Business
Black Friday starts now: A guide to avoiding pressure tactics, online scams and porch pirates
Good news for bargain hunters: Gone are the days of having to stand in line at dawn and then elbow your way through a store to get your hands on coveted Black Friday deals, as many retailers have already launched their Black Friday sales in stores and online.
Target, Amazon and JCPenny were among the large retailers that released their promotions a week ahead of Thanksgiving, while Walmart and others dropped their deals on Monday.
Some experts say this is a broader shift toward spreading out discounts and sales throughout the month of November instead of just on Black Friday and its online counterpart, Cyber Monday.
Even so, Black Friday remains a popular day to shop for holiday gifts. Based on survey results, the National Retail Federation projected that 132 million people will go shopping that day, and almost two-thirds of them will do so in stores.
The preference for in-person shopping on Black Friday is a shift from last year, when the National Retail Federation estimated that 76.2 million people shopped in person and 90.6 million made purchases online.
Consumers who prefer to ditch the hustle and bustle in stores by looking for promotions and discounts online should be aware of retailer tricks meant to pressure shoppers into making a purchase, online scams, and porch thieves who are hoping to steal packages from your front door. Here are some tips from experts to help you make your way through the season’s first big shopping weekend.
Pressure to make impulse purchases
It’s already overwhelming to make your gift list and check it twice to ensure that you’re not missing anyone, whether it be your aunt in Boca Raton or your mailman down the street. It’s even more overwhelming to find one of those gifts on sale at an online retailer, only to see a tag in bold lettering that says “High Demand,” “Low stock” or “In 10 people’s carts,” because your next thought tends to be, “This could sell out, I need to get it now.”
These are often just mind games retailers and advertisers play that are “designed to spur us to make hasty spending decisions,” said R.S. Cross, campaign director for Public Interest Research Group.
The organization found that on top of urgent messaging, some sellers on the online marketplace Etsy are using fake countdown timers on deals that don’t expire.
PIRG tracked 20 bestselling or Etsy-curated products with countdown timers on deals and discovered that 16 timers reset for another 24 hours when the timer hit zero. The other four items further dropped in price when the timer ran out.
Other common tactics include displaying how much an item will cost by making monthly installments that “both make low-cost products’ prices seem cheaper and make expensive impulse purchases more doable,” according to the organization.
To help resist this manipulation, Consumer Reports suggests that consumers create a budget and stick to it. It’s easier said than done, especially when Black Friday deals are presented as limited-ime offers.
Consumer Reports also recommends starting shopping early. If you purchase an item now and see a price that has dropped later, you can contact customer service and they’ll usually refund the difference.
As you search for deals this week, Cross said, compare items across various online retailers “and don’t get distracted by offers you haven’t had the time to think through,” said Cross.
You can use online tools including Google Shopping, Price Grabber and Shopzilla to compare the price of products on various retailer outlets.
Avoid online scams
When you peruse the internet for sales from specific brands and retailers, make sure you’re clicking on and making purchases from their official websites.
Online security group McAfee identified a surge in counterfeit sites and phishing scams that use the names of popular luxury brands and tech products to lure consumers into purchasing products for what the consumer believes are unbelievably low prices. Instead, they’re giving away personal information (including credit card, address and account information) to cyber crooks.
McAfee researchers found these sorts of scams targeting footwear and handbag brands, including Adidas and Louis Vuitton. Scammers also tricked consumers by using the Apple brand on fake websites linked to stores selling counterfeit Apple items alongside unrelated brands.
Experts say the best way to counter these scams is to be skeptical of a product when the discount seems too good to be true. Carefully check the URL of a website to ensure that it’s legitimate — even minor variations in spelling or style are a telltale sign of a scam.
Porch pirates
Online purchases are easy because once you click the “complete order” button, all you have to do is wait for the package to arrive at your front door. But porch pirates may also be prowling for packages to arrive so they can swipe them.
These thieves steal packages primarily from residences whose front doors are easily visible and within 25 feet of the street, according to the Better Business Bureau.
In the past year, porch pirates have stolen approximately $12 billion worth of packages, according to Security.org. The security system analysts found that apartment renters experience package theft at double the rate of those who live in single-family homes.
To avoid becoming a package-theft victim, experts recommend that you schedule their delivery on a day you’ll be home. You can sign up for tracking notifications from a retailer, UPS, FedEx and USPS to remind you of the date and time of an expected delivery.
If you can block the visibility of your front door by parking your car in the driveway, that might help keep porch pirates at bay, Officer Drake Madison of the Los Angeles Police Department said.
