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08 Nov 2023

How to avoid fake Black Friday deals

Don’t get duped by dodgy deals this Black Friday. Follow these tips to find out whether the ‘special offer’ you’ve got your eye on is real

Hannah WalshSenior researcher & writer

The hype around Black Friday creates the impression that every offer is worth trampling over fellow shoppers to get to, with retailers slashing prices to historically low levels for one day only.

But Which? research has found that there's no need to rush, as genuinely good deals are very rare.

Are Black Friday deals real?

We found that a massive 98% of products that were on sale on Black Friday 2021 were actually cheaper or the same as their Black Friday price at other times in the year.

For our 2022 investigation, we analysed 214 of the previous year’s Black Friday deals at seven major home and tech retailers – Amazon, AO, Argos, Currys, John Lewis, Richer Sounds and Very – looking at their prices every day in the six months before and after the sale day (26 November 2021).

While you might expect some products to fall in price over time, we also found that 86% of the items had also been the same price or cheaper in the six months before Black Friday.

In fact, none of the products we tracked were at their very cheapest price on Black Friday 2021.

So before you rush into impulse-buying a discounted coffee machine or TV, read on for our advice on how to work out if a deal is real.

Find out more: our Black Friday insider's guide has everything you need to know

How to check if a Black Friday deal is fake: five tips

1. Check the price of the product across multiple websites

You might spot more than one shop selling a product at a similar price, but only one claiming that the price is a special offer.

For example, if four shops are selling the same washing machine for £250, but only one is claiming it's a special offer at 'now £250, was £300', it's a pretty good indicator that the price is not a particularly special deal.

Of course, if you're happy to pay £250 for that particular washing machine, that's fine. But don't snap it up thinking you're getting a bargain.

2. Check the price history

Use our reviews app to make a shortlist of the products you want to look out for in the Black Friday sales, then look them up on websites such as Pricerunner, PriceSpy and CamelCamelCamel (Amazon only) to find out their price history.

This will enable you to know whether Black Friday prices are genuinely worth getting excited about.

Find out more: 15 Black Friday shopping tips

3. Be wary of 'was' prices

Claims such as 'was £100, now £50' are abundant on Black Friday. But don't let these 'anchor prices' mislead you.

Retailers shout about savings - often highlighting them in red to grab attention - as a way of influencing customers, and they can be quite misleading.

In our 2022 investigation we uncovered several products with a 'was' price that had only been available for a few days in the months around Black Friday.

The Toshiba 43UL2163DBC TV was £279 at Very on Black Friday 2021, with a claimed £100 saving on its £379 'was' price. But we found it had been £379 for just three days in the month before Black Friday. It then stayed at £279 until 22 December 2021, when it dropped further to £275.

A Zanussi chimney cooker hood was £239 on Black Friday in 2021 at John Lewis, with a £30 saving from a 'was' price of £269. But it had been £239 since 9 November, and was reduced to £160 for a fortnight in August. It only increased to £269 on 13 October, according to our data, so that £30 saving really wasn’t as good as it looked.

Look out for this on Amazon, too – it displays every price reduction as if it was a promotion, so even a price drop as small as 1p will be flagged as a discount.

Rather than automatically trusting anchor prices, it's better to check against other shops' prices to try to work out the true value of the item you're buying.

We approached the seven retailers included in our investigation with our findings. All, apart from Currys and Very who didn’t respond, said that Black Friday is a key time for deals but is just part of efforts to offer savings throughout the year.

John Lewis told us that the offers in our research were as a result of its Never Knowingly Undersold price-match pledge, which applied until the scheme was retired in 2022.

Find out more: how to get the best price when shopping online

4. Look out for notes or signs explaining offers

The rules that govern special offers are vague. In some instances, shops can get away with using 'was' prices that haven't been in place for a long time if they put up a sign explaining the deal. Tactics such as this can make offers look better than they are.

We've seen notes that explained the product was actually only at the higher price for a fortnight, six months before the current offer.

Sometimes these notes are well flagged, but sometimes they're completely buried - meaning we've had to scroll through masses of small print to uncover vague wording. It's worth doing some thorough research if you want to be confident you're getting the best deal.

AO.com, for example, shows the dates a price was available, but this is in small font below the item description, specification and customer reviews. At Currys the dates are listed alongside the price, but are in a small grey font.

Some retailers choose not to display the dates a 'was' price was available for at all.

Not all manufacturers have RRPs, but some do and choose to display them on their own websites. Before you buy a product in the sales, check the manufacturer's website to see if you're getting a decent discount on the RRP.