Nathan Burrow
Appearances
The Daily
From Wirecutter: Don't Get Swindled on Black Friday
Welcome back to The Wirecutter Show. In today's episode, we're breaking down Black Friday with Wirecutter Senior Deals Editor Nathan Burrow. Nathan, before the break, you said your team posts deals in every category Wirecutter covers, over 40 categories. Of these, which are the ones that are most likely to have the best deals?
The Daily
From Wirecutter: Don't Get Swindled on Black Friday
Well, the good news is you'll find pretty good deals on almost every product category. But historically, we've found particularly good deals in two categories. One would be small kitchen appliances, and the other is electronics like TVs, laptops, etc. Why is that? To a degree, there is an element of unloading merchandise, especially with the electronics product category.
The Daily
From Wirecutter: Don't Get Swindled on Black Friday
Many electronics like tablets, laptops, headphones, they get refreshed pretty regularly on a yearly basis. So clearing old stock can become important for retailers. and they're able to discount those items more substantially as they age.
The Daily
From Wirecutter: Don't Get Swindled on Black Friday
That's slightly less the case with small kitchen appliances, but the margins on kitchen appliances are such that I think they can really afford to discount them by quite a bit during a Black Friday or Cyber Monday.
The Daily
From Wirecutter: Don't Get Swindled on Black Friday
Nathan, I am a renter, so I'm not really looking to buy appliances right now. What else is good to buy on Black Friday?
The Daily
From Wirecutter: Don't Get Swindled on Black Friday
Black Friday is unexpectedly a great time to get deals on regular stuff, those everyday essentials. It might be strange to see an amazing deal on, you know, toys for your dog alongside deals on a MacBook, but it does happen.
The Daily
From Wirecutter: Don't Get Swindled on Black Friday
So if you're somebody who is always looking for the latest and greatest tech, Black Friday might not be great for you in that respect. Laptops with M4 chips, the newest iPhone, stuff like that, they may see small introductory discounts, but most of the time, they don't see discounts that we're going to see later as we get farther away from those release dates.
The Daily
From Wirecutter: Don't Get Swindled on Black Friday
The other product categories that don't see discounts on Black Friday itself are from brands or retailers that do not participate in the event. And those do exist. They are usually outdoor retailers we've found. So REI does not have Black Friday sales. Patagonia also does not participate in Black Friday.
The Daily
From Wirecutter: Don't Get Swindled on Black Friday
But they also have annual events of their own, like REI's anniversary sale, that will allow you to get the best deals of the year on their stuff.
The Daily
From Wirecutter: Don't Get Swindled on Black Friday
Yes, I was just doing this yesterday, in fact, with one of our waffle maker picks. Basically what I do and what I would recommend that shoppers do is I match the exact model number from the review that you're looking at or from the ad that you're looking at against the model number that you see at the product listing. And that's a way to guarantee that you're getting exactly what you wanted.
The Daily
From Wirecutter: Don't Get Swindled on Black Friday
And as a result, you're getting the features that you wanted and you're getting the quality of product that you wanted because you've matched up those model numbers to ensure that it's the exact same thing.
The Daily
From Wirecutter: Don't Get Swindled on Black Friday
So browser extensions are to the right of your search bar. There's a little icon. As you travel around the Internet, it basically registers what you're looking at. It's like an app. that accompanies your browsing online. You may have seen these coupon-based extensions, and the biggest ones are Honey and Capital One.
The Daily
From Wirecutter: Don't Get Swindled on Black Friday
So every year, our entire newsroom, about 100 journalists across dozens of beats, scours the internet to find true bargains. And every year, there's one person whose job it is to oversee all of this. And he's here with us today. Senior deals editor Nathan Burrow.
The Daily
From Wirecutter: Don't Get Swindled on Black Friday
More or less the way those work is when you take an item to cart, they will provide either internally sourced or crowdsourced suggestions for coupon codes you can use at checkout. that have worked previously. Those extensions will work and we use them to identify potential coupon codes that we can surface for our readers. They're free. But just be aware that nothing is really free on the Internet.
The Daily
From Wirecutter: Don't Get Swindled on Black Friday
Really what they're doing is they're tracking your browsing information, as many extensions do. The other thing that these extensions do is when you utilize them and when you click on them in order to get the additional tracking information or in order to get the coupon, they will ultimately collect the affiliate revenue associated with you purchasing that product.
