Black Friday Is Eight Weeks Out. Here's What to Do Now.

Black Friday falls on 27 November this year, with Cyber Monday on the 30th. That's 58 days away, which sounds like nothing needs doing yet.

It isn't. The single most valuable thing you can do about Black Friday is done in September and October, not in November — and it takes about fifteen minutes.

Why September is when the work happens

Here's the uncomfortable finding that should shape everything else. Researchers who tracked prices through a Black Friday found that roughly 36% of online items offered no saving at all compared with what they cost in the weeks before Black Friday. For about a fifth of products, prices climbed around 8% in the run-up to Thanksgiving — and were then "discounted" from that inflated number.

You cannot detect this in November. On Black Friday all you can see is the price and the claimed discount, and by then the "before" number is whatever the retailer says it is. The only defence is a record you made earlier — which is why this is a September job.

When the deals are real, incidentally, they're worth having: the average genuine discount in that same research came out around 24%. The problem isn't that Black Friday is fake. It's that roughly a third of it is, and you can't tell which third without a baseline.

The fifteen-minute version

1. Write the list. Ten items maximum — the things you actually intend to buy, gifts included. A list made in September is a list made before the marketing starts, which is the entire point.
2. Record today's price next to each one. A note on your phone is enough. Include the store, because the same model is often priced differently at three retailers.
3. Set price alerts where you can, so you're told rather than having to check. Browser and app-based price trackers cover most major retailers, and Amazon's own tooling is covered in our Amazon money-saving features guide.
4. Note the model number exactly, including any suffix. Retailer-exclusive model variants exist precisely so the same-looking TV can't be price-compared across stores.

That's it. Everything else in this article is refinement.

What happens between now and the 27th

The October stop is the one people miss. Amazon runs an autumn sales event, and for a specific slice of the catalogue that event — not Black Friday — is the annual low.

Buy in October, or wait?

That rule does most of the work. An Echo or a Kindle has no competitive pressure in November, because only one company sets its price — so Amazon discounts it when it wants attention, in October. A mid-range OLED sits in five retailers' Black Friday ads competing against each other, and that competition is what produces the floor.

The gap is real money: an October event might take $50–100 off a laptop that goes $150–250 off in late November.

The return window is a tool, not a footnote

Most large retailers extend returns over the holidays: items bought from roughly late October or November through December stay returnable into late January, rather than the usual 30 days. That's what makes buying early safe — a good October price with a January return window is strictly better than gambling on November.

Three things to get right:

• The exact dates are published in October and November. Don't plan around last year's; check the retailer's holiday returns page once it goes up.
• Carve-outs are common. Apple products and phones frequently get a shorter deadline than everything else in the same policy.
• Restocking fees survive the extension. Best Buy, for instance, charges up to 15% on opened electronics and a flat fee on activatable devices like phones and tablets. An extended window is not the same as a free return.

And if something you already bought drops further during the sales, you may not need to return it at all — many retailers will refund the difference if you ask, which is the whole of our price adjustment guide.

Three ways people lose money on the day

Being convinced by the percentage. A big number struck off an invented "original" price is the most common trick in the season, and it's the same skill as reading a clearance tag: check the history, not the claim.

Spending $40 to save $8 on shipping. Free-shipping thresholds are designed to do exactly this. If the filler item isn't on your list, the shipping was cheaper.

Chasing doorbusters. The headline TV at an implausible price usually exists in tiny quantities, frequently in a retailer-exclusive configuration built to that price. It's advertising, and the stock runs out in minutes.

One more that isn't a mistake so much as a missed option: for electronics, compare the Black Friday price against open-box and refurbished stock, which is deepest right now and often beats the sale price with a better warranty. That comparison is in our refurbished buying guide.

The short version: Black Friday is 27 November, about a third of its "deals" aren't discounts, and you cannot tell which from inside November. So spend fifteen minutes this week writing down ten items and what they cost today. Buy Amazon's own products in October, wait until the 27th for TVs, laptops, appliances and consoles, and use the extended return window rather than betting against it. For the year-round version of this timing question, see our best-time-to-buy calendar. More of today's deals are below.