With Black Friday gone and Cyber Monday here, the Christmas shopping season is fully upon us. With retailers spending so much time trying to attract our money, it is no surprise that we will see ads full of "deals." However, with tech products (and many other categories), be careful to fully research a product before buying it.
Yes, there are great deals out there this time of year! Many companies will offer some deals as "loss leaders". These deals actually cost the company money (they sell the item for less than they paid for it). Their goal is to use that deal to get you in the door so you will buy other items to make up for the loss on the deal.
However, many other products are advertised as "deals" when they are actually just the lowest-priced item in their category being sold at its regular price. Two years ago, I got caught by a special deal on a tablet. While it actually had good specs for a tablet and its $60 price tag was appealing, I purchased it only to find out that it was actually almost worthless for me. For example, it advertised that you could "download apps from the pre-loaded app store", it never specified that it was referring to a third-party app store, not Google Play. Since I had purchased it to be able to make use of a few specific apps that were only available through the Google Play app store, I quickly returned it for a more expensive version.
Also, make sure to read the fine print. While there are plenty of "free phone" deals, you might ultimately be better off by purchasing a phone at full price and avoiding the expensive on-contract plans.
The key to getting great deals this month is to evaluate every deal before getting sucked in by a low price! Even though the ad may make it sound like a competitor to the iPad, a $20 Android tablet (yes, I saw one in a Black Friday ad) is not going to be very powerful. Great deals are out there; just make sure you are getting a deal and not a dud before you buy!
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