Black Friday (November 27 this year) really is the bottom of the price curve for TVs, laptops, toys and small appliances. Retailers also know you believe that, which is why the week produces more inflated "was" prices than any other. Both things are true at once. Your job is telling them apart, and it takes about two minutes per product.
1. The "was" price is the whole game
"Was $349, now $179" only matters if someone actually paid $349 recently. Stores routinely raise list prices in October so the November cut looks deeper. Researchers call it price anchoring; flyers call it 50% off.
Our site records the price of every product we list, once a day, per store. On any offer page here, the history chart shows what the product cost in the weeks before the banner appeared. If the line was already at $179 in September, you are looking at decoration, not a discount — and we say so on the page.
For Amazon products anywhere, CamelCamelCamel and Keepa do the same for free. Paste the link, read the chart. Flat line = fake sale.
2. "Black Friday price" in October usually isn't
From early November (sometimes late October), every store runs "Early Black Friday". Some of it is real: Walmart and Target now release their big items in waves starting mid-November. But most early banners are regular prices wearing a costume. The pattern to watch: genuine event pricing clusters around the waves (roughly Nov 14–16 and Nov 25–30 at Walmart, Nov 20 onward at Best Buy and Amazon). An "early deal" weeks before those windows deserves the history check from step 1 before you believe it.
The flip side: if the history shows the item at its lowest recorded price, buying early is fine. The idea that everything gets cheaper on the actual Friday is folklore — many doorbusters are identical in the early waves, just with more stock.
3. Doorbuster models are not the models you think
That $89 "same brand" TV in the flyer is often a derivative model made for the event: same brand, thinner panel, fewer ports, worse warranty, a model number that exists nowhere else. Before buying any suspiciously cheap TV or laptop, search the exact model number. If the only results are Black Friday flyers, you have found a derivative. It is not necessarily a bad buy — it is just not the $600 TV's quality at $89, and reviews for "the same TV" do not apply.
4. The unit math beats the banner
Big percentage stickers love bundles: "65% off" on a 3-pack that costs more per unit than buying one on a normal week. Divide by count, compare per-unit price to the product page's everyday price. Thirty seconds, kills half the junk.
5. Sold by whom?
Marketplace sellers ride the event too. On Amazon and Walmart, check "sold by" and "shipped by". The headline price sometimes belongs to a third-party seller with a 3-week delivery and a stingy return window, while the store's own listing costs $10 more with real returns. During Black Friday week, return policies matter more than the last 5%.
How we handle this on our side
Every offer on this site goes through the same filter before it is listed or posted anywhere: the discount must be consistent with the price history we recorded ourselves, headline prices that contradict the product page get held back, and offers we cannot verify say so in plain text. During the event week we re-check prices every 5 minutes, because Black Friday prices die in hours.
Our Black Friday hub keeps the live, verified list all through the event — and if you want the big ad leaks and the strongest early waves by email, the alert box on that page sends exactly that and nothing else.