Walmart’s “early Black Friday” sale started today. Black Friday is November 27. You can do that math without a calculator, and so can Walmart.
The retailer is running three events this year, per Retail Dive: early deals November 12 through 15, the main Black Friday sale November 23 through 29, then Cyber Monday from November 30 to December 2. That’s 14 days of sales spread across three weeks. Target and Costco are running early deals of their own. Black Friday used to be a day. Now it’s a season with a mascot.
The reason is simple. The National Retail Federation expects holiday sales to hit $1.013 trillion this year, up 4.2%, and every store wants its slice before the other guy gets it. Stretching the sale out isn’t a gift to you. It’s a way to get you to spend before you’ve had time to think.
Here’s the part that bugs me. Consumers’ Checkbook, a consumer research group, tracked prices at 25 major retailers for six months and found that at the vast majority of them, the “limited-time” sale price was just the regular price. That was reported last November, and I’d bet my coffee budget nothing has changed. A deal that’s always on isn’t a deal. It’s a price with a costume.
I’m fine with stores making money. Charge what you want. But slapping a fake “was $199” tag on something that has never once sold for $199 is the kind of thing that should get someone’s attention at the FTC, and I mean actual enforcement, not a press conference. I’ve griped before about how shopping has turned into a stress test, and the fake-discount game is a big reason why.
So what do you do? Mostly, relax. Echo Dots and similar gadgets go on sale several times a year, so missing one round costs you nothing. TVs and toys tend to hit their lowest prices on Black Friday itself, so waiting until the 27th for those is usually the better play. Apple stuff almost never gets marked down, which makes any discount on it worth a look. And check a price tracker like Keepa or CamelCamelCamel before you buy anything on Amazon, because it takes about ten seconds and it will tell you whether that “40% off” is real.
The other trick is boring: decide what you were going to buy before the sale starts. If it wasn’t on your list on November 11, a banner on November 12 shouldn’t put it there. I wrote about candy prices a few weeks ago and the lesson was the same: the price on the shelf is only half the story.
My two cents: a sale that runs for three weeks is a calendar, not a sale, so ignore the countdown clock and buy only what you already needed.