The Black Friday experience in your country

[QuantumSingularity]

Well guys, Black Friday is just a week away and i was wondering what is the experience like in your countries. I live in Bulgaria and here some major retailers already have "Black Friday" deals with 99.99999% of those being basically a scam. When the last Friday of November comes, most dealers and shops see this as an opportunity to clear out their junk like Kingston NV2 drives or "Made in Garage" brand products. It's extremely rare to see an actually good and widely popular product with more than 5% worth of discount. Of course some have HUGE "45% BLACK FIRDAY DEAL" from an artificially blown up rice. Stuff like €1300 RTX 4070Ti being "cut down to just" €850 or 7900XTX for "just" €1100 "down from €1500". So i was wondering if the true spirit of Black Friday is alive in your country? The one where we all saw the Americans stomping each other and camping outside the stores to get a true 50% off for a PS4/PS5 or a 65" OLED TV. And if you are in America - is this still actually a thing or have your dealers also went the douchebag route and artificially inflate the prices for the entire month of November, before "slashing" them down at the end?

[emosun]

4 minutes ago, QuantumSingularity said:

So i was wondering if the true spirit of Black Friday is alive in your country? The one where we all saw the Americans stomping each other and camping outside the stores to get a true 50% off for a PS4/PS5 or a 65" OLED TV.

the % of people who actually go to stores early for black fridays deals is incredibly small in the US

the majority of people don't shop or do anything differently on black friday. 100 people lining up at an oldschool store front vs the 100,000 people who don't isn't even close to being significant in the publics eye.

the reason why the store tramplings and fighting happens , is because the kind of people stupid enough to line up at a store to buy cheap garbage aren't going to be the smartest examples of society. you're basically watching jerry springer at that point

[TetraSky]

It has always been a disappointment for me. Everything I would want to go on sale, does not.

 

Plus, buying anything BEFORE black Friday is also FUN ... Because they literally raise prices before it so they can claim it's on a big sale. 

Like this vacuum I'm looking at, it was $240 last week. It went up to $270. You can bet it will go down the $239.99 with a "price cut" for black Friday. They ALWAYS do that. Even local stores are guilty of this. It's fake discounts.

[Crunchy Dragon]

I haven't bought anything tech-related on a Black Friday sale in years, and this is the first year in a long time that I've bought anything not tech-related on a Black Friday sale.

 

Typically I buy most of my tech things used or refurbished anyway, so sales(inflated or not) don't affect me at all, unless whatever I'm looking at is equal to or better than something on the used market for the same price.

[IkeaGnome]

I usually go into BF/CM knowing what I'm looking for and look at prices well before so I know if it's actually a deal or not. 

[QuantumSingularity]

I was looking to snipe down a good deal on either a Dell Alienware AW3423DW or ASUS ROG Swift OLED PG27AQDM. But both have €120 higher prices compared to September so at Black Friday they will be probably €150 off, which will actually mean €30 at best from their usual price. I was also checking if by any chance a good deal of X570 mobo would show up - absolutely nothing. Most of them are at least $100 overpriced compared to any Amazon price i can find. Only memory is somewhat reasonably cheap, but even storage is just.... 2TB Crucial P5 Plus - €124+... WTActualF.

[FlyingPotato_is_taken]

First there where Halloween sales; followed by 11.11 and now they switched into blackfriday presales, blackweek, etc.

TL;DR Yet another year with even earlier and longer sales.

 

Where there good offers? Yes.

Do I skipped most of them? Yes.

Do I regret not buying? no

Have I bought stuff? Yes. Only Aliexpress and not tech related. The closest to PC is a NVEM 6-axis CNC-controller.

 

For 3D-printing it already started: Extrudr had -40% on PLA, -50% on PETG and ASA was discounted as well. Dropping the prices to something like 12-13€ for high quality Filament without MOQ.

 

[SnugglyGirl]

I only really buy online digital software on black friday as the deals are rather fake and I noticed they increased the price of the products I was looking at then have now discounted it which is why I only buy either tutorials or year long subs for software.

 

[Dameworth]

I work at a big box tech store in the US and we expect less traffic every year. It's still the biggest sales event of the year in-store of course but now the sales are spread out across the entire month of November. 

 

As of Friday you can almost all the same deals as on Black Friday, there may be a few unconfirmed sales to still come, but they are in full Black Friday mode already.

