Some 2025 Black Friday ‘deals‘ weren’t truly deals

A new analysis conducted using Visualping, a website change-detection tool, found that a significant share of products were actually cheaper before the Black Friday and Cyber Monday weekend.

While monitoring the prices of over 1,500 retail products from the beginning of October through Cyber Monday (Dec. 1), the analysis found that one-third of the deals didn’t offer any real savings and were often more expensive than the lowest prices in October and early November.

On the other hand, two-thirds of deals were genuine and offered the lowest price during the monitored period.

They also noted that on average, the “fake” Black Friday deals were still 37 per cent higher than the product’s actual lowest observed price. In terms of categories, Travel and Games & Hobbies had the highest share of misleading deals (43 per cent), while household items and tech had the lowest (33 per cent).

At the product level, luggage had the highest amount of “fake deals” (61 per cent), followed by microwaves (50 per cent). Good news, though: backpacks (4 per cent) and video games (14 per cent) had the fewest fake deals.

VisualPing states that the 15-inch MacBook Air was listed on sale on Amazon during Black Friday for $1,439.99, and that it was reported to be at its lowest price, $1,337.46. The Dyson V15 had a Black Friday sale at Canadian Tire for just under $1000, with its largest discount coming in mid-October at $949.93.

Sony’s flagship WH-1000XM4 on Best Buy was also listed as one of the actual Black Friday deals. It has a regular price of $429.99, but has been discounted a few times (including Black Friday) to $278. Another actual deal was the Fujifilm INSTAX PAL digital camera, which was listed on sale for $64.99 on Black Friday. At the same time, it had been discounted earlier in October for $79.99, 10 dollars more than the Black Friday sale.

Source: Visualping