Black Friday's coming: How to be a pro at finding the best deals (The Daily Charge, 11/25/2019)

Black Friday and Cyber Monday almost upon us. We've got the cheapskate himself for Broida to guide us through the craziest shopping period of the year. Stick around for the [UNKNOWN] [MUSIC] Welcome the daily charts Monday, November 25. [UNKNOWN] And joining us via Skype is the cheapskate himself Rick brighter. guys. So without further [UNKNOWN] let's get ourselves ready for Black Friday. Thanksgiving is a mere few days away. So that means we're entering the shopping frenzy knows Black Friday. Over the years, it's grown into a full blown multi day extravaganza stretching into Cyber Monday and beyond. And that's why we've got Rick, Rick just to start off. What are some basic tips that you have anyone approaching the next few days in terms of survival? My gosh! Start with a big tumbler of vodka. That's my most important tip. [LAUGH] Because it's insane. This is not Black Friday or even Black Friday week. It's Black Friday season. things been going on for a month. Feels like it, feels like it. We've got tons of black Friday guides on the site already. Just curious, there's a lot out there, so how does one actually weed out and figure out what the best deals are, and what are actually deals. Right so of course I think the key thing to remember here is to look for the stuff that you want. You probably want to eyeballing whether it's Air Pods or a Nintendo Switch or whatever for a while now. So now is the time to see is this thing on sale for me. And try not to get distracted by all the noise and all the other stuff. I mean No question, even this jaded cheapskate guy here, I feel there's a lot of really great deals this year. But it's just too easy to get distracted and end up spending more than you were maybe planning to do. So for now, focus on what you want, and find that deal. So, wreck This is a question because I cover e commerce. I get this question a lot from friends and family as far as is the whole thing a scam? As far as Black Friday and Cyber Monday in that the retailers will just increase prices just ahead and then pretend that they're slashing them to lower prices. So when you're talking about some of these are really great deals are they significantly lower than what you would find at other points of the year Well, so that's a great question and I understand the skepticism of that because I say that everyday is black Friday in my cheap skate business. You can see for yourself. Like'll use the Nintendo Swtich lite as an example. That retails for 200 dollars and so if anybody's artificially inflating that price you'll know it. And right now, in fact, as of this morning I spotted a Switch Lite deal for $175. That's a pretty rare discount on a very in demand item this year. But I will say, you can kinda find out for yourself, there's a couple of tools that will let you check the price history for any given product. So you can see for yourself, did this used to cost more Has this ever been on sale for the last? And if so, you kinda know if you're maybe getting a little something, well, scammy is going on. One of those tools is called Camel Camel Camel. I don't know why. And that's for checking Amazon price And then there's another one called honey that lets you check price history is that a bunch of other stores.>> And so I mean, we've talked a little bit about strategy and how to hunt for the things Ricky has run through some of the the deals that you've seen so far that have popped out in your mind? Right, so there was that switch deal that I just mentioned for 25 bucks off, that's pretty hot boys and a couple others just crossed my radar this morning. If you look over my shoulder here you can see I have a couple of the Arcade1UP cabinets which I really love just for the nostalgia factor and a couple of those are on sale at Walmart right now for 149 which is about as low as I've ever seen them. Think Galaga and Final Fight are on sale for that price. So that's fantastic. There's some game console bundles like an Xbox One all digital edition. That's also 149 that's pretty amazing. So their deals are coming and there's more coming this week. Before I forget. If you're looking to buy the Echo Show 8 from Amazon, which is still pre-order by the way, it's been on sale for 99, for 100 bucks basically over the last week or so. It is going to be on sale for Cyber Monday starting Saturday for 80 bucks. So that's an all-time low on a product that isn't even shipping yet. Wow, that is Yeah, Amazon Amazon really Am so excited Like shave off the prices on their devices because it's like their own devices they make them Right We've seen that with the Echo Dot right, right that they typically they always say this is the lowest price ever. And what they do is instead of last year where it was $25 it's 2499 or 2497. [LAUGH] Yeah. But they still, if you are at all interested in buying any eco products Black Friday, Cyber Monday is a really good time to look at those prices. I'm curious Rick just so you know Amazon devices obviously go on sale during this time. You mentioned video game deals are there potential or specific categories that tend to get the best deals during Black Friday and Cyber Cyber Monday. You know what? I'm seeing a lot of right now our deals on TVs, which no surprise there, but a lot of audio stuff. I'm seeing some like really crazy good deals on headphones, especially like not only just air pods and airpod alternatives, but over the air stuff, the noise cancelling stuff, the Bose, The Beats the JBLs Sennheiser is seeing the Sennheiser HD 4 dot 50 I don't know why they call it [LAUGH] [UNKNOWN] Is so bad That is on sale for 80 bucks today at at Best Buy, whereas it's normally 180. So man if you're looking for headphones right now, this is the time. Our own magazine has all the details of a Ben like in terms of these these tariffs are these Is this something that folks need to be worried about for next year? Yeah, definitely. I mean like this is this is probably one of the first times is really going to hit people in the pocketbook. Yep. A lot of the other tariffs were really business related or they're behind the scenes really, there are a lot of exceptions that were made for For this exam a period so so and that's the Trump administration basically trying to walk the tightrope of saying we're trying to take a serious position with our China trade war, but at the same time we don't want to mess up the holiday season. We obviously understand that this is really important to the economy is really important to retailers. So having those tariffs kicking too early, we have depressed holiday sales and. By all the numbers but it's supposed to be a really good holiday for retailers. So let's make sure we keep that going. And digging into Maggie story, which is fascinating all of the nuance to it. One warning she did offer was that because of all the attention about the terrorists, some retailers or some vendors may actually jack up Prices for this holiday season and blame the terrorists. So just keep that in mind as you're kind of looking for deals, consult [UNKNOWN] consult@cnetdeals.com or @cnetdeals on Twitter, we've got all this stuff. So the Daily Charge [UNKNOWN] Roger Chang, I'm Ben Fox Ruben. Thanks for joining us. [MUSIC] Can't get enough? Check out the daily supercharge. Our extended post show with special features audience Q&A and in depth reviews available now. Wherever you get your podcasts