If you know you won’t be home when a package arrives, LAPD recommends that you ask a trusted neighbor or friend to look out for the package and pick it up for you. Some delivery companies also offer the ability to change when and where a package will be dropped off.
You don’t have to have your package delivered to your home. Many retailers offer the option to have an item shipped to one of their brick-and-mortar stores, and they usually offer pick-ups at a customer service counter or a designated parking space in their lot.
Amazon has pick-up counters or self-service lockers at retailers, grocery stores and pharmacies. FedEx can hold your packages for up to seven days at one of its retail partners, including FedEx Office, Walgreens, Office Depot and Dollar General stores.
If you stick with having your packages delivered and you won’t be home to receive them, there are an assortment of lockboxes and secure, oversized mail slots available, although they can be costly. Alternatively, you can install a security camera or doorbell with a built in webcam, but that won’t necessarily stop the theft. Instead, it can gather the evidence needed to obtain a refund from the shipper and share with local law enforcement.
“If a specific area is being targeted and everyone makes a report, it shows police where porch thief issues are occurring and will allow them to deploy resources accordingly,” Madison said.
Nike is cutting about 1,400 jobs in its operations division, mostly from its technology department, the company said Thursday.
In a note to employees, Venkatesh Alagirisamy, the chief operating officer of Nike, said that management was nearly done reorganizing the business for its turnaround plan, and that the goal was to operate with “more speed, simplicity and precision.”
“This is not a new direction,” Mr. Alagirisamy told employees. “It is the next phase of the work already underway.”
Nike, the world’s largest sportswear company, is trying to recover after missteps led to a prolonged sales slump, in which the brand leaned into lifestyle products and away from performance shoes and apparel. Elliott Hill, the chief executive, has worked to realign the company around sports and speed up product development to create more breakthrough innovations.
In March, Nike told investors that it expected sales to fall this year, with growth in North America offset by poor performance in Asia, where the brand is struggling to rejuvenate sales in China. Executives said at the time that more volatility brought on by the war in the Middle East and rising oil prices might continue to affect its business.
The reorganization has involved cuts across many parts of the organization, including at its headquarters in Beaverton, Ore. Nike slashed some corporate staff last year and eliminated nearly 800 jobs at distribution centers in January.
“You never want to have to go through any sort of layoffs, but to re-center the company, we’re doing some of that,” Mr. Hill said in an interview earlier this year.
Mr. Alagirisamy told employees that Nike was reshaping its technology team and centering employees at its headquarters and a tech center in Bengaluru, India. The layoffs will affect workers across North America, Europe and Asia.
The cuts will also affect staffing in Nike’s factories for Air, the company’s proprietary cushioning system. Employees who work on the supply chain for raw materials will also experience changes as staff is integrated into footwear and apparel teams.
Nike’s Converse brand, which has struggled for years to revive sales, will move some of its engineering resources closer to the factories they support, the company said.
Mr. Alagirisamy said the moves were necessary to optimize Nike’s supply chain, deploy technology faster and bolster relationships with suppliers.
A bill that would have required insurers to offer coverage to homeowners who take steps to reduce wildfire risk on their property died in the Legislature.
The Senate Insurance Committee on Monday voted down the measure, SB 1076, one of the most ambitious bills spurred by the devastating January 2025 wildfires.
The vote came despite fire victims and others rallying at the state Capitol in support of the measure, authored by state Sen. Sasha Renée Pérez (D-Pasadena), whose district includes the Eaton fire zone.
The Insurance Coverage for Fire-Safe Homes Act originally would have required insurers to offer and renew coverage for any home that meets wildfire-safety standards adopted by the insurance commissioner starting Jan. 1, 2028.
It also threatened insurers with a five-year ban from the sale of home or auto insurance if they did not comply, though it allowed for exceptions.
However, faced with strong opposition from the insurance industry, Pérez had agreed to amend the bill so it would have established community-wide pilot projects across the state to better understand the most effective way to limit property and insurance losses from wildfires.
Insurers would have had to offer four years of coverage to homeowners in successful pilot projects.
Denni Ritter, a vice president of the American Property Casualty Insurance Assn., told the committee that her trade group opposed the bill.
“While we appreciate the intent behind those conversations, those concepts do not remove our opposition, because they retain the same core flaw — substituting underwriting judgment and solvency safeguards with a statutory mandate to accept risk,” she said.
In voting against the bill Sen. Laura Richardson, (D-San Pedro), said: “Last I heard, in the United States, we don’t require any company to do anything. That’s the difference between capitalism and communism, frankly.”
The remarks against the measure prompted committee Chair Sen. Steve Padilla, (D-Chula Vista), to chastise committee members in opposition.
