Black Friday has lost its luster—at least for some shoppers who have discovered that some deals aren’t what they want them to be.
This week, a video surfaced on TikTok featuring the Fortune 500 home improvement retailer Home Depot allegedly disguised original prices on items with a “Black Friday offer” of the same price. The video went viral with over half a million views. It shows a customer removing a “holiday sale” price tag from a high-pressure inflator that was listed as $24.97, revealing the same original price underneath.
Home Depot did not respond Wealthrequest for comment on the allegations or whether the company is falsely advertising Black Friday sales. However, if true, retail experts say it could potentially be considered false advertising and would be a bad choice for retailers right now—especially because shrinking inflation and other pricing tactics sowed mistrust among customers.
“Leading retailers invest heavily in their customer relationships, and trust is a major component of that,” Matt Voda, CEO of the marketing software company OptiMinesaid Wealth. “Trust is hard and slow to build, but it is lost very easily and quickly with such practices.”
This is not the first case that has prompted consumers to question the authenticity of Black Friday deals.
“Even before inflation I’ve been to a few Black Friday shopping (events) and the first thing I noticed was that nothing was on sale, the prices looked the same,” one viewer commented on another viral TikTok video showing similar alleged pricing practices. Goal he was also called in 2023 video recording allegedly revealing a television receiver with a retail price of $649.99 while the same price was displayed on the plate below.
“All kinds of price shenanigans have been going on for decades,” Luka Kačerskiassociate professor of marketing at Fordham Gabelli School of Businesssaid Wealth. “For example, retailers display things like, ‘regular $Xnow $Y”, although it’s hard to imagine the seller ever actually offering the item – or anyone ever buying it – at the ‘regular’ price.”
A Target spokesperson said New York Post at the time, however, that the TVs “were on sale before Black Friday as part of our early Black Friday sales.”
To be sure, Kachersky said false advertising is notoriously difficult to prove.
“Of course the price is the same, but the retailer could simply claim that they changed (or) renamed their existing prices for the season,” Kachersky said. “But while that kind of argument might work for a trader in a legal sense, it doesn’t make sense. Consumers will certainly feel exposed.”
Black Friday is not what it used to be
Whether or not you’ve been accused of falsely discounting prices, it’s not just in your head: Many retailers aren’t offering nearly as good deals as they once were, retail experts say.
“In most cases, the ‘doorbuster’ offers of the past no longer exist, and price discounts have become smaller and more intelligent,” said Voda. That’s thanks to advanced analytics that allow retailers to see the “sweet spot” between generating demand and securing profits, he said, which informs them of key moments to cut prices throughout the year.
Expert in budgeting and personal finance Andrea Woroch also told Wealth the difference between today’s Black Friday deals and the Black Fridays of ten years ago is that consumers don’t see as wide a variety of discounts. While she said she’s seen some “good deals” on select items like 52% off a Nespresso machine at Bloomingdales and 50% off Beats wireless headphones at Target, not everything touted as a Black Friday sale is actually a good deal.
“You just have to remember that not everything is good and don’t get caught up in the buying frenzy that these sales events create,” Woroch said. “Have your list, research, compare prices, find extra savings by stacking coupon codes and watch for price drops.”
