Black Friday ... a query

Xenophon PCDGS · 25 Nov 2019

Has the word "Friday" in used in Black Friday now officially been accepted as also having meaning a difference from the normally accepted meaning of this word as a certain day of the week? In liturgical terms, Good Friday is only celebrated on a Friday.

RailUK Forums

DaleCooper · 25 Nov 2019

I've always known it as POETS day.

si404 · 25 Nov 2019

Black Friday is still meant to be the day after US Thanksgiving, which is always a Friday.

However, like the British January sales, retailers have made the sales expand beyond the period in the name.

bussnapperwm · 25 Nov 2019

It's only another excuse for capitalism to run rampant by fat cat companies like Walmart to make quick cash from US and UK consumers.

DarloRich · 25 Nov 2019

It has never been the same since they stopped letting chavs fight over a slighty reduced price previous year model TV in Asda

scotrail158713 · 25 Nov 2019

DarloRich said:
It has never been the same since they stopped letting chavs fight over a slighty reduced price previous year model TV in Asda

I completely agree with you.
I went to the Fort in Edinburgh last year on Black Friday and only realised it was said day when I got home. I noticed no difference to any other day.

si404 · 25 Nov 2019

The old days where we actually celebrated what Black Friday means - queueing up outside the store waiting for it to open, running in and then getting in a fight with someone else. Those were good old days - or rather bad, fairly recent, day (maybe 2 years we got the fights?)

Bringing it to physical UK retail was a damp squib - maybe 5 stores got the effect it has in the states. Little wonder why it has decayed to nearly nothing after just a couple of years. The supermarkets might have a deal on some big TV, but don't do any fanfare beyond putting them in a prime location.

Giugiaro · 25 Nov 2019

The earliest evidence of the phrase Black Friday applied to the day after Thanksgiving in a shopping context suggests that the term originated in Philadelphia, where it was used to describe the heavy and disruptive pedestrian and vehicle traffic that would occur on the day after Thanksgiving.

This usage dates to at least 1961. More than twenty years later, as the phrase became more widespread, a popular explanation became that this day represented the point in the year when retailers begin to turn a profit, thus going from being "in the red" to being "in the black".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Friday_(shopping)

I also heard that in some places the retail prices would be so low that retailers wouldn't even profit on that day, being a bleak day for them, but one which could still allow unwanted stuff to be sold out and cleared out of stock.

Nowadays it really doesn't mean much. The promotions are now spread to almost the full month of November and even December.
Some retailers artificially jack up the prices prior to that period to falsely create Black Friday promotions that doesn't cost them profit.
And since promotions don't fall on the same day, they can fluctuate the prices over time, creating a sense of despair over costumers who're trying to actually save money since they don't know if prices may go up our down over the promotion period. It could also mean that if you wait up until the actual Friday, stock may already be unavailable.

DynamicSpirit · 27 Nov 2019

si404 said:
The old days where we actually celebrated what Black Friday means - queueing up outside the store waiting for it to open, running in and then getting in a fight with someone else. Those were good old days - or rather bad, fairly recent, day (maybe 2 years we got the fights?)

Isn't that how you normally celebrate Boxing Day?

Butts · 27 Nov 2019

I've been monitoring the price of Flights/Holidays for a specific destination next year and date.

I know exactly what they have been charging and will be interested to see if Black Friday leads to a reduction in my notated prices.

Have been monitoring three different Airlines.

AM9 · 27 Nov 2019

bussnapperwm said:
It's only another excuse for capitalism to run rampant by fat cat companies like Walmart to make quick cash from US and UK consumers.

Yes the suckers make their blind rush to the lure of 'bargains' because they believe the big headlines. Then when the penny drops, they whinge because the bargains just weren't and they realised that they were duped by their own avarice. Despite the longer opportunity to repent whilst paying off their credit card debts, they repeat the same stupid saga 12 months later.

James H · 27 Nov 2019

I received an email with the subject line “Black Friday is now in its final week”

underbank · 27 Nov 2019

I've never bought a single thing as part of Black Friday. I always look, but the things I want to buy are never reduced to less than they were a few weeks/months before and which are reduced back again a few weeks later. Last year I was watching the latest XBOX to buy for my son. The prices went up and down during October and early November (All main retailers were charging the same so were just copying eachother). Then went up last week of November, then came down to same price as month before for allegedly Black Friday sales, then went up again the week after, then back down a couple of weeks before Christmas. So for that item, Black Friday was a complete con job. People could buy at the same price a couple of weeks before and a couple of weeks after. I've noticed the same with other things I've wanted to buy.

So basically, if you have a particular make/model of a relatively new/popular item, Black Friday won't work for you. My experience is that it's just a clear out of old stock or unpopular slow sellers. Basically just how the Boxing Day/New Years Day sales used to be - one or two headline grabbing bargains, but the vast majority was just clearing out the stuff that wasn't selling anyway. A bit like Marks & Spencer stores still do these days - go into their stores before the sale day and it looks "normal", just like it always does. Go in on the sale day, and there are racks of "sale" items that weren't even there before, just brought in from the factory to clear out, usually unpopular ranges in unpopular sizes - I remember going with my wife once and she liked the look of an entire rack of pyjamas - unfortunately, they were all size 20! The decent stuff, is pushed into corners without reductions to allow the "jumble sale" of the surplus factory stock to take centre stage.

What I don't understand is why people fall for it.

si404 · 27 Nov 2019

DynamicSpirit said:
Isn't that how you normally celebrate Boxing Day?

