Items with highest secret markups before Black Friday

Shops sometimes secretly raise the prices of certain items before major promotional periods. Then, when the sale starts, they lower the price again and show offers that look better than they really are.

Secret markups are dishonest and can be difficult to spot amongst all the price reductions. Suddenly, that amazing offer is not such a good bargain – instead, you’ll be lucky if you get the item at its normal price.

But how widespread is this actually? We checked the statistics for the ten most popular categories during Black Friday 2020 and 2021, and it’s clear that a large a proportion of the products were secretly marked up before the sale day.

The price of almost one in ten products was raised before Black Friday and then lowered shortly before the sale day. This means there is a real risk you will fall victim to secret markups when looking for offers – without even knowing it.

If you want to be completely sure whether the amazing price is actually markup, you can check our price history. It helps you to understand how prices have changed so that you don’t fall victim to price markups.

Read more about the benefits of checking the price history before you make a purchase.

The statistics above are taken from the PriceSpy Price Index and show the proportion of products with price markups between:

• 1 October and 22 November 2020, and then decreased in price between 23 November and 27 November 2020.
• 1 October and 21 November 2021, and then decreased in price between 22 November and 26 November 2021.