ROCHESTER, N.Y. — Monday’s Consumer Alert is for folks who are doing their holiday shopping from the couch. Cyber Monday is your day for deals but how do you know if it’s a deal or a dud?
This year it’s more important than ever to do a bit of homework before clicking the buy button. The experts at Wirecutter, the consumer division of The New York Times, have been tracking price increases caused by tariffs and they say they’re seeing the biggest price spikes in toys, small electronics and gaming systems. So shopping the sales is essential and smart shopping is key.
How to track prices
Scroll the Cyber Monday deals on Amazon and it looks like the discounts are deep. Some are 40, 50, even 60% off. But all is not as it seems when it comes to holiday sales. Last year Wirecutter, The New York Times consumer site, scanned nearly 200,000 deals.
“And of those, less than 2,000, 1,915 were actually legitimately good deals,” said Kaitlin Mahar of Wirecutter.
That’s because they’re either fake markdowns or great markdowns on bad products. Take for example these $50 Bluetooth earbuds on sale for 51% off. To find out whether this is a good deal, I copy the URL and paste it in the price tracking site CamelCamelCamel.
And I find that over the past two years, these earbuds have rarely sold for $50. In fact, the average price is $29.59, about $5 more than the Cyber Monday sales price of $24.68. This is not a good deal but is a good example of a fake markdown.
But the opposite is true when I research an Amazon Fire Kids Tablet selling for $44.99, 55% off. When I copy and paste the URL in CamelCamelCamel, I see that the actual price is $100 and $44.99 is the lowest price ever for this tablet. This is a very good deal.
And of course every toybox needs a robot. Right. At $75.99 it’s listed at 38% off. And when I check CamelCamelCamel, I find the lowest price for this product was $100 in October. Amazon’s Cyber Monday price of $75.99 is a very good deal. But is it a good product? That’s where Wirecutter comes in.
Deanna Dewberry, News10NBC: “You also look at the quality of the product on sale, right?”
Kaitlin Mahar: “Right. We test what we recommend in our guides and giving our readers at least a jumping off point where they can determine this is a reliable product, a reliable brand and give them sort of a leg up.”
So, you still have plenty of time to score great deals. Just let the experts give you a hand. Wirecutter and Consumer Reports have both analyzed deals based on the quality of the deal and the product. In addition to CamelCamelCamel, Keepa is also a great price tracking site.
The post Consumer Alert: How to spot fake markdowns and score legitimate deals on Cyber Monday appeared first on WHEC.com.
