Target Angers Customers With Fake Black Friday Deals

If you woke up at 3 a.m. to shop at Target for Black Friday deals, there's a good chance you were defrauded for at least a couple of hours of sleep.

TikTok investigator DJ Downey Girl went shopping over the weekend and discovered, in certain cases, that those Black Friday deals that Target was advertising were actually the same prices Target was charging for those items before Black Friday.

Take the case of 75" Samsung class CU7000 UHD 4K Smart TVs that were sitting out in the middle of the store just begging for deal-thirsty shoppers to snap up. "Black Friday Deals," a Target placard declared.

And then DJ Downey Girl pulled out a placard behind the Black Friday Deal to reveal it was the same price as Target had been selling the TV before the big shopping day.

Let's go to the footage:

As you can see in the video, Downey Girl found other TVs where the placards were also the same as pre-Black Friday pricing. Also, if you do a quick Google Search, a shopper would learn that the same TV is the same price at Best Buy.

"Black Friday Deals" used to mean you were actually getting a...deal.

Based on the Target placard scam and the New York Times declaring, "Black Friday isn't what it used to be," shoppers seem to have less and less incentive to get out of their warm beds to stand in cold lines like the old days.

“When you think about Black Friday, the competitive landscape has really shifted to Black Friday deals prior to Black Friday,” Jeffrey Gennette, chief executive of Macy’s, said during a recent call with investors. “We’re in the midst of that along with our competitors.”

DJ Downey Girl's TikTok followers don't dispute what Gennette told investors.

"I worked at Target back in 2015 thru 2020 and it was always like that things are on sale a month before black friday," TikTok user StarBright wrote like it was straight out of the Macy's CEO's mouth.

"(I) got my mom a coach purse for Christmas last week for $145. they marked it up to almost $200 for black friday," another TikTok user wrote.

And you better keep your head on a swivel for Amazon to pull similar stunts, according to TikTok'r Irene.

"I had some shampoo in my cart on Amazon. 5 days ago it was $17 (originally $35) for Black Friday Deals it went to $23," she commented.

Meanwhile, at Target, the marketing hits just keep coming. Even with its stock recently rebounding off massive losses (it's still down 27% from a 2023 high in February) following events like the company hiring a Pride strategist who then came up with rainbow nutcrackers for the 2023 Christmas season and the company selling "tuck-friendly" swimsuits.

Let this be a lesson to those of you who are Black Friday emotional shoppers who just want that dopamine rush like the old days. Stay in bed, set price alerts on your phone, and streamline your life during the holiday season.

Don't forget: The box stores aren't your friends.