The Daily
From Wirecutter: Don't Get Swindled on Black Friday
So they get a little percentage of what you spent on the product that you ultimately purchased if you used the extensions.
The Daily
From Wirecutter: Don't Get Swindled on Black Friday
Be careful of getting stuck in the sort of Google shopping cul-de-sac. People think that they're doing comparison shopping when they enter something in to a Google search. But in truth, it's not as broad a selection of options as they think it is. They have incentives to send you to retailers and provide you with information that may not serve you best.
The Daily
From Wirecutter: Don't Get Swindled on Black Friday
They'll show you the retailers they want you to see. They'll show you, as a result, the prices that they want you to see.
The Daily
From Wirecutter: Don't Get Swindled on Black Friday
Exactly. Just like a brick and mortar retailer, Google now, they are incentivized to sort of put things where you can see them the most. And so it's something that I caution shoppers about, you know, they need to know that there's more than just what they'll see from that initial page, we recommend doing some further digging.
The Daily
From Wirecutter: Don't Get Swindled on Black Friday
All right, Nathan, before we wrap, we usually ask all our guests to tell us about the last thing they bought that they really loved. But since this isn't a typical episode, I want to go off script and ask if there's anything you're planning to buy today or this weekend with an epic Black Friday discount.
The Daily
From Wirecutter: Don't Get Swindled on Black Friday
So, Nathan, can you tell us how deal sweeping works and what you guys are up to on Black Friday?
The Daily
From Wirecutter: Don't Get Swindled on Black Friday
So one of the things that I'm looking for this weekend is an awesome deal on a turntable. I am looking in particular at one of our picks from a company called Projects. I had a turntable that served me well for many years, but I'm finally looking to upgrade.
The Daily
From Wirecutter: Don't Get Swindled on Black Friday
Absolutely. During Black Friday and Cyber Monday, my team is going through all of the potential deals that are flagged by our expert editorial staff. We are also searching organically out in the world. We're checking price alerts that we've set in order to identify price drops. And so really, it's about going through...
The Daily
From Wirecutter: Don't Get Swindled on Black Friday
The thousands upon thousands of sales that we see out there, vetting those sales and then identifying the ones that are actually real price drops.
The Daily
From Wirecutter: Don't Get Swindled on Black Friday
Well, we don't know quite yet because we're recording prior to Black Friday coming to a close, but I can tell you that last year. we reviewed 147,712 potential deals. And it's never failed to grow year over year. So it'll probably be a little more than that this year.
The Daily
From Wirecutter: Don't Get Swindled on Black Friday
Ultimately, we only recommended 1,344. And that's about 1%, which is pretty consistent in terms of the percentage that we identify that are real deals over the years.
The Daily
From Wirecutter: Don't Get Swindled on Black Friday
That is wild. Broad strokes, what are you actually looking for? How does something make the cut?
The Daily
From Wirecutter: Don't Get Swindled on Black Friday
It has to be a substantial discount, a meaningful discount on, of course, a quality product. Let me give you an example. The UE Wonderboom 4, that's Wirecutter's top portable Bluetooth speaker. Right now it's on sale. I don't know if you hear my air quotes there, but it's on sale very regularly at $80,000. But we've observed the price fall to $75 on a few occasions.
The Daily
From Wirecutter: Don't Get Swindled on Black Friday
It's been as low as $70 on one occasion. And since products in the Bluetooth speaker category tend to gradually fall in price from the time that they're released, we think a reasonable target for the speaker right now is $70 to $75. We're looking for around about the lowest price we've ever seen. $80, which is consistently framed as a sale by retailers, is not a real discount anymore.
The Daily
From Wirecutter: Don't Get Swindled on Black Friday
Yes, typically we look for something that either matches or betters that lowest price we've seen all year. And on Black Friday, you'll see a lot of retailers offer what appears to be the best price of the year, 30 to 40%. But that's not actually true. Often they're overstating the full price because they inflate the list price.
The Daily
From Wirecutter: Don't Get Swindled on Black Friday
So it's actually usually a smaller percentage than that, more like 10 to 15% off the regular street price. And we're looking for something that's even better than that 10% to 15% in order to make our cut. Really, it's going to vary from product category to product category.
