The 'Was £349.99' Illusion: How to Read Black Friday 2026 Prices Without Getting Fleeced

Black Friday 2026 falls on Friday 27 November, with Cyber Monday on the 30th. If the last few years are anything to go by, the "deals" will have started creeping out in the first week of the month, get properly loud around the 20th, and hit full panto by the weekend. Somewhere in the middle of that you'll see a lot of red text shouting "WAS £349.99 — NOW £189.99".

Some of those are real. Plenty aren't. Here's how to tell the difference without turning your evening into a spreadsheet project.

The reference price is doing all the work

UK pricing guidance says a "was" price should generally be a price the retailer genuinely charged for a decent stretch recently — commonly read as 28 consecutive days within the previous six months. That's the line the Chartered Trading Standards Institute points to, and the Competition and Markets Authority has taken an interest when retailers push it too far.

In practice it's guidance, not a padlock. Which is how you get the classic pattern: nudge the price up for a few weeks in September, drop it back to where it always sat in late November, then slap "40% off" on the return trip. Nothing about your bank balance changed. Only the number on the screen did.

The tell is simple. If a "was" price looks suspiciously round, or noticeably higher than anything you've seen that product sell for all year, treat it as decoration until proven otherwise.

Five minutes of history beats an hour of scrolling

Before you spend more than about £50 this month, do this:

Check a price tracker. CamelCamelCamel and Keepa both chart Amazon UK pricing going back years. PriceRunner and Idealo do similar work across a wider spread of UK retailers — Currys, Argos, John Lewis, AO. If that "£189.99 deal" is the same number the thing sat at for most of August, you haven't found a bargain. You've found the normal price wearing a hat.

Search the model number, not the product name. "Bosch Serie 6 WAT" finds you the exact spec across shops. "Bosch washing machine" finds you marketing.

Check HotUKDeals for the timestamp. If the same item was posted in March at a lower price and picked up a few hundred degrees of heat, that's your real floor.

Compare the "was" on the product page with the "was" on the category page. They don't always match. That tells you something about how much care went into either.

Fix your number before the noise starts

This is the bit almost nobody does, and it's the single most effective defence. On 20 November, while you're calm and nobody is emailing you about a countdown clock, write down the three or four things you actually want and the most you'd happily pay for each.

Then honour it. A discount is not a reason to buy something that wasn't on your list. The whole architecture of the weekend — the timers, the "14 people viewing this right now", the stock bars — exists to make you skip that step.

Two rules that genuinely work:

• The 48-hour rule for anything over £100. Basket it, close the tab, come back two days later. If you've forgotten about it, you didn't want it.
• One tab, one retailer. Comparing across ten sites makes you feel thorough and makes you buy faster, not slower.

Where the cuts tend to be genuine

Not everything is a con. Some categories move because manufacturers are clearing stock, not because a marketing team needed a banner:

• Previous-generation TVs and laptops. When the new model lands in September, the outgoing one gets genuinely cut. Check the model year before you get excited.
• Small kitchen appliances. Air fryers, coffee machines, blenders — brutal competition, thin margins, real reductions, especially on older lines.
• Toys. Genuinely discounted, because retailers are terrified of holding stock into January.
• Beauty and grooming gift sets. Often excellent value per millilitre, provided it's a product you'd have bought anyway.
• Broadband, mobile and insurance renewals. Not a deal in the traditional sense, but late November is a decent moment to ring your provider and ask what they can do.

Where the markdowns are mostly theatre

• Mattresses. An entire industry built on the permanently discounted mattress. Nearly everything is "half price" all year round.
• Fitness trackers and last-year wearables. Frequently cheaper in the January sales.
• Big-name fragrance. Typically "reduced" to roughly the price it sits at in duty-free every other week of the year.
• Anything with a made-up model number. Retailers commission exclusive SKUs specifically so you can't price-match them. If the model appears on exactly one website, that's the reason.

The follow-up email is the real test

If a retailer emails you on 28 November with "EXTENDED! Ends midnight!", the price wasn't a Black Friday price. It was just a price. Same if the very same deal resurfaces in the Boxing Day sale. A genuine stock-clearance discount disappears when the stock does.

The short version

Black Friday 2026 is 27 November. The deals have already started. Almost none are as good as the banner claims, and the handful that are will sit in categories where stock genuinely needs shifting.

Spend twenty minutes checking price history, write your maximums down, and buy only from that list. Do that and you'll come out of the weekend having spent less and bought better than most of the country — which beats a 40% badge on something you never needed.