That’s right; the American phenomenon ‘Black Friday’ has hit the UK hard this year. This online and physical shopping buy-one-get-one free deal frenzy has been hitting headlines today up and down the country. On the one hand, Black Friday signifies the last pay day before Christmas and therefore prime time for prices to hit rock bottom and shops to open early-til-late. On the other hand, as early as 7am this morning incidents at several supermarkets in Manchester and London had been reported. So, are we really getting good deals on our tech online on Black Friday or are all the best deals to be had in store?
As I watched the news whilst getting ready for work this morning, one man tweeted Sky News to notify them that he had seen a deal in store and online which was marked up to £200 higher than its RRP and billed as a Black Friday offer- it was glossed over a little on the news report but it did make me wonder just how much of a discount we get on Black Friday and whether it’s really worth queuing outside ASDA at 3am to get the deals.
I think the moral of the Black Friday story is ‘Know what you’re looking for and how much it’s worth’. If you’ve got the regular price in your head, then you’ll know straight away whether the discounted price is a good one or not. Don’t get drawn in by the labelling and hype, take a look elsewhere online and check prices. Some retailers have been selling products at different rates and with different perks this year. For example, the iPad mini is being discounted by Tesco, John Lewis and Apple today, but with Apple you’ll get free iTunes credit with the regular iPad price and with the other retailers you’ll received £100 or so off the RRP. It’s down to you which of those you find most useful but the fact remains; shopping around is never a bad idea.
To tie in with Black Friday, Apple are adding in (PRODUCT)RED donations all weekend on (PRODUCT)RED items and on Monday they will be contributing money from every purchase made in store and online towards the (PRODUCT)RED campaign. (http://www.apple.com/uk/red/)
So what about online sales? Well, here in the UK we are predicted to have spent £555 million online alone today and that is in addition to savings of £233m worth of savings over the whole weekend. In fact, on the so-called Cyber Monday, we will save £98 million of that. Of course, to achieve these savings, we will be parting with 1.32bn of our cash and that’s only this weekend.
Since the take up off of Black Friday was so popular, several other ‘named’ days have emerged in the years since. These include Cyber Monday, Manic Monday and Orange Saturday. Soon we’ll be colour coding every day of the week on our calendars…
So, has anyone grabbed any great Black Friday bargains? We’d love to see them! You can tweet them to us @Cosmic_UK, share them with us on Facebook or email them into us on info@cosmic.org.uk. I myself have grabbed a brand new pair of converses for nearly half price- not bad at all!