• @Aceticon
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    6 hours ago

    Here in Europe they’re forced to show the lowest price of the last 30 days and I was looking at some games in GoG and for several interesting games their Black Friday “discounted” price is €15 whilst the lowest price in the last 30 days is €10.

    So the Black Friday “discount” is in fact 50% more expensive than the previous time that game had a “discount” which happenned not even that long ago.

    • @[email protected]
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      125 hours ago

      That’s regionally specific then, because they sure as hell don’t do that where i live (EU member). They have to compare with non-sale price within a month or something, so it’s complete bullshit here because they artificially inflate prices prior to black Friday “sales”.

      • @Aceticon
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        24 hours ago

        Guess I’ve just chosen the right country to point my VPN to then :)

        • @baatliwala
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          12 hours ago

          Sounds sweet, which country is it

          • @Aceticon
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            2 hours ago

            Actually I just checked GoG without going through a VPN (from work) and I see the same “Lowest price in the last 30 days before discount” information, so maybe GoG just does it for all of Europe or maybe even always.

            In other words, I don’t think is going via na IP in that specific country that’s doing it.

  • @Katana314
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    145 hours ago

    I’ve learned my lesson. I bought a graphics card and a monitor a few weeks ago. They were the kinds of desirable purchases that were never going to get discounted on Black Friday.

    • @[email protected]
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      8 minutes ago

      Been watching a new GPU for the last week, waiting for my paycheck to come in

      35% discount, steepest in it’s history according to CCC, holds right until this morning, payday, now it’s a 5% discount

      Its not the usual scummy price shit but I’m def pissed off

    • @[email protected]
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      154 hours ago

      If you happen to be in the US, better to make those sorts of purchases now before prices go up under tariffs.

    • Starayo
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      74 hours ago

      Yeah, always gotta check price history. Especially on Aliexpress.

      Was looking at buying a particular retro game emulator handheld. Black friday pricing was the same as non-black-friday pricing, but it was “discounted” from $300, which it has never actually been sold at. Still bit the bullet and bought it because it did end up decently cheaper using one of their “spend $x and get $y off” coupons.

  • @[email protected]
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    5011 hours ago

    While you do need to be careful about this bullshit, things do actually often hit lows for black Friday sales. Particularly electronics.

    • circuitfarmer
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      318 hours ago

      But definitely double check SKUs. A lot of Black Friday products are more cheaply made than their usual counterparts, even if they outwardly seem like the same product.

      • @[email protected]
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        84 hours ago

        I used to work at Best Buy in the Video department. We got all new products shipped in just for Black Friday. One year we got these $40 VCRs (I realize I’m dating myself here) that we must have sold a billion of. Within the week, we had so many returns that we didn’t have any place to put them.

        • Thassodar
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          32 hours ago

          Similarly Best Buy’s brand, Insignia, is a mix mashed TV full of components from other TV brands (unless that has changed in the lat 4 years). They’re usually the ones to go on deep discount but, due to the nature of the internals not being from one company, they’re nearly impossible to repair.

          So, although your Insignia may last a year and a half or two, the Sharp panel may fail, the Phillips backlight could fail, or the PCB from Samsung could fail, adding to more e-waste.

        • @CaptPretentious
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          29 minutes ago

          TVs are a classic example. I found luggage accidentally one time years ago. Was so poorly made I was shocked it hasn’t disintegrated in transit. Immediately returned it. When I did some research, it looked like none had ever actually sold off that SKU until Black Friday, and they had a stupid price listed months before hand for that deep discount the day of.

        • @Butterpaderp
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          222 minutes ago

          Check out black friday tvs, then look them up online. Won’t take long to find one that’s “cheap”

    • AwkwardLookMonkeyPuppet
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      88 hours ago

      For like the first ten of them and you have to get to the store 6 hours before it opens and then fight gladiator matches with all the other crazy people to be at the cash register first. No thanks, man!

    • Sami
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      1311 hours ago

      You gotta track stuff you want to buy ahead of the pre-sale price hikes. Depending on where you live, what you want to buy and how much money you make that might be too much time and energy so checking price history sites (like camelcamelcamel for amazon) when they’re available also works in a pinch.

  • @[email protected]
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    2411 hours ago

    Most price changes I have seen goes like this:

    September: 300

    Start of november: 500

    Black friday: 250 - 50% off!

    • @[email protected]
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      34 hours ago

      In the UK, Which (a consumer group) did a study. I think 90% of products were cheaper or same price at other parts of the year.

      The only thing cheaper is usually the shit that no one wants that they cannot shift, or those 5 TVs at the start of the day that make people believe there are good deals available.

    • @Redredme
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      89 hours ago

      What I’ve seen many times (and what often still is a pretty good deal)

      • JAN: product X, 1100 bucks
      • FEB: product X EOL. last items BUY NOW - 20%!
      • MAR
      • APR
      • MAY
      • JUN
      • JUL
      • AUG
      • SEP
      • OCT: some warehouse: Fuck. Is that a a stash of product X?
      • NOV: BLACK FRIDAY WEEK! Product X -45%! LIMITED STOCK!
  • @hOrni
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    16 hours ago

    It would actually be 599.