Amazon have sparked a media furore over their “Black Friday” offers in the UK. Offering lightening deals – short term sales with limited quantities of stock they attempted to kick start UK Christmas sales early in the UK.
Black Friday marks the start of the Christmas holiday shopping season in the US, is the day after the traditional Thanks Giving holiday and is often the busiest retail shopping day of the year. Amazon have imported the Black Friday idea to the UK, but a week earlier than the US Black Friday which will be this week on 26th November. The name is nothing sinister, but recognises many retailers operate at a loss all year and Black Friday heralds the day that retailers come out of the red and into the black with bumper sales.
What Amazon offered was a series of cut price items such as Take That’s “Progress” and Susan Boyle’s “The Gift” CDs at £1, a Ninetendo Wii for £50 along with other offers across categories such as games, perfumes, consumer electronics and Jewellery. The items were advertised as lightening deals but have still sparked attention and disappointment from consumers who failed to buy them before they were sold out.
Amazon have an unrivaled reputation for customer service and for Amazon forums to be full of posts from disgrunted customers as they are at the moment is a rarity. However in fairness to Amazon they did state upfront that buyers would need to check in advance for Lightning Deal timings to have any chance at all of bagging a bargain.
7 Responses
This seems so silly. It was a limited time deal. You didn’t buy it within the limited time. Case closed.
I feel like everyone is always trying to get something for nothing now-a-days.
Just typing that sentence out made me feel really old… *shakes fist at young whippersnappers on lawn*
I tried and failed to buy any deal on Amazon yesterday, it had me so frustrated.
As soon as the “Deal Starts in 00.01” turned into a clickable button I clicked it, Bruce Lee himself couldn’t have clicked it quicker, the result was I didn’t manage to get 1 item into the basket all day.
I won’t be bothering today that’s for sure.
Back in May or June eBay was having some special daily deals thing going on in the US. I wrote a program that hit eBay once every 10 seconds and the moment the deal was posted my laptop made a siren noise and opened up the listing so I could buy it. First day I got a DVD for $1 but the second day I tried to buy and PayPal just threw up an error telling me I hit a speedbump. When I went back to try again the item was sold out. Wasn’t too happy about that one.
I think its a great promotion
Yesterday got:
Le Creuset Cast Iron Round Casserole, Granite, 28 cm
House – Seasons 1-6 [DVD]
Adobe Photoshop Elements 9 (PC/Mac)
Creative GigaWorks HD50 Speakers
Just Dance (Wii)
And best of all for 50 quid:
Nintendo Wii Console with Wii Sports + Wii Sports Resort and Motion Plus Controller
Picked up the saw and lewis this morning too.
I noticed a Toshiba 37″ TV for £249.99 which was due to start at 6.00pm. I patiently sat and watched the timer drop at exactly 6pm I clicked on the link to be shown the TV at £349.99. When I went back to the black Friday page I saw that the TVs allocation was 100% claimed. So in less than a second all of these were sold. When they say lighning fast their not kidding. They are redoing the item at 6pm tonight I wonder how long this one will last.
Bosch Secateurs: Amazon’s normal price £32.50
Eagerly awaited Black Friday price with finger ready to click: £29.99.
Great promotion …. we’re idiots.