Shopping: Navigating the holiday deal season

Attention, shoppers: In case you haven’t noticed, the holiday season is here, said Laura Petrecca in USA Today. But those looking for end-of-year deals might be in for some befuddlement. “There are so many confusing promotions going on, it could make shoppers just want to regift items they have in their closets.” With fewer days than usual between Thanksgiving and Christmas, many retailers are changing the rules. Walmart.com, for example, is offering hundreds of Black Friday deals on Thanksgiving, and will launch 20 Cyber Monday deals a day early for its mobile app customers, Facebook fans, and email subscribers. And other stores, like Macy’s and Amazon.com, have pulled out all the stops, launching their deal seasons up to a week early “as retailers feel pressure to ring up sales.” But here’s some good advice for shoppers who “are trying to take advantage of new shopping patterns”: Pace yourself. Make a list of the top items you want to buy and “snap them up” when you find a decent price, but don’t “go crazy over saving a few bucks.”

Tech tools can help you find good deals, said Eric Ravenscraft in Lifehacker.com. Check out BFAds.net, for example, a website that “collects as many leaked advertisements as possible, as well as retail news, store hours, and other relevant information” that could give you the inside scoop on upcoming deals. SlickDeals.net offers a companion app—available in Android and iOS versions—that will send you “notifications for when new ads leak” and let you “create your own shopping lists to plan your attack.” And if you’re buying online, don’t forget to do some comparison shopping. As long as you know what you want, websites like CamelCamelCamel.com and GetInvisibleHand.com let you track certain items’ prices.

Whatever you do, don’t wait, said Martha C. White in Time.com. With the holiday shopping season starting so much later than usual, there’s really no room to procrastinate. “Waiting until the weekend before Christmas to do your shopping doesn’t just mean fighting for a parking spot at the mall and being stuck on a checkout line for ages.” Studies show that as December progresses, shoppers tend to “buy pricier stuff.” According to MasterCard, slackers often think they’ll find better deals by being patient. “Sorry to break it to you, but if data from last year is any indication, it’s not going to turn out that way.”

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