Black Friday: see how to avoid buying products with “makeup prices”

Next Friday (25th) Black Friday will take place, a date already famous for its promise to promote large discounts on various products, especially online retailers. However, consumers should beware of misleadingly priced offers.

Expectations from retailers are high. A survey carried out by the analytical intelligence company Boa Vista shows that 44% of entrepreneurs expect to register a turnover higher than that of 2021 on Black Friday this year.

In addition, in a global scenario of higher prices and escalating inflation, consumers should make the most of the date this year, with many of them already anticipating their Christmas shopping.

But the date, created in the United States and adopted by Brazilian retailers, also ended up earning the nickname “Black Fraud”, since many stores adopted the so-called “price make-up”, that is, inflated the value of products days before and after promote the “discounted” sale and give the impression to the consumer that it is a good buying opportunity, which became known as “everything for half the double”.

Therefore, the CNN Brazil Business lists some strategies that can help to circumvent false discounts and find real deals.

prevention and anticipation

For experts, the main tip is prevention and anticipation. That is, consumers must monitor the prices of desired products before Black Friday arrives. Thus, it will be possible to identify whether the supplier is actually offering a real discount.

“It is interesting to check [o produto] in advance and write it down over time to check if, in fact, it will have an interesting price on Black Friday”, guides Lucas Marcon, lawyer in the Relationship area of ​​Idec (Brazilian Institute of Consumer Defense).

Marcon points out that the practice of false discounts is still the main abuse in the consumption relationship, which reinforces the importance of monitoring.

If the consumer makes a purchase and later notices that he ended up paying a higher amount than that practiced by the market, he has the right to demand the fair value.

“In this case, it is important to file a complaint with Procon, which will try to mediate with the company. It is good for the buyer to make a print (a copy of the offer screen) with all the purchase information to prove that he paid a higher amount than what was charged”, advises Marcon.

If, through Procon, the problem is not resolved, the consumer who felt harmed can file a lawsuit free of charge through the special court.

The defense body also advises that people take screenshots or photos of prices in periods prior to Black Friday, which facilitates questions if the price shown on the date is higher or artificially more expensive on the eve of the event to appear to have a big discount.

For those who do not follow up on their own, there are sites that create exclusive pages with the record of the price history of products.

Many of them also provide pluginstools that can be installed on browsers such as Google Chrome and used on shopping sites to compare prices.

zoom

For Black Friday this year, the price comparison platform brings some tools. The consumer can create an alert on the products he wants to buy to receive a notification when an offer occurs.

The site also has a price history that shows in a graph the price variation of a product in the last 40 days or 6 months.

Buscapé

Also with a section for Black Friday, the Buscapé website allows you to search for products by price range and discount. In addition to having price history and offer alerts. The platform provides seals indicating the products they have cashback🇧🇷

real black friday

Launched in 2014, Real Black Friday is yet another platform that can help consumers. The site also offers an extension (plug in) for the browser, which helps the consumer to compare and monitor prices in the largest stores on the internet, in addition to some discount coupons.

The platform has a Term of Commitment, in which all the stores in the campaign sign, pledging to offer real discounts, transparent and safe conditions to the consumer.