Deal or no deal? Black Friday price hikes on the rise

Monday, 29 November 2021

Black Friday is over for another year – but were the deals too good to be true?

If you think you nabbed lots of bargains in the Black Friday sales, you may need to think again.

New research from price comparison site PriceSpy suggests some of the”discounts' may have been dud deals.

It found 19 per cent of all products listed on its website were more expensive on Black Friday, with an average price increase of 7 per cent.

More than one in ten products were also found to be a “fake sale”, where the price of an item increased before the sale day to make the discount offered on Black Friday appear better than it actually was.

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Liisa Matinvesi-Bassett, New Zealand country manager for PriceSpy said even though 38 per cent of products listed on the PriceSpy website were offered at a discount on Black Friday, a growing number of products were more expensive.

Rod Duke, the head of Briscoe Group, says he’s investigating a Black Friday complaint.

“Compared to last year's figures, even more products also received a price increase in the weeks leading up to Black Friday, to then drop in price on the sale day, making the discount appear better than what it was,” she said.

“The bigger Black Friday is becoming, the more we have seen a spike in the number of fake sales being offered, which is really disappointing to see.”

The shopping categories that experienced the biggest number of price hikes were computers and accessories, mobile phones, games and consoles and speakers and headphones.

However, the same categories also offered a significant number of price drops.

Rebel Sport was criticised by one shopper on social media who said a Garmin watch was $319 in the week leading up to the sale day, but on Friday it was promoted as $511 with 20 per cent off.

Briscoe Group chief executive Rod Duke said in the week prior to Black Friday, Rebel Sport made a decision to put this product on promotion for a period prior to Black Friday and finishing after Black Friday.

But the sale price didn’t show online as it should have, he said.

“The issue happened only in search display results, where the correct discount price of $319 did not load correctly but did in the product site. We are investigating how this happened.”

A Consumer NZ spokeswoman said it had also received a complaint about a Briscoes Black Friday deal on Tefal Pans, and Duke said he was looking into the complaint.