For as long as many can remember, the Friday after Thanksgiving has always been a rush to secure wishlist items, hastily grabbed to put under the tree just a month later at Christmas.
However, in recent years, Black Friday has proven an interesting time for eagle-eyed shoppers looking for deals—as many are coming up empty.
One Amazon shopper said she prepared her online cart ahead of the shopping holiday to place her order with just one click when she noticed that the discount she had expected to receive was not a discount at all.
Is Amazon raising its prices before Black Friday “sales”?
In the video that has drawn over 210,000 views on TikTok, Jess (@heavenlyhomeschool), a homeschool content creator, says her cart total was higher than it was before sellers started advertising their Black Friday sales.
“So Amazon started their Black Friday deals early, and let me tell you, beware of this,” she says in the video. “I had 25 things sitting in my cart for the last two weeks, like things to prepare for the baby and I know the exact price of every single one of those items and what my cart total was two weeks ago.”
Jess says she was expecting her cart total to drop significantly. “Everything was going to be on sale, and then I would put in my order,” she explains. “I logged in yesterday, all excited to see this low number, and you would not believe that the total was actually higher—higher than it was before the Black Friday sales.”
She says she went over her order item by item to see if she might have accidentally added two of something to her cart. What Jess found, she says, was that the prices for each item were simply raised for the sales, and then lowered to give customers the impression that they were getting a discount.
“It’s actually pretty infuriating, to be honest with you,” she tells viewers. “Then of course they’re going to have the Cyber Monday deals coming, and I don’t even know what that’s going to look like. If you kind of already have an idea of what you want to get for either Black Friday or Cyber Monday, put it in your cart ahead of time so you can see if the price actually changes, if it actually reduces for a sale price versus them just upping the price ahead of time and then making it look like it’s been marked down.”
The Daily Dot has reached out to Amazon and Jess via email regarding the video.
Shopper suspicions
This is not the first time a retailer has been accused of funny business when it comes to Black Friday deal prices. Last year, Target was accused of keeping in-store prices flat, with new signage stating that the item was being offered at a discount, despite being the same.
For this year’s consumer event, a report from WalletHub shows that the deals might not be spread around as evenly across categories as customers might like. Per the report, about 41% of advertised Black Friday specials for 2024 offer no real savings for customers, compared to their usual prices.
It’s worth noting that not every product available to purchase on Amazon is listed by the retailer itself. Many independent businesses and sellers list their products on the website in Amazon stores, meaning the prices are not always set by the retailer.
Viewers weigh in
Some viewers noted that they had seen this practice before, during other sales events offered by this and other online retailers.
“They did this on prime day too,” one commenter wrote.
“Screammmm this!!!!” another urged. “No one believes me when I say this every year, and it’s not just Amazon.”
“I noticed this last year,” a third commented. “They do the same for Amazon prime day. It’s frustrating.”
@heavenlyhomeschool Beeare of these black friday “deals” – are they really deals, or did they mark up the pricr before slashing? #blackfriday #scam ♬ original sound – Jess | Heavenly Homeschool
Others noted that they were employing similar methods as Jess—prepping their potential orders ahead of time—to see what would happen to the prices once the “discounts” were offered. One method mentioned multiple times was the Honey browser extension, which can show how the price for an item has changed over time.
“I take screenshots of my cart just to see how much they up the prices it’s insane how much they price gouge,” one commenter wrote.
“I use the Honey extension on a computer,” another commented. “It will show you the price over the last 30 days to see if it’s actually a deal.”
“I’ve been putting products into an Amazon price tracker to see how low the price gets and if it’s a good deal,” a further user suggested.
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