 

The amount of people asking me if there are going to be better prices on Black Friday is staggering, the general public is still adapting to Black Friday being a longer event than piling into stores all at once.

 

It works out for everyone, customers don't have to rush into the store for a free for all on sales, and the store can make that money.

 

At this point, shopping online and maybe setting your purchases for pickup is the way to go, but it is not worth it to go into the store and shop in real time unless you really want to experience it.. stores are not staffed enough to support good sales experiences for a majority of customers and a lot of the people that go into the store now are looking for a handholding experience.

[Seccedonien]

Over here on NL some retailers are already advertising with some discounted electronics (I have no idea about anything else) but in all the years that they have done the "black Friday deals" I have never seen a single one where I thought it was actually good enough to convince me to buy it.

[Lurking]

I'm pretty sure there are very few actually good deals that are loss leaders to get you into the store or on the website. But most will just be fake deals, or just items that would be on sale anyway to make room for new X-mas stuff. Like obsolete electronics.

 

I bet in January you can get similar items at same or even lower prices. 

 

For some reason this event spread out all over the World. Fortunately it is an all November thing now. 

 

People are gullible. Many don't shop by price, but by % discount. They rather buy a $2K TV at 50% off than the same TV for $500. And that is not even counting the fact they originally didn't need or want that item anyway. So the "saving" is the negative of whatever they paid "on sale".

 

If you research properly and are patient and flexible over the year, you can have much better things at a lower price than when you focus on November 

[thrasher_565]

ya bf is bs now adays. i mean who wates for bf for a usb cable to go on "sale"...

[Penisi]

Here in Iceland the retailer raise the prices so they can mark them at a higher discount. Been caught doing it a bunch of times but they keep doing it. So you can't really trust the stores here. I haven't bought electronics here in years, buy them from amazon or when I travel abroad. 

[ThousandBlade]

Every shopping holiday everywhere is basically a scam.

this is nothing new.

[DeerDK]

Denmark here. It's just another sale. The retailers try to move older stock and overhype small discounts. Not much scam, but some misdirection.

Unless you are in the market for something specific that may go on sale its not that exciting.

It seems to have taken a bit over from out traditional January sale, but I guess its more convinient with a sale before Christmas instead of right after it

[Donut417]

Ive done the going out after Thanksgiving dinner thing a couple of times. Not worth it in my opinion. So happy more stores have deiced to just close Thanksgiving. I also worked two Black Friday's at Sams Club, so I can say it sucks on the retail side.

 

I did some Black Friday shopping this year on Amazon. Today which happens to be Black Friday is grocery shopping night, so we will be heading to Walmart to see the chaos.

[maplepants]

Here in Germany some advertising laws changed a few years ago. Now you can’t call something a sale unless it’s actually sold at the previous higher price for 30 days or something similar. 
 

Since then sales like Black Friday are very minor. 
 

Amazon in particular has taken to pointing out that their prices are cheaper than the “recommended retail price”. 
 

It’s a violation of the spirit if not the letter of the law so who knows how long that scam will last. 

[jsnotlout1]

On 11/17/2023 at 6:31 PM, TetraSky said:

It has always been a disappointment for me. Everything I would want to go on sale, does not.

 

Plus, buying anything BEFORE black Friday is also FUN ... Because they literally raise prices before it so they can claim it's on a big sale. 

Like this vacuum I'm looking at, it was $240 last week. It went up to $270. You can bet it will go down the $239.99 with a "price cut" for black Friday. They ALWAYS do that. Even local stores are guilty of this. It's fake discounts.

Amazon literally didn't even bother to raise the price this year. Just put the real price as "list price" to claim it's a better deal. But In reality it's all the same price it was before

[Milesqqw2]

On 11/17/2023 at 6:25 PM, emosun said:

the reason why the store tramplings and fighting happens , is because the kind of people stupid enough to line up at a store to buy cheap garbage aren't going to be the smartest examples of society. you're basically watching jerry springer at that point

It doesn’t help that 99% of the time it is people at walmart. walmart brings out the worst in people. 

[TetraSky]

2 hours ago, jsnotlout1 said:

Amazon literally didn't even bother to raise the price this year. Just put the real price as "list price" to claim it's a better deal. But In reality it's all the same price it was before

To be fair, a lot of items have been "discounted" for well over a week already. It's less a "black friday" and more a "black week" or even "black month" these days.