How to avoid fake Black Friday deals

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've dug deep into the pricing history of more than 200 Black Friday deals to find out how many were cheaper or the same price at other times of the year. 

We looked at 227 deals on popular products advertised by some of the biggest retailers during 2023’s Black Friday sales and checked their pricing history six months before and six months after the day itself. 

We’ve been running this investigation annually for several years now. In this year's investigation, for the first time ever, every one of the 'deals' we checked was available for the same price or less at other times of the year than on Black Friday itself. We also found that:

• Around four in 10 deals were cheaper at other times of the year than on Black Friday.
• While you may expect product prices to fall over time, 11% of the products we looked at were cheaper than their Black Friday price in the six months before the big day. 

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 visit websites such as Pricerunner, PriceSpy and CamelCamelCamel (Amazon only) to find out their price history. 

This will help you 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 as a way of influencing customers – often highlighting them in red to grab your attention. But it can be hard to know if the savings are for real. 

We've unpicked the pricing history of the deals we looked at for a year before Black Friday 2023 to see how genuine the higher comparison prices were. 

For six in 10 deals we looked at, the higher price had been in place less than half the time the product was available in the year before the promotion. This included 14 supposed deals where the retailer hadn't charged the higher price at all in the previous 12 months. Questionable savings we found included:

• The Remington Shea Soft Hair Dryer at Boots – £18.99 on Black Friday, supposedly reduced from £49.99. But it had never been on sale at Boots for this higher price during the previous 12 months. 
• The Garmin Venu 2S smartwatch at John Lewis – £294 on Black Friday with a claimed previous price of £384. However, the highest price it was sold for during the previous 12 months was £349.99, and its price didn't go up to £384 in the following six months either.

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.

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

4. Watch out for differing tactics

The way in which Black Friday deals are presented differs quite significantly between retailers, and learning to decode the language of deals can help you understand more about the savings you may (or may not) be getting.

Do you know what an RRP is?

In our 2024 Black Friday investigation, all the deals we found at Amazon, and some at AO.com, used a recommended retail price (RRP) to show the saving. 

On the face of it, these look much the same as ‘was’ prices – but there’s a crucial difference. The item doesn’t have to have ever been sold at the RRP by that store; RRPs are simply the amount the manufacturer suggests the product be sold for.

For example, Amazon advertised the Samsung Series 5+ heat pump tumble dryer for £629.99 on Black Friday last year, setting it against its RRP of £789.99 – a supposed saving of £160. But it hadn’t actually been sold at £789.99 by Amazon in the entire 12 months prior. In fact, the highest price it had reached in that period was £719.

When we surveyed members of the public, only 62% knew what RRP stands for and only 55% knew what it means. Some 18% incorrectly thought it meant the retailer must have sold the item at that price previously.

How about was/now pricing? 

On the face of it, 'was/now' prices appear more straightforward. But when we showed an example of a was/now deal to consumers, 31% assumed the higher price was offered right before the promotion. 

This doesn’t have to be the case – in some of the deals we looked at, the ‘was’ prices dated from as far back as 11 months earlier.

Some deals were advertised in even more opaque ways. At Very, we found prices with a strikethrough simply followed by a claimed saving, giving shoppers no information about what the higher figure meant.

5. Let Which? do the hard work for you

Our experts spend hours scouring deals at the UK's biggest retailers to handpick the very best ones. Check out our recommendations:

• Best broadband deals
  
• Best fridge freezer deals
• Best iPad and tablet deals
• Best mattress deals
• Best mobile phone and Sim-only deals
• Best laptop deals
• Best TV deals
• Best vacuum cleaner deals
• Best washing machine deals

Or if you have a particular retailer in mind, check out our pick of the best Currys Black Friday deals and John Lewis Black Friday deals.