The Daily
From Wirecutter: Don't Get Swindled on Black Friday
For something like a MacBook Air, which can retail for over $1,000 depending on the configuration, a 10 percent discount can be really impactful. But for something under $100, we prefer much larger discounts percentage-wise because we want the amount saved to be meaningful. Ultimately, if you go through the deals that we post during Black Friday, Cyber Monday, this entire week,
The Daily
From Wirecutter: Don't Get Swindled on Black Friday
The average percentage off we generally settle on is around 20% to 25%. It's a far cry from the massive discount percentages that a lot of retailers will claim they're giving you. But it's really a realistic percentage off that is truly some of the better pricing of the year. And we find that that's consistent across product categories during Black Friday. Okay.
The Daily
From Wirecutter: Don't Get Swindled on Black Friday
Are there any new categories you're recommending this year?
The Daily
From Wirecutter: Don't Get Swindled on Black Friday
Yes. So Wirecutter has started to recommend a lot more in the way of apparel and cosmetics and gifts. You'll probably see more deals highlighted on drugstore cosmetics, makeup, and other beauty items from Ulta and Sephora this holiday season.
The Daily
From Wirecutter: Don't Get Swindled on Black Friday
Unfortunately, it's gotten harder. There are more retailers involved than ever before in these big deal events, and the shopping experience is honestly more opaque than ever before. And so we're trying to sort of puncture the hype. We're trying to identify the real stuff. And the sales have also gotten longer, which makes for some confusing dynamics for shoppers.
The Daily
From Wirecutter: Don't Get Swindled on Black Friday
We saw early Black Friday sales start around the turn of the month between October and November. And so... Really, at that point, it's about identifying what you should wait until Black Friday to purchase. Because a lot of retailers will count on you to sort of not take advantage of price protection policies that are in place.
The Daily
From Wirecutter: Don't Get Swindled on Black Friday
Even if you got a sale November 1st and there's a price protection policy in place that would allow you to get refunded, they sort of count on you not taking advantage of that, not going back in store and getting refunded the difference when the price drops another 10% on Black Friday. So when that dynamic exists, it puts the onus back on the shopper to take action to get that difference refunded.
The Daily
From Wirecutter: Don't Get Swindled on Black Friday
And in a sense, it kind of operates like a rebate where shoppers, you know, they may take advantage of it, but they often don't. In that sense, retailers are potentially ensuring that they're able to pad the bottom line a little bit.
The Daily
From Wirecutter: Don't Get Swindled on Black Friday
Yeah. At this point, there are three different Amazon Prime events that pop up throughout the year. as opposed to the one when I started at Wirecutter. And then during those windows, we're seeing sales from other major retailers like Best Buy, like Target, Walmart.
The Daily
From Wirecutter: Don't Get Swindled on Black Friday
And of course, the smaller retailers and direct-to-consumer retailers get in on the act at various points throughout the year as well, especially during the Black Friday and Cyber Monday window.
The Daily
From Wirecutter: Don't Get Swindled on Black Friday
So there are three main reasons. And the first one is... related to price and how it's presented. And that's the MSRP, probably seen that abbreviation. It stands for Manufacturer Suggested Retail Price. So basically, in a nutshell, the MSRP is the term used for prices suggested by manufacturers for retailers. Those retailers pay wholesale prices
The Daily
From Wirecutter: Don't Get Swindled on Black Friday
And then they mark the price up to a price of their choosing. In the modern day, MSRP is often ignored by retailers in favor of their own pricing approach. So you'll see list prices that are totally divorced from MSRP. I will say it's often used as a benchmark to set pricing or to give the perception of a discount. And we've all heard those ads from car dealers that tout their price versus MSRP.
The Daily
From Wirecutter: Don't Get Swindled on Black Friday
More often than not, it's really just another form of discount manipulation.
The Daily
From Wirecutter: Don't Get Swindled on Black Friday
So how does your team work around this to get to the true discounts?
The Daily
From Wirecutter: Don't Get Swindled on Black Friday
So we use something called street price. And that's a term we use for what we perceive the everyday price of a given product to be. If there are a lot of price swings, we tend to use an average for the street price. So something that's 40 one week and then 50 the next and then back to 40 would have a street price of 45.
The Daily
From Wirecutter: Don't Get Swindled on Black Friday
Our goal is to just identify what a reader would pay on a normal basis without the sort of price manipulation that you might see in making the list price or the full price seem like more than it is.
The Daily
From Wirecutter: Don't Get Swindled on Black Friday
And earlier you said that there are three main reasons why it's so hard to find a good deal. What's the second reason it's so hard to discern a true bargain from a fake one?
