5min chapter

The Wirecutter Show cover image

Don't Get Swindled on Black Friday

The Wirecutter Show

CHAPTER

Navigating Black Friday Deals

This chapter explores the best product categories for discounts during Black Friday, emphasizing small kitchen appliances and electronics while cautioning about minimal discounts on new technology. It also discusses the importance of verifying product models and introduces browser extensions that help shoppers find better deals.

00:00
Speaker 2
Welcome back to The Wirecutter Show. In today's episode, we're breaking down Black Friday with Wirecutter Senior Deals Editor Nathan Burrow. Nathan, before the break, you said your team posts deals in every category Wirecutter covers, over 40 categories. Of these, which are the ones that are most likely to have the best deals?
Speaker 1
Well, the good news is you'll find pretty good deals on almost every product category. But historically, we've found particularly good deals in two categories. One would be small kitchen appliances, and the other is electronics, like TVs, laptops, etc. Why is that? To a degree, there is an element of unloading merchandise, especially with the electronics product category. Many electronics, like tablets, laptops, headphones, they get refreshed pretty regularly on a yearly basis. So clearing old stock can become important for retailers, and they're able to discount those items more substantially as they age. That's slightly less the case with small kitchen appliances, but the margins on kitchen appliances are such that I think they can really afford to discount them by quite a bit during a Black Friday or Cyber Monday. Nathan,
Speaker 2
I am a renter, so I'm not really looking to buy appliances right now. What else is good to buy on Black Friday? Black
Speaker 1
Friday is unexpectedly a great time to get deals on regular stuff, those everyday essentials. It might be strange to see an amazing deal on, you know, Boys for Your Dog alongside deals on a MacBook, but it does happen. I
Speaker 3
love Black Friday for the regular stuff. I actually, one year, bought, I don't know, something like 240 pounds of kitty litter because it was six 40-pound bags of kitty litter. And it was $7 off each. And I was like, I'm going to snap these up. So, yes, it's a great time to buy things like, you know, just batteries, kitty litter, you know, the normal stuff. Are there any categories specifically to avoid? Like categories that just never have a good deal?
Speaker 1
So if you're somebody who is always looking for the latest and greatest tech, Black Friday might not be great for you in that respect. chips, the newest iPhone, stuff like that, they may see small introductory discounts, but most of the time, they don't see discounts that we're going to see later as we get farther away from those release dates. The other product categories that don't see discounts on Black Friday itself are from brands or retailers that do not participate in the event. And those do exist. They are usually outdoor retailers, we've found. So REI does not have Black Friday sales. Patagonia also does not participate in Black Friday. But they also have annual events of their own, like REI's anniversary sale, that will allow you to get the best deals of the year on their stuff.
Speaker 3
So, Nathan, another part of doing your homework as someone who's shopping for a deal is to understand the model that you're looking for, the model number specifically, and to try to find that model when you're doing your shopping, right?
Speaker 1
Yes, I was just doing this yesterday, in fact, with one of our Waffle Maker picks. Basically, what I do and what I would recommend that shoppers do is I match the exact model number from the review that you're looking at or from the ad that you're looking at against the model number that you see at the product listing. And that's a way to guarantee that you're getting exactly what you wanted. And as a result, you're getting the features that you wanted and you're getting the quality of product that you wanted because you've matched up those model numbers to ensure that it's the exact same thing.
Speaker 3
I've heard that browser extensions can help you find a better deal. Can you tell us about browser extensions? What are they? Do they work? And if so, how and how well?
Speaker 1
So browser extensions are to the right of your search bar. There's a little icon. As you travel around the internet, it basically registers what you're looking at. It's like an app that accompanies your browsing online. You may have seen these coupon-based extensions, and the biggest ones are Honey and Capital One. More or less the way those work is when you take an item to cart, they will provide either internally sourced or crowdsourced suggestions for coupon codes you can use at checkout that have worked previously. Those extensions will work, and we use them to identify potential coupon codes that we can surface for our readers. They're free, but just be aware that nothing is really free on the internet. Really, what they're doing is they're tracking your browsing information, as many extensions do. The other thing that these extensions do is when you utilize them and when you click on them in order to get the additional tracking information or in order to get the coupon, they will ultimately collect the affiliate revenue associated with you purchasing that product. So they get a little percentage of what you spent on the product that you ultimately purchased if you used the extensions.

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