“Early Black Friday” deals are where the fake discounts hide

Black Friday has not been a single day for years. “Early Black Friday deals” start appearing in early November, sometimes before, and by the week of Thanksgiving almost every product page carries some kind of badge. The question for a shopper is whether those early deals are as good as the ones on the day itself. Our data suggests they often are not, and it gives a clear reason why.

What we measured

For the Fake Deal Index we check a fresh sample of advertised Amazon deals every week, around 1,500 to 1,750 of them, and count how many are not meaningfully below the product’s usual price. Across 15 weeks from July to October 2026 that share averaged about 19%. We also measured Amazon’s October sale event, Prime Big Deal Days (October 6–7), once while it was live. The result was 6%.

So in our sample, an ordinary week carried roughly three times as many fake discounts as the event itself. The weekly report taken on October 5, the day before the event when early deals were already live, came in at 8%, and the share climbed again afterwards: 13% the next week, then 15%.

Why the run-up looks like an ordinary week

We measure prices, not intentions, but the pattern fits a simple explanation. On the event days themselves, shoppers compare. Deal sites and reporters publish lists of the best real prices, competitors match each other, and a padded deal gains little. In the weeks around an event, attention is lower but the promotional language is everywhere. “Early Black Friday” is a label that can be applied to any price, and nothing about it requires the price to be lower than usual.

The worst weeks in our sample make the same point. The three highest weeks were August 3 (27%), August 10 (25%) and August 17 (23%), the peak of back-to-school promotion, when there is a seasonal reason to badge everything but no single event day that concentrates comparison shopping.

Where the risk is highest

Some categories were much worse than others in ordinary weeks. Computers carried fake discounts on 33.6% of deals, office supplies on 28.6% and furniture on 24.7%. During the event, computers fell to 4%, while office supplies stayed at 25% and furniture at 18%. If something in those categories is on your list, an “early Black Friday” badge is the least reliable signal you will see all season. The full breakdown is in which Black Friday deal categories to trust.

Three common shapes of an early “deal”

The list-price discount

The badge is measured against a manufacturer’s list price that the product has not sold at for months, if ever. The percentage can be large while the price is exactly where it always is. This is the most common pattern in computers.

The bump before the cut

The price rises for a while in October or early November, then returns to roughly its usual level with a badge. Against last week it is a real drop. Against the last three months it is nothing. Our comparison uses the usual price over 90 days, which is why a short bump does not fool it.

The deal that is only a deal on the day

Some products do get a genuine Black Friday price, but only on the event days. In the weeks before, the same listing may show a smaller badge on a price that is no lower than usual. Buying early locks in the ordinary price.

How to handle early deals without missing the good ones

• Treat an early badge as a reason to check, not to buy. Look at the product’s price history and see whether today’s price is actually below its usual level. Paste the link into worthitforyou to see a year of real prices for free.
• If an early price is near the lowest of the year, it is a real deal. There is no rule that Black Friday will beat it, and stock on genuine lows can run out.
• If it is at the usual price, wait. In our data the event days were far more honest than the weeks around them.
• Watch the weekly number. Our Black Friday fake deal tracker publishes the share of fake deals every week until Black Friday. If November weeks look like the summer, you will see it there.

How these numbers are measured

Every week we take a fresh sample of advertised Amazon deals, about 1,500 to 1,750 of them, spread across 13 shopping categories so that no single category dominates. For each one we compare today’s price with the price that product has usually sold for over the previous 90 days, using our own price research. A deal counts as “not really a deal” (we call it busted) when today’s price is within 8% of that usual price or higher. In other words, the discount badge is there, but the price is not meaningfully lower than what the product normally costs.

That rule is deliberately generous to retailers. A product that is 9% below its usual price passes, even if its struck-through “was” price is wildly inflated. So the share you see is a floor, not a ceiling: the real number of misleading discounts is, if anything, higher. Each week’s report, its examples and a downloadable CSV are on the Fake Deal Index, and the full method is on our methodology page.

For a timetable that puts all of this together, see our week-by-week Black Friday 2026 plan.