We are again at that time of the year: everyone calls it Black Friday, but now it would be more correct to talk about Black Week. The discounts that precede the so-called Black Friday (the pre-Christmas shopping day that follows Thanksgiving in the United States) last at least a week, if not more, and are literally everywhere.
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Really unmissable offers?
But are we really sure that the offers of these days are really unmissable as we are led to think by marketing and advertising? You already know the answer, and it is no: if it is true that during the Black Week you can run into some rare occasions, it is not certain that the price proposed for the product we are interested in is the lowest of the year. The first piece of advice concerns the sphere of consumer psychology: don’t buy anything you don’t really need just because the price is low. If you intend to buy a new computer, a mattress, a television or a hairdryer, buy it only if the price proposed is the right one for your budget and in relation to your needs.
If, on the other hand, you end up not buying it, do not regret: it is very likely that in some time, in a lean period, perhaps after Christmas, the same object will end up in promotion again. In short: not being duped at Black Friday is first of all an exercise in self-control.
Newsletters and Google search
In practice, there are also a number of opportunities that it is always good to check before buying without further research. First check if the online store you want to buy from has a newsletter – in most cases there is a signup bonus that could add an extra discount. Maybe it cannot be combined with the Black Friday offers, but it could actually be activated on products not included in this week’s commercial initiatives, or even offer a similar discount, but without the purchase time limit on Black Friday.
The other thing to do, especially if you are buying an online service (hosting a site, a domain, a subscription to a heavily discounted software) is to search for the exact same product on Google. You might be amazed at which and how many discounts are found in this way, regardless of Black Friday or even cumulative with this week’s already discounted prices.
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The Amazon universe
If the offers you are interested in are on Amazon, the opportunities to check the quality of an offer are even more. Among the Black Friday discounts offered by the largest e-commerce in the world you can find many good deals, but it is still good to pay attention: the discounts advertised on the site are often not really unrepeatable and are above all calculated not on the average price of the product. at this time, but on the list price decided by the seller.
CamelCamelCamel
To really find out what the average price of a product on Amazon is (and therefore what is the real discount we are taking advantage of) there are several useful tools. The most famous has a particular name: CamelCamelCamel. It is a real archive of the prices of all (or almost all) Amazon products that allows you to access a history of the price list of a specific object. To start a search just copy the address of the Amazon page we are viewing, paste it in the search field at the top and press enter: the system will immediately show us a graph with the price trend.
Take for example a coffee machine on offer at the time of this writing. CamelCamelCamel suggests that the price of € 279.99 is actually good and is one of the lowest ever recorded. However, there have been rare cases in the past where the product has come to cost even less (€ 269.10). The site also allows you to enter an email and indicate a target price in the fields immediately above the graph, on the results page: in this way it will be possible to receive a message every time the product touches the price indicated by us. CamelCamelCamel prices are not always up-to-date (so beware of any discrepancies), but the system remains very useful for checking any offers from previous weeks and months.
Keepa
Another equally valid tool is Keepa, which in addition to the price history also offers very useful graphs on the performance of the product in the ranking and allows a more granular analysis of past offers. Keepa also provides the ability to check eBay bids for the same product and makes it easier for you to search thrift dealers. The operation is the same: open the page, copy the product address on Amazon and press enter to view the offer history.
In the case in question of the coffee machine in our example, we realize to say that there were strange movements before the activation of the offer. The price was € 299.99 until Thursday 18 November in the early afternoon. The price then jumped to € 319 for a few hours, and then dropped during the night of November 19th (with the activation of the Black Friday offers) first to € 299 and then, an hour later, to € 279.
The step to € 299 allows you to bring the discount back within the limit of 10% (because Amazon reports the previous price). However, those who had observed the price the day before, already aware that the offers had been announced for November 19, would not have seen € 299, but € 319.
Check prices on other e-commerce
The last thing to do before hitting the buy button on an offer is to check the product prices at other online retailers. To do this, you can use sites such as Trovaprezzo, one of the most famous in Italy, or Idealo (which has also been offering a tool for checking the price history for some time). For non-niche products it is usually difficult to find prices lower than that offered by Amazon, which can count on a much larger sales scale, but a quick search allows you to verify this and be sure that the Black Friday offer on the giant of the e-commerce is actually the best.
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