The Daily
From Wirecutter: Don't Get Swindled on Black Friday
So this one is another acronym, largely on the manufacturers, and it's called MAP pricing, which stands for minimum advertised price. So in order for a retailer to carry a manufacturer's product, they will often broker an agreement where the retailer cannot openly advertise a price that is lower than than a price that is predetermined by the manufacturer. Retailers have ways to get around that.
The Daily
From Wirecutter: Don't Get Swindled on Black Friday
So you'll see things like on-page coupons when you go to a product listing or verbiage that indicates that the sale price will reflect only when you add something to cart. What that creates is a situation where it actually makes it harder for people that are shopping online to identify something that's on sale readily.
The Daily
From Wirecutter: Don't Get Swindled on Black Friday
And some retailers might want to advertise and give you a better price, but they can't. And so in a sense, it's a little anti-competitive because it disincentivizes them in terms of offering a price so good, it'll set the market and get you as a shopper through the door because you have to be there on site already to see it. And so if you can't see it before you're there,
The Daily
From Wirecutter: Don't Get Swindled on Black Friday
There's really no reason for them to try to push to provide this rock bottom price. This makes determining the price, the everyday price of a product difficult and sometimes impossible from a shopping search. So customers don't have ready access to information about pricing when they're going around shopping on the internet casually.
The Daily
From Wirecutter: Don't Get Swindled on Black Friday
A lot of retailers out there will track other retailers' pricing. And so there's a lot of... Amazon is probably the best example of a company that is really algorithmically... tracked the pricing of other major retailers out there, immediately matches that pricing, and as a result, is trying to make itself the only game in town.
The Daily
From Wirecutter: Don't Get Swindled on Black Friday
They will match a Walmart price if Walmart drops price to a certain point. They will match a Best Buy price if Best Buy drops its price to a certain point. And so, in that sense, retailers track one another, which sets the market, but it does not drop below that pricing
The Daily
From Wirecutter: Don't Get Swindled on Black Friday
Unless they decide to take one of those extraordinary measures and have that on-page coupon or have the price that reflects in card.
The Daily
From Wirecutter: Don't Get Swindled on Black Friday
One of the things that you have to look out for is definitely that verbiage that exists on our product listing page.
The Daily
From Wirecutter: Don't Get Swindled on Black Friday
And so while it might take a little bit of additional effort, it's worth clicking through on the retailer of your choice to see if the product listing has that coupon verbiage or if there's verbiage on that product listing page that says, you know, see price in cart or deal price reflects in cart.
The Daily
From Wirecutter: Don't Get Swindled on Black Friday
And then you can go ahead and take the additional steps to ensure that that price is what you hoped it would be.
The Daily
From Wirecutter: Don't Get Swindled on Black Friday
OK, so you really have to do your due diligence. Nathan, what's the third thing you really want to look out for?
The Daily
From Wirecutter: Don't Get Swindled on Black Friday
Unfortunately, things that are cheap, like blowout TVs and clearance bin items and stuff like that, things that are cheap during Black Friday might actually be cheap as in cheaply made. During Black Friday, if you want a TV, it's a stereotype, but every year we see the big discounts on those cheapo models. Sometimes they're brand names that you've never even heard of.
The Daily
From Wirecutter: Don't Get Swindled on Black Friday
And retailers will often show them side by side with brand name models that are better. And for the uninitiated, they tend to look the same. They're even...
The Daily
From Wirecutter: Don't Get Swindled on Black Friday
Models within the same line of television where some models are from a given brand are good and some models are specifically released around the holiday season or are released to be a model that can potentially be discounted to an incredibly low price, but they're of lower quality. And that's something that you have to bear in mind and be cautious of when you're shopping.
The Daily
From Wirecutter: Don't Get Swindled on Black Friday
100%, especially if you're looking at things like sales periodicals, which are omnipresent during the season. We recommend that you click through, that you actually read reviews, that you look at specific model numbers and features to identify the PV model or the model of any other electronic that works this way so that you're able to make sure that you get a quality item.
The Daily
From Wirecutter: Don't Get Swindled on Black Friday
Yeah, absolutely. So for years and years, there were retailers like Target and even a Walgreens or a Costco would have like a physical booklet, and some of them still do, that shows you the products that will be on sale. It's generally broken out by category. And it was sort of a pre-internet way to get people into brick-and-mortar stores.
The Daily
From Wirecutter: Don't Get Swindled on Black Friday
Now those periodicals, they're released in advance of an event like Bike Friday. Sometimes those advertisements are meant to get you there in the hopes that you'll stay there.