We’re a broken record about this this whole Black Friday thing...

We write a version of this post every year, sorry if we sound like a broken record – but we think it’s worth saying it repeatedly.

We’re generally positive about American imports - especially those with a V8. We’re also particularly partial to a Crispy Crème donut and two of the brands we stock are American (you can’t get more red, white and blue than Carhartt).

However, sitting here in the UK during November we just don’t get the hype around Black Friday.  We don’t celebrate Thanksgiving and the third Friday in the eleventh month isn’t a national holiday when we historically flock to worship at the altar of retail.

Yet most UK retailers seem to have embraced this discounting frenzy with both hands.  Ever since Asda turned American (thanks to Walmart) and sold a handful of super-cheap TVs which resulted in a barrage of publicity and people (albeit bloody nosed) spending money their store.   

We’re sure your inbox is no different to our and despite opting out of everything, we are repeatedly deleting what seems like an unrelenting stream of Black Friday emails offering never-ending discounts.

Brutal truth from us at Tinker and Fix - we don’t ‘do’ discounts.  Well, we do, but it’s a postage discount that’s offered all year round (it’s a bit like a dog is for life, discount isn’t just for Bank Holiday or Black Friday).  

But ‘that’s not a discount’ we hear you say. We get that all the time from Amazon, Sports Direct, John Lewis and all the others. Yep. You’re absolutely right. But it’s well reported that Amazon don’t put money aside to pay their taxes in full, that Sports Direct aren’t as generous to their workers rights as they are to the discounted sales they run, that John Lewis is losing profits at a scary rate, and that other businesses are blowing out discounts in a bid to stay alive (which invariably means, unfortunately, they won’t).

But ‘we want the 20% off offer’ we hear you say - ‘we’ll wait until one of them come around and order then’.  Sorry - you’ll be waiting a long time (and it definitely won’t be this Black Friday!) Or, you might be thinking 'where is the 10% off discount if we sign up to your emails'? Sorry we don't do that either - we only send a couple of emails a year. We don't generate content just to sell you more things - as we can't abide getting a barrage of emails from companies pretending to be our friend when they really just want us to continually open our wallets!  If you are adamant that you want a discount then we strongly suggest you try and source what you need elsewhere (absolutely no issue with us - we really don’t want you to miss out!).

The thing with discounting is that customers become conditioned to want it cheaper the whole time. Which just isn’t feasible - if you want something that is good quality, is built to last, and is made in a way that’s sustainable (be it ethically, environmentally, or commercially). There is a cost of making things well - but the benefit is that you’ll have them for life. So when you’re looking for a discount code, think instead how much value you’ll get from the item - its lifetime value - and all of a sudden it becomes discounted without being devalued!

Still not convinced and still asking ‘discount?, what discount?’ We do offer postage free over £80 - which costs us from £3.50 to up to £10 depending on the size of what you order.  And for those items under £80 we charge a flat rate of £3.95 (or just 80p if it’s something small - on a single Fixit or greetings cards.).  So on many items this doesn’t even cover our postage cost - so you often are getting a bit of free postage (that’s the issue with us selling wonderfully bulky tools and equipment).  But hey - that’s fine - we sell things online, we suck up the cost of postage and all packing - as that’s the norm.  

And if all this fails, and you’ve managed to get to the end of this - hell, here’s a discount code - SuckOnThis - you’ll get a discount, of sorts, it’s not worth money, instead you’ll get a free lollypop. Enjoy!