Indeed (not me personally), hence why Black Friday failed to take off on the east side of the Atlantic, beyond being the name of a week-long sale on the internet, on places like Amazon, which is odd as they always used to do 'Cyber Monday' rather than Black Friday.

HOOVER29 · 27 Nov 2019

Another thing we have the yanks to thank for.

Howardh · 27 Nov 2019

Found a genuine Black Friday offer - a year's Eurosport sub for half-price £19.99 so taken it, they have the rights to the Olympics and will show more stuff than the BBC; + also winter sports eg. Biathlon.

Puffing Devil · 27 Nov 2019

If you shop on Amazon, https://camelcamelcamel.com/ is a great tool. It tracks price histories and can also send alerts if you have a target price for an item.

Great for spotting real reductions and price trends.

Butts · 27 Nov 2019

Air New Zealand have 100 £179 returns from London to Los Angeles up from grabs.

Looking beyond the headline it is only a handful of dates in the early New Year.

Jamesrob637 · 27 Nov 2019

DarloRich said:
It has never been the same since they stopped letting chavs fight over a slighty reduced price previous year model TV in Asda

Whereas I have just bought a new TV from Argos at a (non-Black Friday) nice and reduced price and guess what? Nobody fought me for it, nobody barged into me and nobody pushed me out of the way! Quite civilised :lol:

ComUtoR · 27 Nov 2019

Puffing Devil said:
If you shop on Amazon, https://camelcamelcamel.com/ is a great tool. It tracks price histories and can also send alerts if you have a target price for an item.

One of my favorite websites :

https://pricespy.co.uk/

Before I buy any 'large' purchase I will use it to check the price. Its basically a price comparison site for retail. Type the product into the search bar, click search, check prices across a multitude of stores. It's saved me hundreds of pounds over the past few years. Good for stores who will price match.

swt_passenger · 30 Nov 2019

si404 said:
Indeed (not me personally), hence why Black Friday failed to take off on the east side of the Atlantic, beyond being the name of a week-long sale on the internet, on places like Amazon, which is odd as they always used to do 'Cyber Monday' rather than Black Friday.

Amazon is already plastered with Cyber Monday stuff today, Saturday.

Xenophon PCDGS · 30 Nov 2019

Would I be right in thinking that there are far more service industry "offers" now than there was when this Americanisation first saw light in Britain. For example, BT, Sky and Virgin Media all seem to have "Black Friday" bargains on offer.

Calthrop · 30 Nov 2019

I've been persistently thinking that the name Black Friday, for the "spend-fest", was whimsically / frivolously "borrowed" from use to refer to some tragic historical event which occurred on a Friday -- cf "Bloody Sunday" whether re St. Petersburg 1905, or Londonderry 1972. Having looked it up, I find that there was indeed a historical Black Friday: but not involving actual bloodshed / loss of life. I learn that this occurrence was on Fri. September 24th 1869: antics on the New York Gold Exchange, with the millionaire railroad entrepreneurs Jay Gould and his partner James Fisk trying to corner the gold market. This led to financial mayhem, with a finance-type "panic" followed by a few economically anxious months for the USA -- happily it proved possible in the end, to avoid a major economic depression coming about.

si404 · 30 Nov 2019

Black Friday was the day retailers aimed to go into the black for the year, hence the name.

swt_passenger said:
Amazon is already plastered with Cyber Monday stuff today, Saturday.

well Black Friday is over, so the continuing event needs another name...

...and what better than naming after the day internet firms did their black Friday stuff instead of black Friday.

DaleCooper · 30 Nov 2019

I think it should be Blue Monday.

jon0844 · 30 Nov 2019

underbank said:
My experience is that it's just a clear out of old stock or unpopular slow sellers. Basically just how the Boxing Day/New Years Day sales used to be - one or two headline grabbing bargains, but the vast majority was just clearing out the stuff that wasn't selling anyway. A bit like Marks & Spencer stores still do these days - go into their stores before the sale day and it looks "normal", just like it always does. Go in on the sale day, and there are racks of "sale" items that weren't even there before, just brought in from the factory to clear out, usually unpopular ranges in unpopular sizes - I remember going with my wife once and she liked the look of an entire rack of pyjamas - unfortunately, they were all size 20! The decent stuff, is pushed into corners without reductions to allow the "jumble sale" of the surplus factory stock to take centre stage.

What I don't understand is why people fall for it.

Many retailers buy in goods they don't even sell normally. Electrical retailers often did this to sell a cheap TV or DVD player from a no-name brand (or they slapped their own brand on it) at a ridiculously low price, down from a ridiculously high suggested retail price.

To be fair, there are some good deals and if you're after, say, an Amazon Echo then it makes sense to wait for their Black Friday deals (or Prime deals). They'll do the same nearer Christmas, and after, so you don't have to feel too pressured anymore.

I find that if I know I need something, I may wait to see if there's a discount. I got money off an iMac I was going to buy, but waited - net result £100 in my pocket. What I do not do is spend the week/month online looking for big discounts and then convince myself I need it.

I think people have wised up to Black Friday now and so the industry isn't doing the crazy stuff it did before that saw people fighting to the death over a cheap sofa or TV nobody would normally want anyway.

SteveP29 · 3 Dec 2019

Butts said:
I've been monitoring the price of Flights/Holidays for a specific destination next year and date.

I know exactly what they have been charging and will be interested to see if Black Friday leads to a reduction in my notated prices.

Have been monitoring three different Airlines.

I hope you were clearing cookies and cache after every check?
Once you've visited a site like that and a cookie is generated, your starting point for prices is usually the last price you saw

Black Friday ... a query

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