Camping out for a heavily discounted flat-screen TV on Black Friday feels like the stuff of ancient legend these days. Most shopping is now done online, and deals that used to be reserved for one day have been stretched to cover the weeks before Thanksgiving—if not most of November. Plus, some “discounts” aren’t what they appear to be.

Signs can be misleading

Most items marked as “on sale” include an original or list price to show you just how much you’re saving—but retailers can artificially inflate these “original” prices or mark down goods for months to give the illusion of a sale.

Buyer beware: The Washington Post’s Geoffrey A. Fowler compared the prices of 50 items he previously purchased on Amazon (like toys, printer toner, clothes, etc.) in the six months leading up to Prime Big Deal Days in October with their prices during the sale on Oct. 8. He found that if he had waited to buy those items during Prime Big Deal Days, he would have saved just 0.6%. Some items were even more expensive during the sale.

Similarly, Consumers’ Checkbook tracked popular sale items from 25 major retailers, and 12 of those retailers (including Bass Pro Shops, Gap, Michaels, and Wayfair) listed half of their items on sale for nearly 25 weeks straight.

If you’re determined to bargain hunt: Learn how to price-track items and make sure the deal is real. And FYI: It turns out that Black Friday is actually still a pretty decent time to score a deal on a mid-tier TV.—MM

An American-born shopping strategy may be in the midst of a mini comeback. The days of couponing so hard that you get on a TLC show are over, but post-pandemic grocery inflation has ushered in a new wave of deal fiends.

Although coupon use plummeted to an all-time low in 2022:

• Redemptions ticked up in 2023 and 2024, mostly driven by digital offers rather than traditional newspaper inserts, according to Inmar Intelligence.
• More than 25% of US adults are using more coupons because of the state of the economy, up from 18% in mid-2021, according to a 2024 survey by the National Retail Federation.

Rebound: In September, Kroger reported a “lift” in the number of products sold after the grocery chain reintroduced paper coupons. Bargain shoppers also logged a win in August, when Bed Bath & Beyond Home opened its first store under its new banner and brought back its legendary 20% coupon. This time around, though, it can’t be used with other offers.

The deals aren’t what they used to be

Gone is the era of combining enough coupons to save 75% at checkout (or even be owed money by the store):

• Walmart, ShopRite, and Target don’t let shoppers use more than four of the same paper coupon in one day anymore.
• Many retailers have also stopped giving cash back on coupons of a higher value than the purchase price.
• To limit fraud risks, some stores don’t allow printouts from Coupons.com—or any coupons that aren’t on their master list, even if they’re legitimate.

Where the Extreme Couponers are now: Many stars of the 2011–2012 TLC show moved on from coupon-clipping to maxing out their 401(k) and IRA contributions and racking up hotel loyalty points for cheaper travel. They told the Wall Street Journal that this offers higher returns for a drastically lower time commitment. Probably fewer paper cuts, too.—ML

You’re just six more purchases from a free coffee. You’re four more hole punches from a free sandwich. If you amass 500 more points, that airline will let you fly the plane.

Maybe that last one isn’t real (yet), but loyalty programs have become ubiquitous. As of 2016, long before the current loyalty gold rush, Accenture reported that 90% of companies already had programs that gave you “free” stuff for making purchases.

But these plans can come at a cost.

Loyalty being punished?

If you’ve noticed the perks aren’t as perky as they were when you first joined a given club, you might not be imagining things. The Washington Post looked into potential loyalty paranoia and instead found that Starbucks and other companies might use your info to cut back on your deals through surveillance pricing:

• Former FTC officials Samuel Levine and Stephanie Nguyen told the outlet that some companies will use AI and your personal data to charge higher prices to specific patrons.
• A study from the Vanderbilt Policy Accelerator and the University of California at Berkeley’s Center for Consumer Law & Economic Justice also found that these programs can invert the idea of loyalty, benefiting companies more than customers.

Data concerns: Ask that app not to track all you want, but some are still able to gather enough data in other ways to determine things like your income and how much money you’re willing to fork over. The author of the WaPo story requested and received his data report from Starbucks, which showed every drink and snack he had bought, every offer he had received, and every tap he made in the app. That kind of data could be shared with dozens of tech firms that specialize in tailoring prices.

Open investigation: The FTC began investigating surveillance pricing in July 2024, but when the Trump administration took office, it halted the probe. Levine and Nguyen said they’d like to see it resume. Noting that in some cases loyalty programs may be the only path to a discount, Levine told WaPo, “We shouldn’t be put in a position where we have to decide between affording our groceries and protecting our privacy.”—DL

You might wait to buy a new mattress on Presidents Day or Memorial Day, but if you want to camp out outside a big-box store and possibly get in a fist fight on your way through the door, there’s only one Black Friday. And unlike those other two, the “holiday” is all about shopping—and it’s not the only one, as made-up discount celebrations proliferate.

Where does Black Friday come from?

• The term originated in a very different corner of capitalism, as it was the descriptor given to a September 1869 stock market crash brought on by a panic caused by gold speculators.
• It reemerged in Philadelphia in the 1950s, and this time it was about the day after Thanksgiving—but not yet about getting cheap gifts at the start of the holiday season. The day fell between Turkey Day and the Army–Navy football game, bringing huge crowds to the city and straining its police force.
• Clever retailers latched onto the name in the 1980s, creating the shopping ritual we now know. This time, “black” was used like accountants do, to reflect profitability, as opposed to being in the red.

Black Friday has spawned imitators…with Small Business Saturday and Cyber Monday rounding out the shopping weekend. The National Retail Federation expects that a record 186.9 million people will shop during the five-day period following Thanksgiving this year. And some retailers have cooked up their own special shopping days, with Amazon’s Prime Day, born in July 2015, chief among them. The “day,” which now lasts several days twice a year, has copycats of its own, with competitors like Walmart and Target staging sales at similar times.

But the biggest one has yet to feature on most US calendars: There’s a shopping holiday in China known as Singles Day that recently generated ~$150 billion in sales—more than Black Friday and Prime Day combined. Falling on Nov. 11 (picked for all the ones in the date), it’s the main sales event for China’s answer to Amazon, Alibaba. This year, the deals ran for nearly a month, leading to new records.—AR