Are Black Friday deals real?

History starts when a product is added to the tracker. We schedule a check every three days until Nov 12, every two days from Nov 13 to 19, and daily from Nov 20; a failed check can leave a gap. On Black Friday, Nov 27, we check each price again after 9:00 a.m. Eastern and compare it with that product’s own history, in this order:

1. Not enough history — fewer than three days with a price up to Nov 19, or less than seven calendar days from the first to the last of them, counting both. We don’t guess.
2. No current Black Friday price — we have no available price recorded at or after 9:00 a.m. Eastern on Nov 27, or our latest check failed or found the product unavailable.
3. Real deal — the Black Friday price is at least 8% below the usual price (the median of the prices we recorded up to Nov 19) and at least 3% below the lowest price up to Nov 19.
4. Fake discount — the store claims at least 10% off, but the price is above 95% of the lowest price we recorded up to Nov 19.
5. Was cheaper before — the Black Friday price is more than 2% above the lowest price we recorded before Black Friday, including the early sales.
6. Meh — none of the preceding conditions applies.

The store ranking uses tracked products at recognised stores, anonymously, and is updated once a day. Before Black Friday, a store qualifies once at least three of its tracked products each have prices on seven different days; after Black Friday it shows the results of the sale.

These labels describe the prices we recorded for the products in our tracker. They are our reading of that history, not a finding of unlawful pricing and not a claim about the lowest price on the web.

The UK consumer group Which? checks Black Friday prices every year. In its study published in November 2025, it followed 175 appliances at eight retailers for six months before and after Black Friday 2024: 83% were the same price or cheaper at least once outside the four-week sale. In its study a year earlier, 92% of 227 Black Friday 2023 deals were the same price or cheaper at other times.

In a 2017 study of 1,000 Amazon products, Consumer Watchdog found that 61% of the reference prices it recorded were higher than any price it had observed on Amazon in the previous 90 days.

The FTC’s Guides Against Deceptive Pricing call a comparison legitimate if the former price is one “at which the article was offered to the public on a regular basis for a reasonably substantial period of time”, and a false bargain if a higher price was set “for the purpose of enabling the subsequent offer of a large reduction”. In California, a “former price” must be the prevailing market price in the local market within the three months before the ad, unless the ad clearly, exactly and conspicuously states the date when that price prevailed. Truth in Advertising counted more than 90 class actions filed against US retailers over misleading discount claims in 2025, as of Nov 24, 2025; these are allegations, not rulings.

To check a deal yourself: look at what the product cost two, four and six weeks ago, not at the crossed-out price; compare the exact model number, size and specifications; check the price history at other big stores — a matching price elsewhere doesn’t prove it is the usual price.