The Black Friday Shopping Thread

Yes, it's been a thing here for the last few years.

Worth keeping an eye out for theatre offers as a few have put out some good short-term discounts on Black Friday in previous years.

In the 4 years its taken hold of the UK its already become deeply saturated from genuine discounts and sales for a single day (with spare stock driven off on Cyber-Monday) to drive the markets to a weeks-long marketing ploy of buying in cheap stock and selling it off as 'on offer'. By-and-large its all really stuff we don't need, but when I first became aware of it from the US through music production companies there were some series bargains had as prices for software crashed 50/60%. This year I'm seeing discount on software around 25% but nowhere near the offers of a few years ago.
Stil, keeping tabs on a few things, need a new hard drive for my computer so been holding out on a price crash on SSDs for today.

Wow, that is amazing! I didn't even know it was possible to get flights that cheap. 😲

I bought some things from Asos, they currently have 20% off everything. I like to buy British brands from there. I picked items that were selling out or that I will use in December. Otherwise might as well wait for the winter sale for a bigger discount. Then I'm still holding out for a good deal for my London hotel and willing to wait until Monday. This time the deal from the hotel itself doesn't work for me as it applies to stays from January onward. They changed the offer from last year. I'm also curious to see if TodayTix does the same Cyber Monday deal as last year, shows for £15. Even though I have all my shows booked now, 8 in 6 days, I could add more matinees... 😊

Got an ipad mini in the John Lewis black friday event the other day, with £100 off - today they have dropped the price by a further £30, so contacted them under their "never knowingly undersold" pledge - got a mail back within the hour saying they'd be refunding me £30, which is nice!

Absolutely- knowing they play fair on this makes me more likely to shop there. And they are only paying out to people who spot the price change (which I only did by chance as I was looking at covers)

Typical Americanisation thing that has come over here.

Not impressed with what’s on offer this year I’m afraid, I saved about £140 on the RRP on some shirts from Reiss, got the blu-Ray of Black Panther for £7.99 and 30% off some Christmas cards from Dean Morris ( the recipients of which might not be keen to have me calling them ‘friends’ after they’ve opened them and seen what’s on them) but otherwise it’s mostly tat that I’ve seen on offer, the sort of stuff I’d be embarrassed to try and get money for if it was me selling it.

I just checked out of there this morning, great hotel and really convenient! I had a room with shared bathroom but the bathrooms were kept really clean and there was always one free, so it didn't matter. Room was a decent size too for NY!

There are 4 bathrooms to each floor (or at least there were on mine) and they all have showers, so there is never a supply problem! There is also a sink in the room and mirror, hairdryer etc. as well as a TV and heating you can control (really useful when it is sub zero outside like this morning!). The lifts are a bit slow but that was all I could find fault with! Super easy to get from JFK as well as the E train drops you around the corner at 53rd and Lexington. The famous Ess a Bagel is literally around the corner so if you get up early enough the line won't be bad, but I actually preferred the bagel I got for a dollar from the coffee cart across the street!

I also used to go for dorm rooms as they were cheaper, but my favourite shared dorm place closed down and I decided to spend a little more this time to treat myself to a single room. So glad I did!

And as an update on last night's escapade - I escaped from Macys just before midnight after 2.5 hours with two pairs of shoes and three dresses...oops. Just about managed to get my case to shut today!

Starlight in Bochum does a genuine Black Friday deal with top price tickets basically half price. Only for certain dates though.

But otherwise yes have found very few genuine “deals” and whole thing is generally a marketing con!