The minute all the Halloween decorations were taken down, Christmas decorations went up (on November 1st!!!), and Black November crept in.
The hysterical push to buy buy buy comes earlier and earlier each year. If you are strategic, this is a good time to buy, but you have to be savvy.
- buy things you use regularly
- buy things you have wanted to try but they were too expensive
- take the opportunity to make large purchases (a dishwasher or nice winter coat)
- buy advent calendars after Christmas, only if you will use over 80% of the items.
Fundamental to all the above is that you know what the regular retail price is. In the middle of October, I made a list of everything I need or will be needing and put them in my basket in online shops that allow things to stay in your basket. If I was not able to do that (some baskets empty overnight), I used a price tracker to track the average prices of items over the past six months. What shocked me is how many of these retailers have raised their prices by 20 to 30 per cent over the last week. This allows them to legally drop the price of these items in the next few weeks and proclaim a bigger discount in their advertising, while still staying within the law.
The EU Price Indication Directive (PID) prevents businesses from artificially inflating the original price to make a discount seem more significant than it is. When a sale is advertised, the previous price shown must be the lowest price the item was sold at for at least 30 days before the sale began.
Several large and reputable chains were fined earlier this year for deceptive Black Friday discounts. They were showing a previous price that was higher than the item was ever sold at. So now they have raised the prices before slashing them, keeping themselves within the law but being flexible with the truth regarding their customers.
It is true that more people nowadays expect constant sales and discounts more than ten years ago. Prices have shot up and people have less disposal income. Shops do have to turn a profit or they will fail. Interestingly, the threshold between petty theft (shoplifting) and theft in Sweden went from 500kr to 1250kr (since 2019) to 1500kr (last Thursday) due to increasing prices.
