Despite expected frenzy, malls and local stores in and around Durban were fairly quiet with no long Black Friday queues as anticipated.
Black Friday is considered as one of the biggest shopping periods of the year with hundreds of shoppers camping outside malls from the early hours of the morning rushing to be the first in line for the “super savings”.
Speaking to Tabloid Newspapers, a shopper at one of the grocery stores in Gateway Shopping Mall, Candice Naidoo, said this year there is not much hype about Black Friday as there was before. “I am just buying groceries for my house and hoping to get super savings. There are no long queues at shops, this could be an indication that people have been ‘crippled’ by Covid-19 and they do not have money to splurge unnecessarily,” said Naidoo.
Independent economic analyst Professor Bonke Dumisa, urged consumers not to buy goods on credit. “Most of those goods advertised as ‘super savings’ are simply being sold at their normal prices which are in most cases simply deliberately pushed up say two months before November in order to create the illusion of Black Friday super savings. I advise consumers to be smarter when buying,” said Prof Dumisa.
