Real Black Friday Deal, Padded Discount or Scam? Six Checks Before You Pay

£299. That is what a Samsung Jet Bot cost at John Lewis for 29 days in May and June 2024, according to a Which? price study. Its Black Friday price at the same store was £350.

So the sale price was higher than the spring price, not lower. The sale badge didn't show that. The price history did.

The 29 days matter too. That was not a one-day glitch. The lower price held for weeks, months before the sale started.

Which? found that this was not unusual. It tracked 175 home, tech and health appliances at eight major retailers from May 2024 to May 2025. It counted November 15 to December 12, 2024 as the Black Friday period. 83% of the products were cheaper or the same price at least once outside that window.

Turn that around and you get the rest of the products. Those were cheaper during the Black Friday period than at any other point Which? recorded that year. So some sale prices really are the year's lowest. The badge just can't tell you which ones.

Earlier Which? work points the same way. In 2021, 85% of products were cheaper or the same in the previous six months, and in 2022 only 2% were genuinely cheaper on the day. Which? ran the later finding under the headline "98% of Black Friday deals weren't worth buying last year."

All of that price data comes from British stores. None of the sources here studies Canadian prices, so it is unknown whether Black Friday pricing in Canada follows the same pattern.

The Jet Bot was caught by its price history, not by its discount. That is what the first four checks below are built on. The last two deal with a different risk: a store that isn't real.

Six checks before you pay

For anything sold with a model number:

1. Copy the exact model number from the listing, every letter and digit.
2. Search for it. Market Realist says that little or no review history suggests a derivative model made for the sale. If that is what you find, compare its specs with the regular model.
3. Look up its price history. Engadget suggests CamelCamelCamel, Keepa or Google Shopping. A tracker shows whether the price was lower earlier. Comments on deal sites don't count as history. Engadget notes that community comments on sites like Slickdeals "are not verified price records." The sources here don't say how well these trackers cover Canadian stores.
4. Compare today's price with the lowest price in that history. Don't compare it with the "was" price or the percentage on the page. In Engadget's words, "a discounted price tells you little on its own." The Jet Bot would have failed this check, because its £350 sale price was above the £299 it had held in the spring.
5. If you don't know the seller, search its name plus "review", "complaint" or "scam". That advice comes from the US Federal Trade Commission's holiday shopping alert.
6. Pay by credit card. The FTC says this lets you dispute the charge if the item never arrives. That is US guidance. These sources don't cover Canadian card dispute rules, so check your cardholder agreement.

You can do all six from the couch, which suits a Winnipeg November.

Three ways a discount gets padded

When the seller is the problem

A padded discount costs you the difference in price. A fake store can take the whole payment. Engadget, citing Bitdefender, reports that scams made up 53% of the Black Friday-related spam analyzed from October 1 to November 10, 2025. That is a share of spam analyzed, not a share of online stores or of purchases. The figure is also secondhand, because Bitdefender's own report isn't among the sources here.

The Which? study looked at prices at eight major retailers. It doesn't measure fake stores. That is why the last two checks are about the seller and the payment, not the price.

The FTC's holiday shopping alert adds two warnings to the seller search in step 5. First, an https address with a padlock doesn't prove a site is legitimate, because scammers know how to encrypt sites too. Second, never buy from an online seller that insists on payment by gift card, wire transfer, payment app or cryptocurrency.

If a US purchase turns out to be a scam, the FTC asks people to report it at ReportFraud.ftc.gov. These sources don't cover where to report one in Canada.

If it were my money, I'd buy this November only when the exact model number has a review history, the price matches or beats the lowest figure in its price history, the seller turns up clean in a search, and I'm paying by credit card.