Watch out for specials that aren't special

Like many people around the country, I have been looking at some of the "Black Friday" specials. First of all, there were very, very few things on sale that I really needed or wanted. Second, even those things I might have been interested in were being advertised at prices that I could find any other day of the year. In addition, I found that the really low prices were for either inferior products or products that were well out-of-date. The special discount was often off of an unrealistic "regular price" that was well above the actual sales price for the product even without the discount.

For example, the ads for special sales in our area are full of large screen monitors at or under $200. But if you examine these monitors or TVs closely, you will find that they have none of the new features incorporated in the slightly more expensive models. Of course, it is always possible that something you have been shopping for goes on sale at a reduced price, but the longer you have been looking for that product, the more likely it is that the product is at the end of its life cycle.

This life cycle issue is a serious one. With computers, for example, Intel has just recently released its 6th generation chips, but only a very few of the currently sold computers have yet to incorporate the new chip set. This means that whatever the discount price of a "new" computer, it is not "new" in the sense that it has the updated chips. On any electronic purchase, it is important to be well aware of the technical specifications of the product being sold at a "discount."

One very helpful solution to these common problems is to search for the same product at different locations online.