How to buy on Black Friday and Cyber Monday and not be fooled

2024 Author: Malcolm Clapton | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 03:44

In a few days, shops will offer you discounts of up to 90%.

What is Black Friday and Cyber Monday

Black Friday marks the start of Christmas sales in the US and around the world, immediately following Thanksgiving. The season of discounts will last a little more than a month, but the lowest prices and the most generous offers are planned for Black Friday. In the United States, on this day, many shops change their working hours and open at midnight, and huge queues line up in front of the doors of outlets.

In recent years, sales have been held not only offline, but also online, so it is no longer necessary to stand in a crowd in the cold.

In 2020, Black Friday falls on November 27th. But in most Russian stores, discounts will begin to operate as early as November 25.

For those who do not have time to place an order on Black Friday, there is Cyber Monday. This year it falls on November 30th. Offline stores do not offer dizzying discounts on this day, but online sites arrange an attraction of unprecedented generosity.

Why Black Friday and Cyber Monday are not a divorce

In Russia, Black Friday and Cyber Monday have a conflicting image. Unscrupulous sellers are partly to blame for this, and partly - the national desire to look for a dirty trick in everything. Indeed, why offer real discounts on serviceable items when you can sell them at regular prices?

There may be several reasons for the sale:

1. Quickly empty shelves and warehouses to fill them with specific items for the New Years.
2. Increase revenue. Stores on this day earn from large sales volumes and the sale of related products.
3. Get out of the competition as a winner. You can spend a huge amount on advertising or offer customers discounts and build a loyal audience by deed, not by word.

In which stores "Black Friday" has already started

Some stores decided not to wait a week and have already lowered prices for many products. This is only in the hands of buyers: you can buy the things you like as long as there are all sizes, configurations, and store sites work correctly. Because on November 27 from the influx of users, interruptions and server overloads are possible.

• Lamoda - up to 80% discount on clothes, shoes and accessories + additional ones with BLACK20 promo code.
• "Yandex. Market Purchase" (formerly "I take!") - up to 80% discount on small household appliances, gadgets, sporting goods, goods for repair and personal hygiene.
• "Gallery of cosmetics" - buyers will get up to 50% discount on decorative and cosmetics for skin, hair and nails care.
• "MYTH" - you can buy books of different genres with a profit of up to 70%. Also, customers will be able to play games, pass exciting tests and receive gifts for orders. More details on the sale page.
• AliExpress - fill your cart now, and from November 23, 11:00 Moscow time, redeem products with a discount of up to 70%.
• Toy.ru - with a discount of up to 60%, you can order children's clothes, hats, toys, pacifiers, wallpaper and much more.
• Citylink - up to 70% discount on gadgets, electronics, small and large household appliances and much more. Be careful: prices for goods labeled "already with a discount" have already been reduced, and when ordering goods without a mark, you need to enter the promo code BFSALE2020.
• Yves Rocher - up to 50% off more than 250 products, including creams, eau de parfum, hair balms and shampoos, shower gels and more.
• Goldapple - up to 60% discount on cosmetics. There are 5 466 products participating in the promotion.
• SheIn - up to 70% discount on all products. Additionally, you can get a discount of 12%, 15% and 20% using the RUDA promo code.
• "Svyaznoy" - up to 90% discount on everything.

How to prepare for Black Friday and Cyber Monday

Make a shopping list

Think about what you need to buy, at least approximately. And include both short-term and long-term goals in the list. For example, you do not have a winter down jacket and your e-book is broken - it is logical to add them to the list of necessary items. Now it's worth thinking about the future. For example, you can buy sneakers for the spring and save a lot.

Select Stores

Decide on the sites for shopping so that on the day of sales you do not rummage the entire Internet. For example, you need a washing machine, two basic T-shirts, pool slippers, and cat food. Find several stores that have already announced their participation in Black Friday. So at the appointed hour you will have to choose from two or three, and not from a thousand options.

Create a budget

Decide how much you are willing to spend. Transfer this amount in advance to the card with which you pay online. And then, just in case, add another 10-15% of this amount there: even if your will is as strong as a diamond, you may not resist a particularly advantageous offer, so let there be a small supply of funds in excess of what was planned.

Keep in mind that Black Friday is followed by Cyber Monday, so don't waste all your money in the early hours of the sale.

Use price aggregators

They allow you to enter the name of the product into the search line and find out in which store the price for it is the most profitable. Among them:

• "Yandex Market";
• Google Shopping;
• "Goods @ Mail. Ru";
• Sravni.com;
• Price.ru;
• Aport.ru;
• Cheap Ass Gamer (specializes in finding discount games).

It should be borne in mind that not all stores are in the field of view of aggregators.

Decide on delivery

Check delivery terms from selected stores in advance. How and for how much they send the goods. It is not worth buying gifts for the New Year if the delivery is two months.

How not to be fooled on Black Friday and Cyber Monday

Track price changes

Sometimes the discounts are really impressive: 70-90% of the original price, as indicated by a special advertising plate. In fact, it may turn out that the sale value of the product is even higher than the usual one. For example, a seller makes a 50% discount on a phone for 30,000 rubles, but the week before Black Friday the gadget was sold for only 13,990 rubles.

To make sure that the sale is real, you need to check how the price changed before Black Friday or Cyber Monday.

Fetchee

This is an extension for Chrome, Opera, Yandex. Browser, which tracks price changes for your chosen items. You can add products from absolutely any store to Fetchee, which makes it useful not only on Black Friday.

Fetchee →

Services for Amazon.com

• Camelcamelcamel website.
• Keepa is a Firefox and Chrome extension for tracking Amazon.com prices.

Keepa for Firefox →

Services for AliExpress

Extension for most popular Aliexpress Shopping Assistant browsers

Application not found

Aliexpress Shopping Assistant for Firefox →

AliExpress Radar

AliTools extension and app (it will also show the seller's rating and tell you whether to trust him)

AliTools Big Data Technologies LLC.

Alitools online shopping assistant AliTools Ltd.

Hurry up

Sometimes the store offers real discounts, but is silent that it sells only a few copies of the product at a bargain price. Therefore, you can save only in the first hours of the sale.

Monitor the quality of the goods

Sellers may offer discount samples or products that are not very popular with customers. This trick works well with things that cannot be exchanged and returned if there are no technical faults in them: gadgets, household appliances, and so on.

Remember that there are many profitable discounts

You went to the site, seduced by a large discount on the product, and realized that it was out of stock. Perhaps the thing you needed was not in the store, it’s just that the retailer deceived you in the hope that you wouldn’t leave without a purchase anyway. Maybe you should try your luck elsewhere?

How to save even more

Cashback services

Cashback services receive money from stores for bringing customers, and then share a small percentage of purchases with users. To get some of the costs back, you need to log in to the online store through the website or service application.

When choosing a reseller, pay attention to how many stores it cooperates with and what cashback it offers. In both cases, one principle works: the more, the better.

Promo codes

With the help of secret combinations of numbers and letters, you can make a discount even more, save on shipping or receive a gift. Promotional codes usually come in mailing lists from stores or are published on partner sites. But the easiest way to find them is on aggregator sites.