Guides, tricks, and everything the internet doesn't want you to know.
Every year, millions of shoppers wait for Black Friday convinced they'll get the best deals of the year. Amazon has turned this expectation into a systematic pricing strategy. What few know is that the algorithm raises prices in the weeks before the event to make the "discounts" look more spectacular than they really are.
Price tracking services like CamelCamelCamel and Keepa have documented this behavior for years. A product that normally costs €89 might be raised to €129 three weeks before Black Friday, only to be "discounted" back to €99 on the day itself — giving Amazon the ability to advertise a 24% discount on a price that is actually higher than the historical norm.
"The 'original price' in many Black Friday deals is invented. It's a reference point that was never the real market price."
Kibbo's Price Spectrometer tracks price history over time. When you visit a product page, Kibbo shows you whether the current price is higher, lower, or the same as the historical average. If you see a "discount" label but the price is actually above the 30-day average, Kibbo flags it.
Before Black Friday, check the price history of any product you're considering. If the price was raised in October or November, the discount is not real. Set a price alert for the product's historical average, not the inflated "original" price.
Install the free extension and never pay inflated Black Friday prices again.
Add Kibbo to Chrome →Ryanair's booking flow is one of the most studied examples of dark patterns in the travel industry. The airline has perfected the art of inserting extra charges at every step, many of them pre-checked by default so that inattentive users pay without noticing.
During a standard Ryanair booking, you'll encounter pre-checked options including travel insurance, priority boarding, seat selection fees, car rental offers framed as flight options, and check-in baggage added by default. Each of these is designed to look like a required field rather than an optional add-on.
"Ryanair buries the 'No insurance' option inside a dropdown list of countries, making it uniquely hard to find compared to accepting the insurance."
Go slowly through every step. Look for pre-checked boxes. Before clicking "Continue", scroll to verify nothing extra has been added to your basket. Kibbo's Checkout Shield alerts you when it detects pre-checked boxes on booking flows.
Kibbo's Checkout Shield highlights hidden checkboxes automatically.
Add Kibbo to Chrome →Booking.com is notorious for its use of fake urgency. Timers that count down, "only 1 room left" warnings, "X people looking at this right now" messages — almost all of these are either fabricated or algorithmically exaggerated to create pressure to book immediately.
The countdown timer on Booking.com does not represent a real deadline. If you refresh the page or leave and come back, it resets. The price does not change when the timer reaches zero. It is purely a psychological pressure mechanism with no functional basis.
"Tests show the Booking countdown resets on page refresh 100% of the time. The urgency is manufactured, not real."
The "X people looking at this" counter is not real-time. It's a value calculated to maximize urgency, not an accurate reflection of concurrent users. The same applies to "only 2 rooms left" warnings, which often remain unchanged for days.
The fake countdown becomes unreadable. Shop at your own pace.
Add Kibbo to Chrome →This article is being written. Check back soon.
This article is being written. Check back soon.
This article is being written. Check back soon.