I was in the market for a new TV and figured Amazon would be usual place to buy given their low prices and free shipment. Thus, on Friday, after researching televisions heavily based on Consumer Reports and my needs, I arrived at a Samsung smart TV 50″ LCD/LED. Â I bought it on Friday for $647 (screen shot included below):
Monday morning (cyber-Monday), I received a Living Social “deal” email for up to 75% off Cyber Monday Week (a bit of an oxymoron) at Amazon. My heart dropped and I figured, “Oh crap, I totally overpaid for that TV on Friday and I should have waited until today to buy it”. So, upon reviewing the cyber Monday pricing at Amazon, I was shocked to see the same exact TV was actually 47% MORE Expensive than it was on Friday! Initially, I figured the pricing would be most likely the same or possibly lower. But higher? By this much? What gives? (screen shot at $948)
Adding insult to injury was the Jeff Bezos (Brilliant though) publicity stunt on 60 Minutes Sunday night where he unveiled a service that will probably never see the light of day but got him free publicity on the night before cyber-Monday when they did NOT offer good pricing on this particular item and surely thousands others just like it.
Just some other odd shopping anomalies I noticed across this shopping weekend. First off, I don’t just blindly buy everything from Amazon. I comparison shop with either Google.com/shopping or redlaser.com so I can see what other websites and companies are charging for the same exact product. Â What I found time after time was that other retailers set their prices based on whatever Amazon’s price is. Â For instance, at the top of the redlaser result is a bit Best Buy button with the “price match guarantee” insignia, but when you click through to buy it, they say there are none in stock. Â This is pretty scammy in my opinion to pretend to offer a particular price on an item by copying prices from the true price leader when you don’t even have the stock (in the hopes that some people will inevitably click through and buy something else). Â Just my added 2 cents.
A final word of advice that I heard today from a friend which seems plausible – if you want to get better pricing through Amazon, just add an item to your cart/saved for later bucket and they’ll drop the price later trying to get you to buy it (as opposed to just buying something at first try). Â I have to give that a shot!
What were your Black Friday/cyber-Monday Experiences?
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We ignore these days, but in my country the Black Friday deals are sometimes fishy too. The stores increase the prices few weeks before and then ‘drop’ them close to their initial value on BF. So it’s not uncommon for such things to happen 🙁