Hey everybody, Economic Ninja here. Customers are really getting upset at the Home Depot. You know, last month’s story was really about self-checkout lines and it going from social media to the mainstream media, but now Home Depot has really pissed off a lot of customers when it comes to what they did during Black Friday. They’re being accused of some pretty crazy stuff, and once again, it moved from TikTok and Instagram to now the mainstream media. This story is out of Yahoo Finance. Check this out. Home Depot accused of faking Black Friday deals by masking original prices with holiday sale stickers showing the same cost.

Now, when I went through Home Depot looking for some deals for my family Christmas, there was nothing to be had. As a matter of fact, I went through and looked and I didn’t feel right about it. I would be jumping on Amazon and other places and find the deals even cheaper for the exact same stuff. Look at what this story says. It says Black Friday has lost its luster, at least for some shoppers who have discovered some deals aren’t what they’re cracked up to be. This week, a TikTok video appeared to show a Fortune 500 home improvement retailer, Home Depot, allegedly masked original prices on items with a Black Friday deal of the same exact price.

The video went viral with more than a half a million views. It shows a customer removing the holiday sale price sticker on a high pressure inflator listed at $24.97, revealing the same original price right underneath. Now, how many of you have seen this exact same thing in the past? We saw a Walmart get accused of it before. I didn’t expect this kind of stuff from Home Depot. And quite frankly, I’m not seeing when I was here on, I should have videotaped it, on Black Friday, there wasn’t a lot of foot traffic at all.

There wasn’t really anything. And I think it’s because most people knew that there wasn’t gonna be a lot of sales. Now, it said Home Depot did not respond to Fortune’s request for comment about the allegations or whether the company falsely advertises Black Friday sales. It says it’s if true, however, retail experts say this could potentially be considered false advertising, you think, and would be a bad choice for retailers now, especially as shrinkflation and other price tactics have shown distrust among customers. Leading retailers invest heavily in their customer relationships. And trust is a major component of this.

This comes from Matt Vota, CEO of marketing software company OptiMine. He says, trust is difficult and slow to build, but lost very easily and quickly with such practices. This isn’t the first instance that this has prompted customers to question the truthfulness of these Black Friday deals. Even before inflation, I’ve been to a few Black Friday shopping events. And the first thing I noticed is nothing’s on sale. The prices look the same, one viewer commented on another viral TikTok video. As a matter of fact, when I did a video about a week and a half ago about the self checkout lines at Home Depot, and how I don’t go through them because I want to be able to make sure people have jobs.

So I wait in line for a human. And there’s been times that I’ve seen where it’s just the only human is the one running the four registers. I go, you know what, I’ll come back later. And I try and make it a point. And I don’t get rude about it, but I make it loud enough to a couple of employees hear about it. So hopefully they go to their manager and hopefully their manager goes to someone else and goes, yeah, you know what, people just don’t like these. This isn’t good. We should probably just employ more people.

It says here, even let’s see going down to Target. Oh, Target. Here we go. A Target spokesperson told the New York Post that at the time, though, that TV so let me go. Let me go up really quick. I apologize. Even before inflation, I’ve been to a few Black Friday sales that we talked about it, right? Says Target was also called out in 2023 in a video alleging revealing a television set that was ticketed for a sale price of 649 while also displaying the same big price tag underneath. This isn’t new. And you know, I went to Best Buy also during Black Friday.

I couldn’t get over how cheap the TVs were. But I don’t think that that is a Black Friday thing. I think what you’re going to see is next week, this week, it’s going to be the norm. It’s because there’s so many TVs stacking up because people they’d rather pay their bills and for food right now, rather than going and buying unnecessary items. Most of the American consumers are tapped right now. They’ve been crushed under the last four years of inflation, and they’re really hoping for a way out. We’ll see if that happens or not.

But for right now, I’ll tell you what, personally, firsthand, I didn’t see any deals at Home Depot during Black Friday. Let me know down below if you did or not. All right, with that being said, the economic ninja is out. [tr:trw].

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