How true is the Black Friday conspiracy?

[Virtual01]

How much truth do you think the Black Friday conspiracy holds? I'm referring to the idea that companies will do very small production runs of gimped versions of their normal products to sell during black friday at a cheaper price. Normally these are visually identical to other models but with less features or with lower quality parts. This is obviously done to deceive the consumer into thinking they are getting a good deal when in fact, they are not.

 

How widespread is this practice? If you went into a store on black friday without any prior research, how afraid would you be of buying a gimped product?

[Guest Kloaked]

I've honestly never heard of this.

[GammaProX]

they still make hella profit at selling stuff that cheap they buy stuff for like $15 and sell it for $80 normalyy. so that seems like alost of work when they make bank already even at the cut price  

[Decon]

back when used to buy lego frequently, sets sold at holidays always seemed to have decidedly worse quality ABS...

[Gix7Fifty]

Let me put on my tinfoil hat to mow this one over! :lol:

[iamdarkyoshi]

How widespread is this practice? If you went into a store on black friday without any prior research, how afraid would you be of buying a gimped product?

I would sue them for false advertising

[Arty]

Some Companies used to do this it would have a differnet sku, most people are unintellegint and fell for it. 

[Arty]

I would sue them for false advertising

you can't cause the model # is differnet, its a differnet product, just seems like another.

[MageTank]

I've only ever seen this happen with stupidly cheap 32 inch HDTV's. Outside of that very specific product, it's really uncommon.

[iamdarkyoshi]

Something LTT should try. Buy like 3 of several GPUs at normal price, and then buy 3 of those same GPUs on cyber monday or black friday and see if the regularly priced ones OC better

[Guest Kloaked]

you can't cause the model # is differnet, its a differnet product, just seems like another.

 

It's still deceit. It's just as false as those former scams on Ebay that were selling pictures of phones for the retail price of the actual phone, and people actually bought them not knowing any better.

[XTankSlayerX]

I've never heard of this... What...

 

only things i've bought on black friday: A Xbox 360 which didn't have any issues for 3 years, and a Samsung 51Inch TV which is still going strong.

[_ASSASSIN_]

Something LTT should try. Buy like 3 of several GPUs at normal price, and then buy 3 of those same GPUs on cyber monday or black friday and see if the regularly priced ones OC better

because there aren't any other factors that would lend to this variation...

[comicsansms]

This topic is bullshit.

It would cost them more to make "Cheaper" lower quality versions of the product.

[iamdarkyoshi]

because there aren't any other factors that would lend to this variation...

Buy them at different times, different vendors, different brand, and different architectures. 

[AshleyAshes]

Some companies sell their cheapest SKUs on Black Friday sure.  Some dirt awful Blu-ray player on sale for pennies, but that model was always that bad, it's just discounted.

 

The logistics of producing extra cheap versions of existing SKUs just to sell for ONE day, maybe one weekend, would be expensive in themselves.  Stuff has be ordered months and MONTHS in advance andit takes almost month ship from Asia to the west,  You'd then have to store the goods at logistics centers but also sit on them, still paying for their storage, to wait until Black Friday, then figure out what to do with the unsold 'special stock'.  It'd cost more money than it would could possibly make. 

 

[byalexandr]

What I'm more amazed by is the fact that people sit down and eat a large meal to give thanks to what they have and appreciate it, and then the next day run over a 6 year old to get a TV for $10 cheaper.

[Guest]

back when used to buy lego frequently, sets sold at holidays always seemed to have decidedly worse quality ABS...

I used to notice that too. I also think that their Disney sets are all of low quality. I got a Star Wars set to put on display and I found 4 design flaws with it right off the bat. Set was really overpriced, too.

[Sam Z Man]

When you have worked in retail for a company that gives you information on every items profit margin you become aware that the shit that's on sale for 65% off is still making them 15% profit.

[EliasNM]

It could be possible for products that are in low stock and to get people to buy I can see this happening, on other items that are commonly well stocked I don't see why a company would do so. I never considered this as a thing on huge sales as these, but then it seems its happened. I normally just buy suits on Black Friday of all things, tech is off the books for me till Cyber Monday.

[The Official Czex]

What I'm more amazed by is the fact that people sit down and eat a large meal to give thanks to what they have and appreciate it, and then the next day run over a 6 year old to get a TV for $10 cheaper.

 

Damn... That's dark. I like you.

[Virtual01]

When you have worked in retail for a company that gives you information on every items profit margin you become aware that the shit that's on sale for 65% off is still making them 15% profit.

 

Yeah my employee discount at work allows us to buy items for 5% above cost. Seeing how much of a discount we get on some items makes me want to vomit. Some expensive stuff is well over 50% off, and cables especially are 90+% off.

[byalexandr]

Damn... That's dark. I like you.

Just statin' the facts.

[_ASSASSIN_]

Buy them at different times, different vendors, different brand, and different architectures. 

my point is the biggest variation you have is the die itself. Not all chips are made equal, so to speak.

[Sam Z Man]

Yeah my employee discount at work allows us to buy items for 5% above cost. Seeing how much of a discount we get on some items makes me want to vomit. Some expensive stuff is well over 50% off, and cables especially are 90+% off.

My employ discount is absolute cost on anything in store or a special order, except 2 brands that I don't even like anyway, but yea when you buy 140$ worth of stuff for 51$ you realise how much everyone's getting screwed.