[IkeaGnome]

56 minutes ago, Neroon said:

Seriously think about Ikea for a moment, they never have discounts

I'm very cheap. $20 is $20, but I won't go lower.

[crazzp]

5 hours ago, Neroon said:

Like I said, they could either announce all the discounts beforehand, so that you can make a well informed decision

Like Linus and Adam mentioned, they wouldn't make anything from these kinds of deals. Imagine a buyer just buys all the discounted items only. They would be making a loss on every deals like this. Again like that they said, they could give a deeper discount on each item if they dont do it your way. 

 

5 hours ago, Neroon said:

Seriously think about Ikea for a moment, they never have discounts.

The Ikeas in Singapore have a discounted section - items to clear. They also have a section selling products as is, again discounted. 

[Neroon]

2 hours ago, crazzp said:

Like Linus and Adam mentioned, they wouldn't make anything from these kinds of deals. Imagine a buyer just buys all the discounted items only. They would be making a loss on every deals like this. Again like that they said, they could give a deeper discount on each item if they dont do it your way. 

 

The Ikeas in Singapore have a discounted section - items to clear. They also have a section selling products as is, again discounted. 

Making them known beforehand wouldn't change that, would just make it so that we know which day the right deal comes along.

 

Discounted sections is different. Those are generally items that are damaged or are no longer produced. That's perfectly fine. Selling off your remaining stock like that is perfectly fine, and LMG has done that before.

[LinusTech]

I think people might be over-thinking this a little. 

 

We will have some deals. You like? You buy. 

 

Then we will have some other deals. You like? You buy. 

 

If the deals you no like? You no buy. 

[FlyingPotato_is_taken]

24 minutes ago, LinusTech said:

We will have some deals. You like? You buy. 

 

Then we will have some other deals. You like? You buy. 

International shipping is expensive. Let's say $20-30 to Europe.

 

Day 1: Discount on screwdriver. I buy it and grab some shirts while I am at it.

Day 3: Discount on water bottles. Do I want to pay again $20 shipping? I skip it.

 

I think that LMG would also benefit from an well thought out improvement/solution next year; blackweek 2024.

 

Edit:

On 11/18/2023 at 1:48 AM, LinusTech said:

The *main* advantage is it allows us to discount more deeply on the promo products in hopes that people will put some profitable items in their cart.

What if you have a limit at which combining is unlocked? People could still combine shipments and LMG sells more. To pick up the example with the day 3 water bottle: 

Let's say $20 offer and the minimum to unlock combined shipping is $50.  I didn't planned on buying more shirts but I might just buy more than I initially anticipated to combine the shipment and save on shipping cost.

[Neroon]

24 minutes ago, LinusTech said:

I think people might be over-thinking this a little. 

 

We will have some deals. You like? You buy. 

 

Then we will have some other deals. You like? You buy. 

 

If the deals you no like? You no buy. 

This is exactly the issue. Shipping is 18 dollars to my country (The Netherlands) for the screwdriver, 16 for a t-shirt and 50 for the backpack, so I don't know what kind of deals you will be offering, but I doubt it will compensate for paying for shipping multiple times. And that's not even counting taxes, because taxes are applied to shipping costs. So for example a shirt right now would be 43.54 for me to order. 20 for the shirt, 16 in shipping, and 7,56 in taxes. 

 

Now if I add that shirt to an already existing order, I would pay 20 for the shirt, and 4,10 in taxes. 24,10

So we have a base cost of 16 + 3,36, which comes to 19,64. So if you want to sell me a shirt for roughly 25 cents, it would actually be worth doing a second order... ignoring the time it would cost me to do a second order.

 

By all means, if you slash all t-shirt prices in half, I could pick up a bunch and at enough shirts it would be worth it, but the math is very rough, and easily not worth it at all. This is why I like to do a larger order.

[Jenbu]

On 11/17/2023 at 6:48 PM, LinusTech said:

If you're overseas, I think the export documentation makes combining tricky on our side, so they'll probably all arrive separately. I believe that's how it went down on Black Friday.

We're always looking to the community for feedback. It's possible we'll try a different strategy next Lime Day or Black Friday, but this time around it's going to be time-delimited deals spaced out like last year. The *main* advantage is it allows us to discount more deeply on the promo products in hopes that people will put some profitable items in their cart. If we throw up all the deals at once, we have no chance.

If we don't know what will be discounted next, it will dissuade people from adding things to their cart that are not discounted. People will only buy what is discounted that day and wait to see if the other thing they want will be discounted later. Complete opposite.  On top of that, now people will have to consider shipping on each order - which will negatively affect what they want to buy.

 

I think if you did something like Amazon, you discount a wide range of goods - then do deep discounts on certain items on certain days - will actually lead to users buying more of the profitable items when they purchase the deep discount items. Less FOMO because they will still get some sort of discount.

[LinusTech]

We will take everyone's feedback, and see how things go this black Friday and we will se eif we need to change it up for next Lime Day/BFCM

[Bobby529]

13 hours ago, Neroon said:

This is exactly the issue. Shipping is 18 dollars to my country (The Netherlands) for the screwdriver, 16 for a t-shirt and 50 for the backpack, so I don't know what kind of deals you will be offering, but I doubt it will compensate for paying for shipping multiple times. And that's not even counting taxes, because taxes are applied to shipping costs. So for example a shirt right now would be 43.54 for me to order. 20 for the shirt, 16 in shipping, and 7,56 in taxes. 

 

Now if I add that shirt to an already existing order, I would pay 20 for the shirt, and 4,10 in taxes. 24,10

So we have a base cost of 16 + 3,36, which comes to 19,64. So if you want to sell me a shirt for roughly 25 cents, it would actually be worth doing a second order... ignoring the time it would cost me to do a second order.

 

By all means, if you slash all t-shirt prices in half, I could pick up a bunch and at enough shirts it would be worth it, but the math is very rough, and easily not worth it at all. This is why I like to do a larger order.

Well for me it costed $20 to ship my short circuit hoodie but i still made a saving a normally with would have costed me aroun 110$ however with shipping on lime day it only coasted me 55$ because the deal on the hoodie was so good. So like linus said you have to pick and choose.To find the best deal.That is my experience yours may differ. I do agreee it would be nice if it is free shipping or combined, but maybe the have like a codding fault. Also for the UK at leas it could end up being more if they combined due to 20% import tax as if the products are from over a certain price and I believe it is the same for netherlands. We are all over thinking it.

[Neroon]

10 hours ago, Bobby529 said:

Well for me it costed $20 to ship my short circuit hoodie but i still made a saving a normally with would have costed me aroun 110$ however with shipping on lime day it only coasted me 55$ because the deal on the hoodie was so good. So like linus said you have to pick and choose.To find the best deal.That is my experience yours may differ. I do agreee it would be nice if it is free shipping or combined, but maybe the have like a codding fault. Also for the UK at leas it could end up being more if they combined due to 20% import tax as if the products are from over a certain price and I believe it is the same for netherlands. We are all over thinking it.

You went from 110 to 55? How. That would be a 55 discount. The hoodie itself is 50. Sure there is taxes and all that, but how much did they ask for the hoodie to get it down 55.