A few lessons that only rampant consumerism can teach us…
1 Friday Lasts All Week
And the week before. And the week after. The whole idea of Black Friday is that it’s a sales period that comes after Thanksgiving, an American celebration that has nothing to do with us, and now we can’t even stick to the day that’s actually in the name. Instead, retailers declare long in advance that ‘Black Friday lasts all week!’, then when the Friday in question arrives, ‘Black Friday lasts all weekend’, and then when it’s over, we’re told it’s Cyber Monday. No doubt we’ll soon be told that it lasts all week, then retailers will probably just give a special name to every day of the year, all with the explicit intention of making people spend money they don’t have.
2 A Lot Of Deals Are Rubbish
Even though we’re more than a little cynical about this whole thing, we’re not going to let our cynicism stop us from getting a bargain, so we still peruse various shopping sites to see if anything takes our fancy. A lot of the time, however, the ‘amazing’ deals that are promoted are frankly terrible. There were some decent discounts this year, as well as some more modest ones, like £10 here and £20 there, but what we noticed was that a lot of things weren’t actually cheaper than they are normally. In fact, many of the big ‘discounts’ were entirely fabricated, with the quoted pre-discount price being either an RRP or a price that was slowly inflated beforehand in preparation for the sales.
3 It Seems A Lot More Civilised This Year
One thing we like about the spreading out of Black Friday is that people aren’t so inclined to rush out to shops or head online all at the same time. This year, there were no news reports of people pushing over pensioners or children to get to games consoles, and none of the big retail websites crashed under the load of bargain hunters visiting them. Things instead were much more sedate, and that’s far more preferable. We suspect, also, that a lot of people are staying away because they know the entire idea of Black Friday is in fact a bit of a con. Well, we did say we were cynical.
4 Self Control
For all our cynicism, we do admit there were some genuine deals to be found, but then the problem for us became not taking retailers up on every single bargain we could find. But with the right combination of deep breathing, relaxation and constant checking of our bank balance, we were able to stop ourselves from buying 12 Android tablets we didn’t need just because they were cheap. As a result, we managed to retain the cash we’d put aside for other slightly more important things like food and heating. On the downside, you can’t play Words With Friends on a loaf of bread.
5 Wait For January
For us, Black Friday isn’t really necessary. We’ve had a traditional sales period in the UK for many years already, and it takes place in January. Whether or not the deals at this time are any better than Black Friday is up for debate, but we’re not convinced we need the latter. And by sticking with the January sales and avoiding Black Friday, maybe can convince retailers that we don’t need to copy American ideas and that we’re not interested in buying stuff we don’t need just because a tenner has been knocked off a price that they never charged in the first place.