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Christmas Shopping: The Best Deals in Canada
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by Terri Potratz | November 27, 2008 at 05:35 pm
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Black Friday is about to hit the US with massive sales and discounts on a wide range of goods, but hearing about all the consumer gluttony from our Southern neighbours can leave Canadians feeling a bit jealous.
We've certainly had plenty of sales popping up here lately as most retailers slash prices earlier than usual, but Canada doesn't have a "Black Friday" so to speak this early in the year.
There are lots of deals available for the frugal Canadian, though. One site, Black Friday for Canada, tells Canadians how they can take advantage of American sales - either by visiting participating Canadian retailers or by shopping from US sites online.
Another site, Red Flag Deals, is unrelated to Black Friday but compiles all the greatest deals in Canada and is especially useful leading up to the holiday shopping season. You can find coupons and forums where people discuss deals they've found.
Unfortunately, we do things a it backwards here in Canada and our big doorbuster sale of the holiday season doesn't occur until Boxing Day, the day after Christmas. This is when retailers will clear out their seasonal stock with major sales, and it is very similar to Black Friday save for the date.
Many retail companies internally refer to the sales week after Christmas as the "thirteenth month" or Boxing Week and over the last couple of years have actually changed the name from the "Boxing Day sale" to the "Boxing Week Sale". It is similar to Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving, in the United States. Boxing Day 2005 was the single largest economic transaction day ever in the history of Canadian commerce according to Visa. Individual big box stores can even gross over CAD$1,000,000 on one single Boxing Day.
Boxing Day/Week sales are still heavily promoted in Canada, but retailers have not escaped the current need to host sales earlier and earlier in the season in response to shoppers' economical woes in the wake of flailing markets. Seeing sales a month before Christmas would have been rare in Canada just a few years ago, but now most are discounting goods prior to Boxing Day specials.
We may not officially have Black Friday, but Canadian retailers certainly are offering up some great deals on products. A wise consumer will be sure to fully research any big-ticket products they are interested in to ensure they get the best deal.
Here are some key tips:
- Search online. You can still support your local walk-in business if they are offering a competitive price, but do your research. If you are after Black Friday deals, those can be found online too and purchased immediately with the click of a button.
- Sign up to email alerts from your favourite shops - they'll notify you when sales happen, and often customers on mailing lists will get a heads-up or advance buying notice.
- Let your phone do the bartering for you. Most smart phones at least have the capability for you to do price comparisons online, and the SnapTell iPhone application enables you to take a photo of a DVD/CD/game/book and receive the cheapest place to buy it nearby. Google SMS can also help you research prices - just send a text to "GOOGLE" with the word "price" and the product name and wait for your response.
Other great shopping tips can be found here:
Tech-Savvy Tips for Black Friday Bargains
and here:
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Most RecentMost Recommended Comments (2)
at 13:02 on December 7th, 2008
It's great to see a list of Canada-specific resources, as so many of the sites people talk about are more US-focused. We run a site called CheapTweet that has deals for stores all over the world (though we focus on English language retailers only). There are a number of Canadian stores represented on CheapTweet! CheapTweet aggregates the deals, discounts, sales and specials people talk about on Twitter and allows site visitors to search for, save and vote on those deals. There are all kinds of products, from TVs and electronics, to clothing and toys.
It's at http://cheaptweet.com
at 03:20 on December 27th, 2008
e-commerce is getting more and more popular. this creates the need of having good tools to help shoppers make right decisions while buying online. reizit is a place where shoppers can recommend or bury a product, share experience and discuss shopping deals.