“I’m a little perturbed, and I’m a little disappointed, because you have someone who is trying to work with industry, who is trying to get facts and data,” he said.
Monday’s vote was the fourth time a bill that would have required insurers to offer coverage to so-called “fire hardened” homes failed in the Legislature since 2020, according to an analysis by insurance committee staff.
Fire hardening includes measures such as cutting back brush, installing fire resistant roofs and closing eaves to resist fire embers.
Pérez’s legislation was thought to have a better chance of passage because it followed the most catastrophic wildfires in U.S. history, which damaged or destroyed more than 18,000 structures and killed 31 people.
The bill was co-sponsored by the Los Angeles advocacy group Consumer Watchdog and Every Fire Survivor’s Network, a community group founded in Altadena after the fires formerly called the Eaton Fire Survivors Network.
But it also had broad support from groups such as the California Apartment Association, the California Nurses Association and California Environmental Voters.
Leading up to the fires, many insurers, citing heightened fire risk, had dropped policyholders in fire-prone neighorhoods. That forced them onto the California FAIR Plan, the state’s insurer of last resort, which offers limited but costly policies.
A Times analysis found that that in the Palisades and Eaton fire zones, the FAIR Plan’s rolls from 2020 to 2024 nearly doubled from 14,272 to 28,440. Mandating coverage has been seen as a way of reducing FAIR Plan enrollment.
“I’m disappointed this bill died in committee. Fire survivors deserved better,” Pérez said in a statement .
Also failing Monday in the committee was SB 982, a bill authored by Sen. Scott Wiener, (D-San Francisco). It would have authorized California’s attorney general to sue fossil fuel companies to recover losses from climate-induced disasters. It was opposed by the oil and gas industry.
Passing the committee were two other Pérez bills. SB 877 requires insurers to provide more transparency in the claims process. SB 878 imposes a penalty on insurers who don’t make claims payments on time.
Another bill, SB 1301, authored by insurance commissioner candidate Sen. Ben Allen, (D-Pacific Palisades), also passed. It protects policyholders from unexplained and abrupt policy non-renewals.
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Politicians in Washington and the reporters who cover them have an often adversarial relationship.
But on the last Saturday in April, they gather for an irreverent celebration of press freedom and the First Amendment at the Washington Hilton Hotel: The White House Correspondents’ Association dinner.
Hosted by the association, an organization that helps ensure access for media outlets covering the presidency, the dinner attracts Hollywood stars; politicians from both parties; and representatives of more than 100 networks, newspapers, magazines and wire services.
While The Times will have two reporters in the ballroom covering the event, the company no longer buys seats at the party, said Richard W. Stevenson, the Washington bureau chief. The decision goes back almost two decades; the last dinner The Times attended as an organization was in 2007.
“We made a judgment back then that the event had become too celebrity-focused and was undercutting our need to demonstrate to readers that we always seek to maintain a proper distance from the people we cover, many of whom attend as guests,” he said.
It’s a decision, he added, that “we have stuck by through both Republican and Democratic administrations, although we support the work of the White House Correspondents’ Association.”
Susan Wessling, The Times’s Standards editor, said the policy is a product of the organization’s desire to maintain editorial independence.
“We don’t want to leave readers with any questions about our independence and credibility by seeming to be overly friendly with people whose words and actions we need to report on,” she said.
The celebrity mentalist Oz Pearlman is headlining the evening, in lieu of the usual comedy set by the likes of Stephen Colbert and Hasan Minhaj, but all eyes will be on President Trump, who will make his first appearance at the dinner as president.
Mr. Trump has boycotted the event since 2011, when he was the butt of punchlines delivered by President Barack Obama and the talk show host Seth Meyers mocking his hair, his reality TV show and his preoccupation with the “birther” movement.
Last month, though, Mr. Trump, who has a contentious relationship with the media, announced his intention to attend this year’s dinner, where he will speak to a room full of the same reporters he often derides as “enemies of the people.”
Times reporters will be there to document the highs, the lows and the reactions in the room. A reporter for the Styles desk has also been assigned to cover the robust roster of after-parties around Washington.
Some off-duty reporters from The Times will also be present at this late-night circuit, though everyone remains cognizant of their roles, said Patrick Healy, The Times’s assistant managing editor for Standards and Trust.
“If they’re reporting, there’s a notebook or recorder out as usual,” he said. “If they’re not, they’re pros who know they’re always identifiable as Times journalists.”
For most of The Times’s reporters and editors, though, the evening will be experienced from home.
“The rest of us will be able to follow the coverage,” Mr. Stevenson said, “without having to don our tuxes or gowns.”
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