Congratulations! We have survived another Black Friday! Personally, I find Black Friday shopping to be very stressful. It is no longer Black FriDAY, but rather Black Friday week. Every retail establishment that has my email address has been sending daily emails about their latest and greatest offer!
It is very easy to get caught up on the deal chasing! I have a very deliberate approach to Black Friday shopping. I have a list of items that I am interested in purchasing (my wish list, to use the language of last week’s post) and some historical knowledge of typical Black Friday offers. For example, for the past two years, Popeye’s Supplements has offered a Buy 1, Get 1 50% off Black Friday sale, so I am able to stock up on my Cranked Energy Bars at a discounted price.
I also usually check out the Body Shop, both on Black Friday and again on Boxing Day. While I was interested in the $5 Shower Gels, I didn’t have enough items to hit the $60 minimum for free shipping, and my local stores were not eligible for Click & Collect. So, I decided to abandon my online purchase. The Body Shop was determined to “help” me to complete my purchase. I have received two follow-up emails advising me not to “miss out – complete your order today!” Further, the Body Shop’s Black Friday sale ad was in my newsfeed on Facebook. I attended a presentation once where social media was described as a machine designed to sell things to you – I couldn’t agree more!
Sometimes a Black Friday deal isn’t a deal at all, despite being labelled as such. I had been pricing out airfare to Maui to attend a conference. I received an email from Westjet on Monday morning with the subject “Escape with 24-Hour deals.” The email described a limited number of promo codes available, for 70%, 50%, and 30% off base fares. I had priced out the flight a few months ago, and had been watching the price go up as the travel date approached. While the 70% promo code was no longer available, the 50% discount yielded a lower price than I had ever seen. However, this promo code was also quickly unavailable. The price for the flight at 30% off was more than the lowest fare I had seen, but still a reasonable “discount” from the currently published fare. So, I went ahead and booked the flight. The next day I received another email from Westjet with the subject “Black Friday deals available now.” I was curious what the new offer would be, so I checked the pricing on my previously booked itinerary. It was lower than the fare that I had booked the previous day! Luckily, Westjet allows full cancellation within 24 hours of booking, so I was able to cancel and rebook my ticket at the lower price. However, I was disheartened by the high pressure sales tactics that were used – the time sensitive nature of the discount (24-hour deals) and the scarcity of the promo codes (only limited numbers available). This is an example of a situation where the consumer needs to do their research in order to determine if an advertised “deal” is, in fact, a deal.
A deal is certainly not a deal if you are buying something that you never intended to buy. We are inundated with ads for Black Friday sales – via email, social media, television, and billboards. This can cause us to buy something for the wrong reasons – not because we want or need the item, but rather because we have fear of missing out on the deal! I use a separate email address for online shopping and most of the promotional emails I receive flow through this email account. For the most part, I do not read them, unless I am shopping for a particular item.
And a deal is never a deal if you cannot afford to pay cash for the item. Many retailers offer buy now, pay later payment terms; however, these payment arrangements often involve deferral fees and interest charges which more than offset any “savings” that you might realize from buying something on sale. Charging a purchase to your credit card and paying it off over time, with interest, is similarly problematic.
Bottom line: regardless of the deal, if it is an unintended purchase which you cannot afford, don’t buy it. Put down the credit card and slowly back away from the computer. You’ll thank me for it later.
Life Lessons 