It’s that shop-til-you-drop time of year again, and retailers have already spent most of November with teaser sales and ads for Black Friday and Cyber Monday. Here’s how to score the best deals and avoid getting ripped off.
Make a List (and Do Your Research) Before You Start
We feel that it’s necessary to point this out right away. Most retailers mark things up earlier in the year so that they can mark them down on Black Friday and convince you to buy them. But that doesn’t necessarily mean you’re getting a great deal; it just means that they marked the products up the rest of the year.
There’s also a stock of lower quality gadgets and other products that they need to get rid of— the high-end or high-quality items rarely get marked down. That’s not to say that it doesn’t happen, but it’s just important to keep these things in mind when looking for deals. In some cases, there may even be specific models that are released only for Black Friday at bargain prices (with bargain quality). Remember, a $300 HDTV that has a crappy picture and two HDMI ports isn’t a deal if $500 would have got you a sharp image and all the HDMI ports you needed.
Because that great sale might not be so great after all, and you’ll always save the most money by not spending your money in the first place. To that end, we recommend making a list before you dive in. What would you buy, right now, if it wasn’t on sale? Would you pay full price for an Xbox One? Would you buy that external hard drive you’ve meant to purchase and finally back up your family photos? If you’d buy it now, at full price, then, of course, you should look for it on sale.
Also, remember that Black Friday—while it has some good sales—doesn’t always have the best deals of the year. Some TVs may be cheaper in December, January, and February, for example. (Read on for tricks on how to figure out how this applies other items).
RELATED: The Best Way to Save Money on Tech: Buy Used
Furthermore, the best prices aren’t actually during any sale—they’re on the used market. Black Friday is great for buying gifts, but if you’re buying for yourself, you can save a lot more by scouring Craigslist, LetGo, and OfferUp for used products instead.
It seems elementary, but by making a list of things you’d like to buy during Black Friday, you armor yourself against suddenly wanting to buy a marked down (but still very expensive) IPS monitor just because it’s suddenly on a flash sale.
Not only that, but if you make your wish list ahead of time, especially when it comes to things like electronics, you’ll know exactly what you want, and you won’t end up buying your second or third-tier choice just because some retailer claims it’s 50% off. Remember, you don’t want an HDTV, you want the HDTV that has all the features you like. Do your research on any product you buy—you know, just like you would if it weren’t Black Friday.
Once upon a time, Black Friday was just one day: the Friday after Thanksgiving. Then came Cyber Monday, which was like a Black Friday for online retailers. Then the whole weekend started to blur together as one mega event. And now it’s gone even further.
We’ve even rounded up some of the best Black Friday sales on our sister site, Review Geek.
Avoid the Stores
One of the best ways to avoid getting ripped off, overspending, or both, is to stay away from physical stores. Retail stores offer extremely enticing “doorbuster” type sales, but those doorbuster items are few and far between. If you’re not camped out in the Best Buy parking lot right through your family’s Thanksgiving Dinner, you’re not getting a ticket to purchase any of those doorbusters. Showing up after the Black Friday morning stampede has passed through is not only a terrible way to save on anything, but it just encourages you to look at (and potentially buy) the stuff that isn’t marked way down.
Not only is avoiding the stores a great way not to get injured by hordes of overly eager shoppers, but these days there is little reason to go to the stores. Outside of those rare doorbusters (that require campouts to capture), retailers have taken to putting the deals online to avoid missing out on customers who prefer to shop online. By shopping from the comfort of your couch or desk, you’re in a better position to adhere to the rest of our tips, as you’ll be away from the gleam of all the other stuff on the shelves and free from the subconscious pressure to shop and not leave empty-handed.
Compare Current (and Historical) Prices
There’s never been a good reason to take a retailer seriously when they tell you they’re offering you the best price—as we mentioned earlier, Black Friday doesn’t always offer the best prices of the year. Thanks to technology, there’s no reason to be left in the dark. Shoppers today have the world at their fingertips when it comes to finding the best deals. Use the following sites and mobile apps to compare prices from at home and on the go.
Historically, we recommended more than just CamelCamelCamel in the price comparison category. Still, so many sites have become shamelessly unethical when it comes to promoting retails as having the best price (when really they just have the best kickbacks for the deal site), so we’ve been forced to trim our list back.
Sign Up for Emails
We dislike junk mail as much as the next person, but email coupons can yield ridiculous savings. Our “promotions” tab in Gmail has been brimming with sale coupons and pre-release deal links this month, where we can buy products before sales go public on the main site.
If you’re searching for hardware deals this holiday season, for example, it would be silly to not sign up for the promotional emails from Newegg, Fry’s Electronics, TigerDirect, and other computer retailers you frequent. The competition for every shopping dollar has gotten so fierce that the Black Friday deal emails start pouring in before Halloween these days.
Feel free to set up a spam-catching email address specifically for this purpose—that way, you don’t have to worry about unsubscribing from them all when the holiday season is over.
Hunt the Deal Forums to Become a Deal Hawk
Price comparisons are great. Getting an email coupon is too, but the real deal magic happens in deal forums. Whether it’s Black Friday or the middle of summer, you stand to save a ton by keeping an eye on the serious deal forums. Internet deal hunters are hardcore. We’ve saved thousands of dollars over the years by keeping an eye on the forums they frequent where they trade tips that lead you to buy things in ways you may never have purchased them—like visiting the vendor’s website from the Bing search engine, stacking two coupons, and signing up for an email newsletter coupon to net a total of 73% off a product that’s listed for 20% off.
Where do you find crazy tips like that? Dive into these sites:
SlickDeals: SlickDeals has a Hot Deals forum that’s bustling with great deals due to competition between posters. Tune in and get a constantly updating list of the best deals around the web. You can find the dedicated Black Friday forum here. You can also set up alerts for items you want, and save yourself the trouble of browsing the forums. GottaDeal: GottaDeal doesn’t get as much coverage as Fat Wallet and SlickDeals, but the forums have been around for nearly ten years, and there is a pretty large base of posters scouring the web and posting deals in their forums. You’ll even see a set of forums highlighted on the home page that is dedicated to Black Friday deals.
As we mentioned above, the people who make these forums their virtual stomping grounds are serious deal hunters. They’re not checking in for Black Friday; they’re hunting the internet for deals every day of the year. If someone posts a Black Friday ad or link that’s peddling an inflated-price item with a fake Black Friday markdown, they’ll be the first to tell you that it’s a rip-off.
Armed with these tips and tricks, you can avoid stores, comparison shop effectively, and get back to spending time with friends and family over the holiday weekend.
