It’s nearly Black Friday, the time of year when corporations show they’re thankful for you with discounts on thousands of products. But get this: Corporations are not as grateful as they appear (WTF?), and there are a lot of phony deals out there. Here are Gizmodo’s best tips for avoiding bad deals at any time of year.
Is that ‘deal’ really a deal?
The first step is to check if the discount you’re seeing on a product is truly a deal. To do that, you need to check the price history. Amazon has a habit of inflating prices of products leading up to Thanksgiving, and then showing a reduced price that is not as below-normal as you might think.
Beware Amazon’s favorite holiday tradition: price gouging. Let’s look at this mechanical gaming keyboard from Logitech, listed at a 29% discount for $57. This is the biggest discount in this article, so it has to be somewhat of a good deal, right?
We like using Camel Camel Camel to check the price history of products on Amazon. Simply take the URL of the Amazon product you’re looking for and pop it into the price checker. Camel Camel Camel will show you the history of prices on this product.
Screenshot: Camel Camel Camel
From the keyboard’s price tracker history, you can see this is barely a deal at all! The keyboard always sells for around $65, but Amazon raised the price to roughly $80 right before the holidays. A few months ago, it was on sale for half that price, at around $40. Poor deals like this are incredibly common around the holidays, and it’s important to know when you’re being misled.
Some discounts aren’t unique and can be skipped
Let’s try another example with a pair of noise-canceling Sony Headphones, the WH-1000XM5. It’s currently 18% for $328, which sounds like a pretty good deal, right?
Sony WH-1000XM5 Price HistoryScreenshot: Camel Camel Camel
In this case, our chart shows that Sony put this item on sale last year for $280, nearly $50 less. The chart also shows that this product goes on sale for roughly this price every few months.
This is a bad deal, in my opinion. You can skip it this week, and you’ll be able to get it for this price again in a few months. Better to put your funds toward products where you’re truly getting a unique discount.
Know when you’re getting a great deal
As many bad deals as there are out there, it’s also important to know when it’s a deal you won’t likely find again. The waterproof JBL Charge 4 speaker is on sale for Black Friday, showing a 24% discount for $80. Let’s run this through Camel Camel Camel as well.
JBL Charge 4 Waterproof Speaker Price HistoryScreenshot: Camel Camel Camel
Here, you can see this is the lowest price ever for the speaker, which was selling for $150 just last week. This is an example of a great deal; however, the listed percent-discount doesn’t fully reflect that.
The lesson here is to not trust the sticker discount from Amazon and do a little research before you buy. There are plenty of real deals out there this weekend, and with a little digging, you can find the truly worthwhile ones.